On Djing...

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.

last night was the best night i've had in months. bar is finally getting a crowd in on thursday nights. all of august and most of september was dead. still not taking requests, still loving it. had a stretch of vogue crash music with 'work this pussy' samples going into chaka kenn - size queen and other 'fuck me hard with your big dick' type tracks, it felt so good to play that shit. a couple of groups on the floor who stayed with me through a handful of switch-ups for over an hour :)

yay! glad you're building up a crowd

had what might be my last gig of the year at my usual place the other week. the rugby boys were back again, they're a fun crowd and i got a few nice compliments after my set. my "big dick" track was medicine8's "big dick in the room" lol. last 45 minutes or so was just wall-to-wall classic hi-NRG, lime, tapps, etc., it's so much fun to play that stuff out

nice map

i had no idea re junkie xl vs solomon burke and i have had the 2cd buried deep for years.
gotta love well connected producer albums.

thanks jordan :). ahh donna i knew your gig was coming up soon! fun to think we were playing around the same time. your hi-nrg stretch sounds like a blast.

because this thread has more chatter re: djing, here's the live recording from the coney island bumper cars. I'm the first 35 minutes. The mic was just placed on the booth so you can hear the crowd and the ride operator making siren noises and telling people to not bring drinks on and some funny chatter ad the very end.

https://soundcloud.com/newyorkendless/bumped-my-ass-off-at-james-bday?fbclid=IwAR2WxrSRy5qCzhTflSI1hFdCaJVTy0s9tc6SQxImw0AOoRXHpQu70iEVZUw

"zorro"! hell yeah. pretty rad you got to play at coney island!

i recorded my entire set from last week but it's interrupted throughout by the host making announcements, gonna maybe excerpt it and throw it up on my mixcloud at some point

Zorro is so underrated...don't know how I didn't know that one till a few months ago. Considering how huge Hypnotic Tango is you'd think people would know more of their stuff.

Friend who I’ve worked with in the past opened a rooftop/club this Saturday and I just visited by myself to drink a couple of whiskeys and wish her the best. She was very stressed and told me that the light jockey didn’t show up - knowing that I know how to program and use that sunlite controller she begged me to stay and was happy to help. Place was full and it fits around 500 people and doing lights is honestly very stress free.

At some point the dj asked me to cover for him for a half hour… problem is it wasn’t my computer and had no idea how to interpret the unlabeled file names. Ended up having to play from a 2,000 folder filled with top 40 hits which isn’t ideal but it actually worked out great. Crowd was 30-ish and halfway drunk at that point so I guess I could have played mostly anything and gotten away with it.

Anyways went with 00s pop party music, last track the dj left was a house track so mixed “Calabria 2007” into “It Just Wont Do” both selections I was afraid to play because they’d instantly reveal if the people would vibe for a detour into this sort of thing or I’d need to improvise and change course - which would have been a trainwreck because again I wasn’t familiar with the filing system of this dj and had no time to explore.

Fortunately it went down great. Iirc Nina Sky “move ya body” next. Sean Paul “we be burnin”, Ying Yang Twins “Shake”, Eminem + nate dogg “shake that” and Mr Cheeks - “lights, camera, action”… there’s a couple of tracks I played in between that I can’t remember. Dj came back and seemed happy I didn’t make everyone go home.

I hate when I have to dj without my own files, it’s very stressful not knowing and having proper folders of where to look for.

I mean I don’t dj as a main gig, I was rather thrown into learning how to do it for emergency purposes, so this scenario happens more often than not.

I did fail terribly one night at a rock bar, thought the crowd would be into post punk and goth but apparently it was more of a jock rock vibe. Made some clients go and felt really bad about it.

"Calabria 2007" into "It Just Won't Do" would have had me as putty in your hands to be honest.

Glad to hear things are going well for you both map and donna rouge!

Tomorrow I am DJing at a charity event. It's the afternoon - 1pm-5pm - and there is another guy playing from 5pm til close. I'm not expecting my usual crowd of "post-work drinks" and my 20-40 yr old pals, and so I'm not going to be able to rely on the 00s r&b and 90s crossover dance hits that usually work for me. I've had barely any time to prepare, as I've been busy with work and then this week I've taken a chill that's led to me phoning in sick for work most of the week. I'm pretty nervous as I think it's going to be a bit out my comfort zone, but I was volunteered for it and it's always nice to do something for a charity cause.

I did an "all requests special" last night, which was a) easy, b) interesting, c) odd, but d) well received. I did start adding some of my own choices in towards the end, though, for the sake of dancefloor fluidity. https://serato.com/playlists/Mike_Atkinson/strut-ya-stuff-request-special-20-10-202

"Calabria 2007" into "It Just Won't Do" would have had me as putty in your hands to be honest.

― boxedjoy

It helped that people were already in party mode and the place was full, but yeah it turned out to be a great starting one two punch. Didn’t really know what to follow it up with lol… should have kept that vibe going for longer…

"Destination Calabria" is one of my can't-go-wrong-with-this tunes. It never fails. Not heard the Enur 2007 version before; looks like it didn't cross over to us in the UK. Like it!

The Enur version was very popular in latinamerican countries when it came out. I like the original too but the Enur version has a more modern oomph that paired better.

Destination Unknown was also popular but I think that was mostly for the music video lol

They’re kind of the same song but the Enur version always sounded more fun to me.

IIRC there were two UK pop/dance tunes that sampled it last year, which were both in the UK singles chart at the same time.

Like “infinity” which has been remixed/sampled/revived every 8 years or so since 1989.

I was wondering if it has been revived recently and yeah it seems Willy William did a 2022 song with it that has like 100m streams on spotify.

Going to a rabbit hole to see what happened to Natasja I just found out she died in a car crash in Jamaica on June 2007 just around the same time as Calabria was starting to become a big summer hit. :(

Just checked: the 2022 UK hits were Nathan Dawe/Ella Henderson “21 Reasons” and Benzz “Je m’appelle”.

Yesterday was tough. I got to the bar which is never usually more than 100 people and it was RAMMED. Easily 200+ people there. And outside of my three pals who came to support me, just about everyone was in their 50s and older. Which is fine but it's a very different crowd. I had thought there would be a bit more variety in terms of the audience so I could still play some of the usual 90s/00s stuff I rely on but I very quickly realised that this wouldn't work at all. So I went Britpop, Motown and fake Motown for the first hour, then tried to keep it very wedding disco and relatively safe. Nobody was dancing because there was no room to dance, but I could see people singing along, shoulder-shuffling in their seats and giving me smiles. Which was really nice.

EXCEPT. This group of older men positioned themselves right beside me and pulled faces all afternoon. They were the types who were never going to dance or enjoy what I do anyway. Fred Perry shirts, tan leather shoes, serious gold jewelery. So my logic was: why should I try to win them over, and risk losing the rest of the room, when they're never going to be happy with what I'm doing anyway? One of them came over and told me - he didn't ask, he told me - that I had no clue what I was doing and should be playing Beatles and Rolling Stones. But by this point we had folk singing along to "It's Raining Men" and "Jump (For My Love)" so it was quite clear where the party was going. And in all honesty, I don't like 60s rock enough that I would ever want to hear it myself, so I don't have it on my USBs. He told me he was 77 and had had an aneurysm and wasn't happy with this "headbanging music." This was during Ride On Time. I just smiled and laughed, because what else do you say to someone who feels so entitled to their regular spot in the pub that they would prioritise their own taste over stuff that was otherwise working for the rest of the room?

He was relentless. A real moodhoover drain on my energy. Luckily the couple who were beside me cottoned on and made a joke that I should just turn my set-up to face the other way and actively ignore him. They were asking for Calvin Harris and Kylie as well which helped my mindset a lot. He then tried to argue with me by pointing to an older guy sat beside the speaker and saying it wasn't fair to "subject" him to that. Again I just smiled and nodded because the older guy was also smiling and dancing in his chair, and he was more than capable of moving away if it was too much for him.

As we were finishing up the charity afternoon he started moaning to one of the bar staff and saying how I was being disrespectful. She laughed and pointed out I had been playing all sorts of stuff all day and everyone else was having fun. Then - and I love her for doing this - she got up on a table and did a big thanks to everyone who donated money and prizes and then to me for giving up my afternoon and playing all day. I got a massive cheer for that! So: Old Aneurysm Nusiance, sorry but you're not the main character at this event. Nor am I of course, my role is just to keep the energy going as people get drunk and want to sing along to uptempo hits.

I was told the event was 1pm-5pm so I planned accordingly. Except, the Sunday night DJ who is there every week had actually said he wouldn't be in until 8pm. And of course not everyone left at 5pm. So I suddenly had three hours to fill. I was really winging it. I still didn't feel my usual fallbacks were right for the room or the crowd so I had to very rapidly figure out what I was doing. It was tough and challenging but I think I did well. The staff all came up for a dance to Smalltown Boy and You Spin Me Round while Old Aneurysm Nuisance sat scowling at them loving more "headbanging music." I'm really happy with how it went considering how far it stretched me from what I would consider my comfort zone.

I had a few drinks afterwards when the 8pm guy turned up. Another guy came up to me and said he remembered the night I first played there a few months ago. He was asking how long I did it and where else I do it, and he seemed sincere in his surprise that I don't play elsewhere and I've only been doing it in public since summer. It was exactly what I needed to hear after feeling like I spent a day battling complaints, even if it was only a handful of difficult punters whose opinions I don't put much value into. The two women working at the bar also came up to me afterwards and we were having a gossip about the day went and one of them said a lovely thing to me. She said that she likes when I'm in because I don't play to a crowd but I play for a crowd.

Tl;dr - you can't please everyone and I find it hard not to, but I'm learning to not care and other people are really enjoying what I do so I'm happy as it stands.

Oh and I forgot - I did end up playing The Beatles. But in a way that I knew would wind up the cohort:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtjoZxXA9Iw

(do not ask why I had this on my USBs)

Not tl;dr at all, I love reading dj tales like this. And although I lolled at the terms ‘moodhoover’ and ‘Old Aneurysm Nuisance’ we’ve all been through similar cantankerous bullshit. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah this is great bj. Would read your compiled dj diaries!

Just popping in to say that this is easily my fave olxor thread atm, thanks to all the frank, detailed discussion. So no tl;dr