On Djing...

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

Playing a 7 hour set sounds like a nightmare! There’s no way I’d be a able to make it without drinking.

Great story! I’ve been on the other end: hiring djs that play frequently at my bars/clubs and there’s more often complaints than compliments thrown the djs way, which I ignore 99.9% of the time. the occasional angry clients are more vocal, the happy people are dancing and having a good time.

The thing that happens every now and then are clients that offer money (100,200 dollars) to request a song which is usually denied because it doesn’t fit at all with the vibe. If it fits and the dj agrees I’ll give the money to the dj.

I might be very lenient as a boss and I have no problem with giving our djs drinks as long as their responsible with it and I have two djs playing. A couple of times I’ve been in the position to send djs home when they are clearly too drunk and making mistakes and paying the other dj to cover the rest of the night.

A couple of years back we always had open bar for the djs but nowadays the manager limits it to 4/5 drinks per night because the djs would drink a full bottle of tequila thru the night and it was… problematic.

dying at "headbanging music"

I will usually have a couple of drinks but in all honesty I don't really have time to be doing much else. Even though I'm using Rekordbox and a DDJ-400 controller I feel like I'm busy enough with cueing up what's next and chatting to people. I do find it helps steady my nerves, and a drink loosens me up enough that I can dance and relax myself, but I wouldn't want to make a mess of things and embarass myself.

A friend of my brother's has been DJing for a few years and notoriously ruined his first night playing at a well-regarded club in Glasgow by getting really drunk before it. I don't believe a good DJ has to be able to beatmatch etc and it's better to just soft blend than have the "galloping horses" effect of two tracks playing simultaneously at wildly mismatched tempos, which is what this lad was doing when he wasn't accidentally sliding the volume and crossovers about. I don't think he's ever really got the momentum back since it happened.

In my day job I'm still very much a people-pleaser but I don't find complaints bother me much. I'm always following a procedure/policy/rules so it's never truly a decision I've made. I might be interpreting it strictly or leniently depending who I'm dealing with but generally speaking a complaint from a customer or a client isn't something I'm going to feel bad about because I know I've done all I'm able and willing to do. Whereas I think what I find hard about the requests and the moodhoovers with this, is that when they react with disdain and uninterested to what I'm playing it feels very personal, like they're telling me my tastes and perceptions are worthless. I mean, I absolutely do not want to have the same taste as a 77 year old man who grunts his way through anything faster than 110bpm, but I don't like the idea that I'm making someone feel unwelcome and uncomfortable. But I cannot please everyone, I'll drive yourself crazy trying to, and there's no point in doing it anyway because it wouldn't be fun or worthwhile.

It's borderline psychotic than anyone could think that they should actually get to tell you what music you should play. It's like if you turned up at a baseball game and fuckin moaned at the coach to let you play. Just fuck off, you're not a baseball player and you're not in this game!

I get free drinks on Fridays, when I’m playing 2 to 2.5 hours. It’s always 2.5 pints while I’m playing, then I’ll finish the other half while I’m packing up. My rule is never to exceed 3 pints while playing, no matter how long the set is. That seems to work. (Also, any track longer than 3 minutes gives me enough time for a piss.)

xp to boxedjoy, I subscribe to the “pleasing all of the people some of the time model”, so I’ll never stick with a genre longer than 20 mins. Cross-genre transitions are fun! (NB I love immersive hypnotic sets too, but I’m playing a bar.)

same. I'm not trying to keep people on a dancefloor, I'm trying to complement their food & drink experience. different vibes!

love yr story there boxedjoy and I would have been bobbing in my chair if I had been there

finally getting back into the groove tomorrow after a 3-month break. first I took a month off for my birthday, then I threw my back out right before the October gig and canceled. so it's been since early August. it's probably gonna be pouring rain, this is why the Chet Baker and Julie London records stay in my rotation crates.

time to mask back up with the N95s as well, I just got over COVID and have no intention of getting it right away again (which has happened to numerous people I know)

sorry for spam, but here's a video i took that i like. i think boxedjoy turned me on to this one. thanks boxedjoy.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Czw6LPriahw/

In all my time as a DJ I haven't found a way to turn down idiot requests without coming off as a grumpy asshole.

My friend and I had a room full of people bopping around to Amapiano and Afrobeats slammers on Saturday, and these same couple of people kept coming up asking for Taylor Swift because "It's our friend's birthday".

By the third time, I was ready to tell them where to go, but I just kept saying "Sorry, we're not going to play that". They weren't getting the hint, just kept going "Pleeeeeease". It was ridiculous

Vinyl-only helps with that.

I was liked Stirmonster’s suggestion (in this thread?) to say, “I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of them”, not matter how well known the request.

lol I gotta try that sometime

i don't mind coming off as a grumpy asshole but i wouldn't exactly recommend it.

for people who keep pestering me when the answer is clearly 'no,' i tell them that if they have a problem with the music they need to talk to the bar staff, who thankfully back me up. i've had to say 'this conversation is over' a few times and just get into an ignoring contest. it's kind of amazing to me how much this gets on this type of person's nerves - they're clearly used to their relentless bullying tactics working.

You can say “if you really cared about your friend you could have done the homework to find a place that will play Taylor Swift”. Then follow up with my quote I think I already mentioned which is to say you know where you can hear Taylor Swift? Any where else in the world.

oo i like that, ice cold

when i DJed nearly every house and apartment party in college, one classmate of mine would come up to me, without fail, and ask me to play some hip-hop. she would always do this when the room was packed with people dancing and having a great time.

once, she said to me, “no one is having fun” and i looked at the room, motioned to 40 people dancing vigorously, and said, “maybe you need to adjust your idea of what fun is.” she never said anything to me about my deejaying ever again.

(this was in an apartment that perhaps dan selzer can recall, above the old video store)

tbh I don't even remember an old video store!

My Oberlin DJ career can be summed up as...music director of WOBC, so plenty of that. I did an "electro-funk/space disco/proto-techno" night at the 'sco that nobody was at, and I DJ'd a "rave" in the South lounge which I think was still daytime. I played old electro and Paul B. Davis played "new" electro. I also gave a history of techno lecture to a very questionable techno exco that took place in Zeke. And I manned the lights most time Morgan Geist played techno to an empty 'sco.

i guess the kids finally got hip to dancing by the time i got there! i would DJ to a packed Sco on occasion, but mostly at house parties.

I forgot I DJ'd at least once house party. I had two belt driven turntables and a single a/b switch. No cue. No faders. That's called "paying your dues".

I’m slow today but what’s a ‘sco

disco?

student disco, I'd guess, yeah

come over to mine after the 'sco I ordered some 'za

It was a "club"/"bar" in the basement of the student union. My microtonal drone band Sruti Box (featuring Mike Kelly aka Kelly Polar) opened up for Gastr Del Sol there. Mostly known for quarter tuesdays, where cups of beer were a quarter and I think in all my years I never once attended. But there'd be various DJ nights as well, to mixed success.

Tuesdays were quarter beers, wednesdays were splitchers (pitchers of PBR for $4), and Thursdays were pizza and pitchers (whole cheese pizza and pitcher of beer for ten bucks).

Deejaying a quarter beers night was great— as long as you played four to the floor, people would dance.
Kelley Polar played and Morgan Geist did a killer live set during my senior week.

Some fun if blurry years.

my thursday nights have been going better since october. you'd think the cold would discourage people from coming out but the opposite has been the case. they haven't been close to packed by any means but a handful of dancers is something. last night my partner and this really sweet guy we've been seeing came. the energy was amazing. many good moments.

<3

haha so i show up last night and half the lights are off. the bartender tells me they'll probably close around ten because it's been really, really slow, did mr. k send you a message, he told me that he sent you a message. i tell the bartender i have friends coming tonight and can i play for a while, he's like sure. i warm up a bit, 2-3 more people come in. the bar is really dead, like 7 people total. my partner, our third, and his twin sister show up and they start dancing hard. i'm more caffeinated and energetic than usual because third and his twin sister are beautiful, brilliant young people and this is the first time i'm meeting her in person, so i want to impress. i'm also higher than usual, double my normal edible dose. they carry me along past 10 and then 10:30. i'm playing a pop set. i sort of ambiently notice the bar isn't closing. you can't see people come in from the booth or the floor, you have to crane your neck around to peep the bar - i notice a few people there. i get up to a rihanna calvin harris tune and suddenly the floor floods with 20 people! i don't think i've ever seen it take off quite so fast. high as i was the energy transformation was incredible. i got some jitters but i know where to go from the saturday nights i did last year. so we have a righteous jump-up-and-down singalong sesh for 30 minutes until the bar finally decides to do last call at 11:45. my friends and lovers get to experience a good crowd. i get home and notice a message from mr. k through facebook messenger. he has my cell, not sure why he decided to send me a message through facebook, it's not like i'm going to check that 20 minutes before i leave. so it's just kind of wild that everything happened, that we had a party on a dead night that i was supposed to not even play. it was incredible. i'm still pretty amped from it.

i'm also higher than usual, double my normal edible dose.

this seems incredibly brave given how much that could affect your sense of time :)

oh i mean i've done that amount before, which is a small dose for most (10mg), and was still pretty functional, so i wasn't too worried. it was a special occasion and i had work off today, so i felt like letting my hair down. 5mg is usually enough to take the edge off and make me feel kinda floaty during a gig without really impairing me.

My new years resolution was to promote less and create more.

That's a general rule. I want to get back into the creative process of actually making stuff, producing music, writing for pleasure, maybe even find other endeavours to concentrate on.

I've been a promoter and a proselytiser my whole life and DJing and putting on nights has been a huge extension of that.

But I miss that feeling of creating new things. And so I told myself I'd leave it for a bit and channel my energies on learning Ableton and trying to write some fiction this year.

Then two days later a local venue I'd previously chasing for gigs got back to me and offered me a monthly residency.... I'm chuffed ofc but its ironic

so I guess my first DJ set doing prog night went pretty well. they asked if I wanted to come back and play within the next few weeks. only thing is, I will need a mixer of some sort, because right now I'm just borrowing it from the guy who normally does it.

I found this one - pretty cheap obviously, but do I really need anything more expensive? all I'm gonna use is two turntables and my phone.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/392363543298

FWIW, the functionality on that mixer looks to be exactly the same as the mixer that I use, so I reckon you should be fine. Also, yay, prog night, would totally teleport!

It’s missing one feature I find really useful is a knob to let you mix the headphones from cue to main, sometimes esp when there are no monitors or they’re busted it’s helpful to hear a mix of cue and main in the headphones.

Oh I would definitely need that. I play in too many places with poor monitoring or none at all, I rely on this