The Quality not Luxury Gap
Jun. 17th, 2006 09:34 pmDJing went sort of OK last night - venue was almost like some shebeen or illegal dive, understairs in a secret style door under the pub. Although we were told to finish by 10pm (I was told 11pm) we eventually were allowed to DJ til 2am - problem since I'd taken only enough MP3 tunes for 2-3 hours, and didn't have the CD deck linked up.
First set went well - went for more mellow bootlegs, hip house, house and more listeny tunes as it was obvious not many people were going to dance, but I get em going to Cookie Crew. Problem was the staff from the venue kept coming over and physically turning me down. Even though I have no monitor to hear within the booth what's being played...grrr.
Az (Paige's brother, Paige is an old friend and ex-work colleague, and Indy whose Birthday party it was is a work collegue who saw me DJing at Uprising many moons ago) alternated with me, and played more IDM stuff mixed with 80's which went down well, I went on again and for an hour or so it just didn't work - was playing dancey Telex bootlegs and silly drum and bass mixes - got talked over - nope.
Threw in some rave stuff - not really.
Sadly there was no monitor or phones so I couldn't hear if I was overloading, initially too loud, then too quiet...I literally had to go onto the dancefloor to hear if it was too much!
I gave in after an hour with the cred-yet-fun dancey bootleg or IDM stuff - even Since you've been Gahan, Black Metal Tarantula, my Electric Eye bootleg and the electro stuff had bombed, and then put on Japanese Boy by Aneka closely followed by Rhythm is Gonna Get you by Miami Sound Machine - my emergency cheese choices. Full floor.
Thing is, this is partly why I'm probably going to stop DJing at the end of this year - unless you get a specialist crowd in, even the bootlegs won't always work on a non-bootleg crowd, and you end up playing 80's cheese. Cheese I particularly like, but it gets boring. And I find it stressful anyway. It's not that I'm like 'no-one understands my reggaeton meet shoplifting-gabba-grime MAAAAAAN!' but that I've been fucked around many times recently by promoters (and in this case the venue) and can see that I'd end up playing music I hated, or not the music I want to play, to get a 'good' crowd reaction. Meh. And I freely admit I'm not a DJ, I don't have those skills, it's painfully obvious when I play I don't have the 'feel'.
Do you learn that? How?
I just feel a little, well deflated. Was good to have John there, but he heard very little of my set since due to venue aggro (the early last minute time change) I'd actually stopped just before he arrived, and he stayed for the start of mine but was gone during that as it was too noisy for him. I don't think I'll hire that venue - well the Embassy Bar in Essex Road, Islington can fuck right off.
Was pround of playing Breathe Don't Stop (QTip vs Jackson) then intercutting it at exactly the right point with Usha Uthup's Chhupke Kaun Aya. I had One Two Cha Cha on standby also, as well as Shirley Ellis' great tonguetwister 'ever see a diver kiss his wife while the bubbles bounce about above the water' which is great, and you'll hear that on RC soon enough.
I'm actually thinking that my last gig is going to be Bootie. Out on a high, eh?
( An incomplete / mostly unordered list of what I played )
First set went well - went for more mellow bootlegs, hip house, house and more listeny tunes as it was obvious not many people were going to dance, but I get em going to Cookie Crew. Problem was the staff from the venue kept coming over and physically turning me down. Even though I have no monitor to hear within the booth what's being played...grrr.
Az (Paige's brother, Paige is an old friend and ex-work colleague, and Indy whose Birthday party it was is a work collegue who saw me DJing at Uprising many moons ago) alternated with me, and played more IDM stuff mixed with 80's which went down well, I went on again and for an hour or so it just didn't work - was playing dancey Telex bootlegs and silly drum and bass mixes - got talked over - nope.
Threw in some rave stuff - not really.
Sadly there was no monitor or phones so I couldn't hear if I was overloading, initially too loud, then too quiet...I literally had to go onto the dancefloor to hear if it was too much!
I gave in after an hour with the cred-yet-fun dancey bootleg or IDM stuff - even Since you've been Gahan, Black Metal Tarantula, my Electric Eye bootleg and the electro stuff had bombed, and then put on Japanese Boy by Aneka closely followed by Rhythm is Gonna Get you by Miami Sound Machine - my emergency cheese choices. Full floor.
Thing is, this is partly why I'm probably going to stop DJing at the end of this year - unless you get a specialist crowd in, even the bootlegs won't always work on a non-bootleg crowd, and you end up playing 80's cheese. Cheese I particularly like, but it gets boring. And I find it stressful anyway. It's not that I'm like 'no-one understands my reggaeton meet shoplifting-gabba-grime MAAAAAAN!' but that I've been fucked around many times recently by promoters (and in this case the venue) and can see that I'd end up playing music I hated, or not the music I want to play, to get a 'good' crowd reaction. Meh. And I freely admit I'm not a DJ, I don't have those skills, it's painfully obvious when I play I don't have the 'feel'.
Do you learn that? How?
I just feel a little, well deflated. Was good to have John there, but he heard very little of my set since due to venue aggro (the early last minute time change) I'd actually stopped just before he arrived, and he stayed for the start of mine but was gone during that as it was too noisy for him. I don't think I'll hire that venue - well the Embassy Bar in Essex Road, Islington can fuck right off.
Was pround of playing Breathe Don't Stop (QTip vs Jackson) then intercutting it at exactly the right point with Usha Uthup's Chhupke Kaun Aya. I had One Two Cha Cha on standby also, as well as Shirley Ellis' great tonguetwister 'ever see a diver kiss his wife while the bubbles bounce about above the water' which is great, and you'll hear that on RC soon enough.
I'm actually thinking that my last gig is going to be Bootie. Out on a high, eh?