On June 12, DJ Promo (Matt Solo) set out to break the Guinness Book of World Records for longest DJ session in history, which was originally held by British DJ Genix at 84 hours. Jack Bauer may be able to save the world in 24 hours, but Matt wanted to spin records for 100.

Matt had totally revamped his lifestyle, eliminating drugs, alcohol, junk food, and smoking in order to be healthy for the attempt, and vowed to break the record drug-free, to serve as an important statement as the dance music culture is often savaged by reports of drug-related injuries and fatalities. In addition, the effort was raising money for the homeless and kids with cancer.

By mid-afternoon the day before, Matt was still helping out with the setup at The Vertex, a temporary five metre tall pyramid structure in Federation Square, and still had not even sorted his records yet .

It was a cool nine degrees when Matt began his marathon. He shyly announced “Thank you all for being here,” and then kicked it off with Krwaftwerk-Trans Europe Express. The session didn’t skip a beat, even though the records tended to when people were dancing vigourously on the temporary wooden floorboards of The Vertex.

More than 1,500 songs would be played from all genres. This included guest vocals from Sara Brooke on Monday night before the Socceroo World Cup Match, which brought all kinds of craziness post-game, with people hanging off the rafters and one individual breaking through the outer wall of the Vertex, a 5 metre high pyramid-shaped structure, like a mini-Louvre, except the art in here was on vinyl and CD’s.

Unfortunately, the structure acted like a greenhouse in the middle of a sunny Tuesday, which drained Matt’s energy and required him to get constant massages to loosen his neck and back. Even on his 15 minute breaks, matt was in constant motion, loosening up his legs on the spin bike, doing pushups, and staying focused.

By Thursday AM, Matt had been spinning for almost three days straight with no sleep. Even so, he was still 20 hours away from the record. Unfortunately, his body and mind started to quit on him. “I Almost dropped my headphones on the turntable, I had no concept what was going on,” explained Matt. In fact, the Red Cross was on the verge of forcing him to quit. “I was almost in tears,” confesses Matt. Somehow, Matt passed his gut check that no training can prepare for and soldiered on.

Come Thursday evening, the Vertex was jammed end to end. Renee Moullet provided some background singing on a few tracks. Matt was almost surprised when the timer went past the record, as a notice went up on the screen behind me while Pete Heller-Big Love played. “Thanks to everyone who kept this whole idea alive-it’s overwhelming,” Matt said to the crowd, before joking , half serious “So are you guys all staying until 1 PM tomorrow?”

By midnight, however, it was decided that in the best interests of his health to stop, extending the record to 87 hours straight. Matt signed off with The Muppets-Manamana, whose nonsensical gibberish perhaps described his frazzled stated of mind, and provided a fitting end to a gargantuan effort.