On Djing...

hmu for janet remix opinions

i quite often play the original version and people will assume it is an edit. there is a particularly amazing live version of Nina Simone's See Line Woman i play and i often get asked whose edit it is and always love being able to say "Nina's!". recently this happened and when i said "Nina's!" they said "Kraviz?"

― stirmonster, Monday, July 31, 2023 7:39 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

omg yeah same experience with “the moving finger”!!

tbf i play at like -4 or -8 but “headz” were asking who produced these downtempo beats and i was like uhhhh dorothy ashby

― the late great, Monday, July 31, 2023 7:42 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJhNRgMIeAE
surely the ultimate one of these, please forgive the intrusion

wow thanks, i’ve never heard that one!!

Played a Classic Pride Anthems set in Harrogate last night: it's a city which has never had its own gay venue, and I believe this was its first ever indoor LGBTQ+ dance party, which is mad, right? It ran from 7pm-1am and my slot was 8-9.45pm, so I wasn't expecting much, but by 9pm the decent-sized venue was packed and the dancefloor overflowing - proper peak time vibes - which was an astonishing and beautiful sight, and basically unheard of for that place at that time. Talks are in progress to make this a regular event, and I reckon last night will have sealed the deal. I badly want to do more of these; as much as I love my Friday nights at the bar at the top of our street, this was my biggest gig since my club residency ended in 1989, and experiencing those vibes again was utterly magical.

Next up: two club nights in Nottingham in September and October, playing five-hour Hi-NRG sets at both. It's a brand new dance space in the converted basement of the city centre's last remaining gay bar, and what they've done with it looks seriously impressive. Things seem to be happening, and 18 months after going digital, I'm ready to let them happen.

DJ-ing during a heatwave in a room with no ventilation turned out to be a fairly pointless exercise! Every single person there ended up drinking outside on the street, having given the dancing a go and given up, so for about 30 minutes during the last hour I was playing to a completely empty room. They could still hear me through the windows, though. So it was one of those nights where the vibe was "I'm glad they've got a DJ on, but I don't actually need to engage further". Which was fine! I'd have done the same!

I had my second turn in the pub last night and I really did feel the odds against me. I was determined to not play anything I played last time in attempt to say, I can do more than just the things I did last time. I also had to combat the same heatwave, and also Scotland had a football game on and this bar does not have Sky Sports to show it. The first few hours were tough - I kept it very chill, 100bpm r&b rising up through to some disco, because I knew it would be quiet and I don't want to be playing "bangers" to an empty room. The bar has a beer garden so a lot of people who came were sat out there. It was pleasant and fun but I was definitely feeling that insecurity of wishing it would properly launch. Then it hit 10pm and they closed the beer garden just in time for me to up the energy with "You Should Be Dancing" and "Good Life" and it suddenly just felt like a total victory. People were up dancing, people were buying shots, it felt so lively and energetic. I had the best time.

People kept buying me drinks so I was a little more tipsy than I wanted to be, and I think some of my transitions were not as smooth as I know I'm capable of, but nobody seemed to notice or care. I was texting my boyfriend and my best pal to ask if they noticed and they hadn't so I was happy with that.

I was surprised by how well "Padam Padam" did, people love it and rightfully so but I didn't think it was in the top-tier floor fillers space yet. I also got a big reaction to Frankie Knuckles' remix of "Million Dollar Bill" and to "Filthy/Gorgeous." My own highlight was "Horny" which I played around 11.15pm and it was positively rapturous with everyone - EVERYONE - singing along. And of course I didn't really have a choice, I had to end on Scotlands unofficial football anthem "Yes Sir I Can Boogie" - complete with a chorus where I super-cheesily cut the volume as everyone sang along. It was a total buzz and I'm really excited to be doing it again in a month's time.

omg so fucking great!

my thursdays have been really dead lately. empty floor most of the time. i'm still feeling the music and enjoying my sets. i'm also playing music for the entire bar. the people who are there generally seem to like it. bopping around while playing pool. i had a drag queen dancing in front of the mirror last night to a few songs while checking out her boobs. i played a perfume track. yeah girl you're hot.

bopping around while playing pool.

yeah since I DJ in a restaurant this is exactly the kind of reaction I look for

Last night I teamed up with a couple of peeps I'd DJ'd with in the past couple of months. We went into a studio that hires out decent quality CDJs and spent a happy few hours just going back to back.

It was especially great because we're all quite newly acquainted I feel like I've made some new friends with similar tastes and interests. And while some of the transitions were a little sloppy, mostly cos we're not that au fait with the equipment and we don't know each other well, the point of the exercise was to have fun.

Getting to use proper CDJs makes me realise how much I have to learn. I'm fairly confident with beatmatching and using EQs and filters but I really want to get more confident with looping and FX.

I want to be able to do that neat trick where you can switch tempos by doing a delay out of one track into a faster or slower track by dividing the tempo by half or whatever. Also just being able to do cool jitters and swooshes would be a game changer

Empathising with my fellow ILX bar DJs. I have a monthly gig in a pub with a very accommodative garden where they don't give a shit if you smoke weed, so naturally the bar area is empty.

I usually feel like I'm playing to people who would rather not have me blasting music in their ears so they can converse.

Then at about 11.15, they close the garden and I have about a half hour to play to a suitably lubricated crowd, then it ends and everyone shouts for more: lads, I've been playing for four hours, where were you?

I usually feel like I'm playing to people who would rather not have me blasting music in their ears so they can converse.

lol I always have to watch this one specific table that is right under one of the four speakers, for some reason that is always the table that complains about volume

(i.e. the other table in the same position never complains)

I am too old to learn new DJ tricks I think, gonna cold mix Mancuso style for life

So glad you had a good time boxedjoy

^^ yes I wanted to say congrats there as well

My place shuts its beer garden at 11pm, so that’s the usual sudden influx - except last night when they just walked through the bar, out of the front door and onto the street. boxedjoy, that sounds awesome! I had a request last night for Million Dollar Bill that I couldn’t fulfil, so that one’s going straight on the list. I like the Padam Jax Jones remix, but brought back down to around 130bpm, but of the current hits it’s Dua Lipa and Peggy Gou all the way, the latter blending very nicely into Kylie’s On A Night Like This (only just spotted the similarity).

well done boxedjoy!

at the bar where i DJ, the monitor is right behind me so it’s difficult for me to gauge how loud it actually is - sometimes i think it’s roaring and then i step away from the booth and it’s actually pretty quiet. think i’m gonna just turn it off entirely next time i do it. my next gig is a month from now and that might be it for me at this venue for the remainder of the year. it’s gonna be a rugby night again, which is great - those boys really brought it out of me lol.

i do have a potentially very exciting opportunity for a party on the horizon but don’t want to jinx it quite yet :)

Would Peggy Gou into ATB or vice versa be too on the nose or anyone trying it?

Last week, I went from Ithegane to a great bootleg mix of Nanana that samples Michael Wycoff to the Sequential One mix of ATB, and it all worked well. Those two Peggy tracks merge together seamlessly.

I have to play a lot of obvious stuff that people know, but I won't do it in a way that totally sells me out. Playing the hits is as much of a challenge as any other form of DJ-ing - more so when you're playing to a crowd that ranges from late teens to late sixties, and all points between

I've actually been thinking a lot about this post in preparation for these nights at the bar. I'm really glad I still get to do my online radio show where I play deep house, garage and techno which I love, but that stuff is really not appropriate for the Friday night casual crowd. I like to think that, yes I'm playing crowd-pleasers but I'm doing it on my terms, I'm not going to ever be playing stuff I wouldn't listen to on my own time like Queen or Ed Sheeran which just isn't me. "Horny" might be a cheesy anthem but it became that by being a great song to start with, and I think you can have big obvious fun without it descending into a Freshers Disco. Of course, everyone's mileage of what's too naff for them is subject to taste.

great post, I don't really play anything like what most of you play, but I still bring what functions as "crowd pleasers", songs people actually know

otoh one time I played a whole side of ZZ Top's Tejas and a gal sitting at the bar starting to tease her boyfriend because he wasn't sure what band it was, deep cut LP ftw

Last night I got two requests. One was for a song that the woman requesting didn't even know the artists' name so I wasn't really worried about it. "Type it in and see if it comes up?" I humoured her knowing it wouldn't be there but I said I would see if I could do anything with it anyway. I obviously didn't.

The other was a guy who came up around 9.30pm. He'd been in at least an hour and had heard the vibe of disco and r&b. He asked me if I'd heard of a singer who does acoustic guitar music with blind children. It was a good laugh trying to explain that it simply wasn't going to happen because it would have just completely killed the room. From the way he was talking it was obvious he was trying to show off, "I know more music than you" but I couldn't care less. So when he came up ten mins later asking for Bob Marley I took great delight in pretending I didn't know who he was, "is that another guy with a guitar?"

lololol

haha. always be giving requesters attitude. i got kinda nasty a few times with one or two people. some dude dancing to my darker house run, then coming up and requesting nickelback. i basically stared at him and yelled "what the FUCK??" lol. like sorry dumbass you picked the wrong time and the wrong night, not going to be nice to you. i have gone full "no i don't take requests" to avoid all of this which is perfect for me tbh.

If someone has a request and it isn't awful I'm more than happy to play it at the end, if it will make their night then that's a good thing.

The other guy who DJs in the bar is an older man with an encyclopedia of musical knowledge and I've never known him to not fulfil a request. He has everything and is happy to play everything. I like that but it's not what I do and it isn't the point of what I've been asked to do - if I was going to do the exact same thing then they would be as well just booking him every single week, and I've been asked because they want to try something different.

A few people said to me last night that I looked like I was really having an amazing time too, because I was singing along and dancing and chatting to everyone. Which is really nice to hear! I think it really helps set a tone. I've seen so many bar DJs who just treat it like bare minimum work, pressing play on the next track in-between scrolling Instagram.

Last night, someone asked “have you got any retro music?”. At this early-ish point, I hadn’t played anything later than 1987. So I asked her to qualify. “You know, like Two Funky Brothers?”. Then she fetched up a track by these people who I’ve never heard of on her phone. I still have no idea what makes them “retro”.

loving the recent posts.
the first time i dj'd a pub party someone came up and asked for some absolute crap.
i genuinely laughed out loud and said 'dont be daft', to which the fella said while laughing at my reaction 'fair enough'.
and thats the best outcome if you ask me.

My favorite during my DJ days was when the entire room would be grooving to whatever house stuff I was playing, and someone would come up and insist “you need to play hip-hop, no one is having fun” to which I would look at them, gesture to the crowd dancing, then move on.

Yeah that happened so often.

The only snarky response I ever gave was as when people were having fun and I was playing my usual stuff and someone was requesting something popular, let’s say Beyoncé, and was getting aggressive and rude about it and I said “do you know where you can hear some Beyoncé? Every other bar in this city”.

that's a good answer.

I have to play a lot of obvious stuff that people know, but I won't do it in a way that totally sells me out. Playing the hits is as much of a challenge as any other form of DJ-ing - more so when you're playing to a crowd that ranges from late teens to late sixties, and all points between

I've actually been thinking a lot about this post in preparation for these nights at the bar. I'm really glad I still get to do my online radio show where I play deep house, garage and techno which I love, but that stuff is really not appropriate for the Friday night casual crowd. I like to think that, yes I'm playing crowd-pleasers but I'm doing it on my terms, I'm not going to ever be playing stuff I wouldn't listen to on my own time like Queen or Ed Sheeran which just isn't me. "Horny" might be a cheesy anthem but it became that by being a great song to start with, and I think you can have big obvious fun without it descending into a Freshers Disco. Of course, everyone's mileage of what's too naff for them is subject to taste.

― boxedjoy, Saturday, September 9, 2023 8:23 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Honestly, I really think "playing what people want" is a really tough bit of artisanship that shouldn't be knocked. I have a friend who mostly plays functions, weddings etc. He makes good money, but there's a skill to what he does that I would struggle with. He played my friends 50th birthday party a while back and just slayed it - all stuff people knew but nothing too obvious; loads of 90s pop and dance bangers, stuff like Prodigy, Faithless, Underworld, hip-hop classics, I can't remember, but it was so well done and worked perfectly for the crowd of people between 35-60 who didn't really know each other well.

I'm lucky to play in fairly cool city areas where most of the people coming in are students and people in their 20s-30s who are mostly into stuff like jungle, hip hop, dubstep etc. I get asked to play D'n'B/Jungle a lot but it's not really my thing - I'll still accommodate though.

But yeah, my DJ sets at the pub I play in tend to be whatever I'm digging that month, sans stuff like extreme metal or leftfield noise etc... Tend to play a few chill out or vintage type things towards the beginning of the night, moving into disco or amapiano or something relatively funky and bouncy, before breaking out the bangers towards the end.

The other was a guy who came up around 9.30pm. He'd been in at least an hour and had heard the vibe of disco and r&b. He asked me if I'd heard of a singer who does acoustic guitar music with blind children. It was a good laugh trying to explain that it simply wasn't going to happen because it would have just completely killed the room. From the way he was talking it was obvious he was trying to show off, "I know more music than you" but I couldn't care less. So when he came up ten mins later asking for Bob Marley I took great delight in pretending I didn't know who he was, "is that another guy with a guitar?"

― boxedjoy, Saturday, September 9, 2023 8:30 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I was having a nice time mixing soca / afro-pop oriented stuff when an elderly Jamaican man with dreadlocks came up and asked me if I played reggae. As the bar was fairly empty except for him and a couple of others, and much as I was loathe to change the mood seeing as the soca was fairly uptempo and flowing nicely, I indulged. I had a new rare 80s roots 7" I wanted to break out anyway. Stopped the soca, put on the tune and he just walked out.

Requesters caaaan be annoying.
But what's even more annoying are really drunk people who just want to interfere somehow.
Leaning over the booth with a drink in their hand, nearly spilling it over the equipment loudly shouting questions like "WHAT KIND OF MUSIC ARE YOU PLAYING TONIGHT? DO YOU DO IT ALL ON THAT COMPUTER? WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU GOT? HAVE YOU GOT ANYTHING BY KURT COBAIN? CAN I HAVE A GO? OH GO ON LET ME HAVE A GO, IT'S MY BIRTHDAY" etc.... Anything

lol half the time when I fulfilled someone's request they would either converse through it like they didn't even notice it was playing, or they were nowhere to be found (even if I was pretty speedy with the request.) Walking out while it's playing is one I haven't experienced though! xp

For all my worries it couldn't have gone that badly because I've been asked to do it again in a fortnight's time!

whaddup

last night was rough. I packed and prepared for a busier night, based on it being much busier than expected last time despite the factors working against me outlined upthread, and also it is a Bank Holiday weekend in Glasgow with most people working a half-day yesterday. I got to the bar, realised that it was not that busy at all and the crowd was mostly men in their 50s and 60s instead of the usual mix of 20-70s, with the post-work pints crowd absent. My pals who come out to support me did a great job of seeming to enjoy themselves, dancing and buying drinks, but a lot of people who were in left and we didn't really have many people come back in. I know I can't control inwards footfall - there's no song I can play that will bring people in off the street - but I can't shake the feeling I had chased people out. Which is frustrating because I feel like I really did try to keep it quite populist for the first few hours - Fleetwood Mac, Diana Ross, Sister Sledge, Blondie, all the wedding disco staples. I mean, I kept it populist all night but I definitely went a little cheesier as I was warming up. I know rationally what was more likely is that people had finished work at lunchtime, been out all afternoon and ready to head home at dinnertime, but it's hard to shake the feeling.

There was a couple who apparently said to the barmaid after I'd been on for an hour "when is the music starting?" which is either the cheekiest or the most absurd thing. The guy came over and asked me for Solomun Burke, who I'd never heard of. I looked him up and he seems a big deal in America but in the UK he's had one song chart which didn't even make the Top 40, so I think I'm allowed to be excused for not knowing him or having it on the USB. His partner then said "you need to play some Motown" and I was like, yeah I've got some and I'm going to play it later (which was not a lie) but that seemingly wasn't good enough for them and they left. I feel like I maybe should have just scrapped my planned order and jumped to the Motown but then I feel like, if I'm just going to take requests and play what people want when they want it then I might as well just be replaced with a jukebox.

The rest of the night went a bit better. A few lads came in around 9pm and stayed til the end, and they seemed to enjoy themselves, but it was very much a case of chair-dancing instead of up-on-your-feet dancing. Whereas two weeks ago the pub was really busy, people were up being lively and visibly having fun. I know you can't win them all but it was a bit deflating.

A few things surprised me. September's "Cry For You," Garbage "Stupid Girl" and Jamelia "Superstar" all went down REALLY well. I did not have any success with Kate Bush "Running Up That Hill" despite having seen it really go off in various places since Stranger Things, I guess we're now bored of it. mike t-diva is right about the Dua Lipa and Peggy Gou current hits, and I stole the idea to play Kylie "On A Night Like This" which really worked. The Peggy Gou song is now apparently a big football (Celtic) chant here which I did not know, and there were people out last night who didn't know it was a real song and thought it was just something made up on the terraces! I also stole your idea to play AC/DC "Thunderstruck" based on you saying it worked well for you a few weeks back, but we must have very different crowds because it did not land at all.

My pals all said they had a brilliant night, I still got paid, and I still had a great time afterwards at an afterparty getting very very drunk, so I can't say it was a complete flop and I'm probably being quite hard on myself. I think on a technical level I did really well, and I think if the crowd had been there it might have gone differently. But I'm not sure what I could or should have done differently in terms of preparing for it, and I think I just need to have a bit more conviction regarding what and how I play.

random thoughts:

you are being a little hard on yourself! if you have a regular gig there will be off nights, the important thing is that you got paid and asked back again :)

personally I would have taken the Motown request as an excuse to shift gears, at least in the absence of any other feedback or vibes pointing in other directions

wait, now that I read it again they sound like jerks and/or Northern Soul snobs, fuck 'em

when it's really quiet in the restaurant I can default to jazz and such, you may not have that option but if things just aren't moving you can just pretend it's a chillout room maybe?

"when is the music starting?"

SO RUDE

yeah it's definitely not a place where I could switch to jazz or anything too adventurous. In the few weeks I've been doing it I've quickly realised that the thread of things that work is very much Big Chorus-Driven Pop Music, which is also why I wasn't keen on that request for Solomon Burke or the guy two weeks ago with his singer-songwriter acoustic-music-for-blind-kids. The bar isn't based in the heart of the city centre or anything but it's very much a High Street vibe - the same reason I'm not turning up with deep house and garage even though that's the stuff I really love playing.

All the Motown that I really like, and would be happy to play out, and I think would work best, is all the stuff that's quite stompy and uptempo. So I fear if I play it too early it doesn't give me a lot of room to go on from - if your energy is already at 100 early on in the night, how do you keep that going over a few hours? Especially if, once you've played the Motown, those people are likely to sit back down or leave after it?

Solomon Burke is not a big thing in the states. Probably better known by uk northern soul types. An average American who says they like Motown isn’t requesting that unless they’re a retro soul person most of whom just steal their vibe from uk northern soul people anyway.

you can always try Junkie XL + Solomon Burke - Catch Up To My Step

Wow, never heard that before.

I have a gig tomorrow, first time in ages! It's a new restaurant trying late-night cocktails/bites/DJ on the weekends. It would help if I'd actually been there previously to scope out the vibe, but this is pretty last minute. My friend who got me the gig has been keeping it on the jazz/soul/reggae end of things but said I can spin whatever I want, so I'll pack a bunch of that stuff but also see if I can hopefully fit in a bit of 80s pop and new wave. Nervous...

It’s my second Hi-NRG gig in Nottingham tonight. Five hours. I’ve got 99 bangers in my set list (and Kylie ain’t one).

How was the first one?

Could have been busier tbh, but they’re keen to make it work, and so am I.