On Djing...

just found out the pride retro party i'm djing tomorrow night is sponsored by a defense contractor 🤦

i think this explains why the ut4h pr1de c3nter has been so weird about marketing it + not including me in the promo.

feels like you have to eat a little shit starting out if you want to do this. true of just about any job i guess.

this is all so awesome, congrats map

I've had a few gigs hijacked by sponsors that didn't want an LGBTQIA2S+ person top billing something they were paying for. Totally understand. I'd tell them to eat shit at this stage in my life but don't blame you for wanting to break through if you can.

thanks sleeve. xii yeah i mean it's explicitly a gay party so that part is ok thankfully otherwise i'd really be uncomfortable.

if it makes you feel any better, i was once asked to work a book event for a famous author and said yes since it was double pay— basically 50/hr, 3 hrs. Guess who had to hand books to Madeleine fucking Albright to sign for an hour?

(I didn’t know it was her before going in, and I certainly wasn’t smiling and joking with her during the signing)

holy shit tabes

how’d your gigs go map??

omg tabes that is wild!

thanks for asking dr, u know i was gonna go on about it itt any way ;)

my afternoon tea dance was one of the better ones. we had to move inside into this grimy basement room because of the weather but maybe 20-25 people came through, a success in my book.

the retro party was a success overall i think? it might be the biggest party i've done and was kinda stressful but i didn't make any big mistakes and kept the energy up as best as i could. people seemed to be having a good time. maybe 100-150 people in the room at the peak? big moment of everyone dancing to "rhythm of the night". requests for 90s hip hop i had to turn down because i didn't have any except for "shoop".

for a number of reasons though the party was kind of ill-begotten - lots of boring details involved. the defense contractor aspect wasn't visible at all. but the venue is just one of these that is in it to rake in as much money as possible and has a really corporate vibe.

around 11 pm i hear this guy yelling at me from my side up in the booth, "what are you doing? you need to play something else, you need to switch it up." he has a staff shirt on and says he's the bar manager. i say "i'm sorry, this is what i have, i don't know what else to play." he's like "no no no, you need to pick things up, this is not working." i look at him for a second and something clicks in me. n.b. i'm playing disco remixes, stuff like joey negro's remix of thelma houston "i'm here again" and people on the floor are loving it. so i yell back at this guy "get out of my face! what are you going to do, fire me? do you want me to stop playing music, is that what you want?" he has this shocked look on his face and steps down from the booth without saying anything! still kinda feeling the adrenaline from that lol.

so yeah, people seemed to really enjoy the music but i was a bit of an anxious mess during the whole thing even though i was performing as best as i could. i hope there's no drama about the above exchange resulting in them not wanting to pay me. overall really bad communication between the venue and the pride organization putting on the party - everything really felt "left to the wolves" so to speak. people i put on the list were not on the list, stuff like that. going to avoid playing at this place again and i'm sure they will be avoiding me as well.

on to next weekend when i have gigs 4 days in a row, i really really hope none of them are as stressful as last night.

the other thing i experienced last night was dj worshipping young men. there were two dudes up in the front for an hour who did a lot of staring at me with admiring expressions and whenever i would mix into a new song they were like enthralled, like "you're killing it" vibes. which was cool but a little weird honestly!!! haha. like they had these hungry looks on their faces? just a young dude bro into djs vibe that i can roll with but isn't like my bread and butter i guess, idk if i'm describing this adequately.

getting so much vicarious thrill from you shutting down that prick bar manager

the whole cult of mixing thing is so funny to me, like it's got to be one of the least demanding "musical performance" skills out there, it is SO EASY and just takes a basic understanding of song phrasing, i'm talking digital djing here, you don't need to manually beat match any more, just do some preparation beforehand, and then squeeze in / squeeze out the eqs. people are always like "how did you learn?" and "i'd like to learn how to do that" and i always say it's the easiest thing in the world, the only real challenge / art is knowing your music and knowing when to play it.

xp haha! i'm glad! i'm pretty proud of myself honestly :). like, you don't own me, i will yell back at you you jerkoff!!!

totally, it feels funny when people are fascinated by the DJ and stare at you and ask questions about the actual mixing b/c it's like people watching a magic show and they can't stop looking at the distraction from the sleight of hand that is actually just having developed your taste and understanding how to play the right thing for the time and place

yessss way to stand up to that manager!!

lol i have never had adoring young men observe me behind the decks but i’m so fascinated by that behavior. it kinda reminds me of this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umarell

(also if stirmonster is reading this thread: loved your guys’ set on saturday!)

ha, that Umarell link is amazing, very Italian behavior imo

lol map

DJs: piano-dropping moments

a drunk lady once demanded that i play prince while i was playing prince (an incredible dimitri from paris remix of prince but still,) then announced that the track i was playing "sounds like music to flick my bean to"

I'm very convinced the skill of DJing is far more tied up in song selection and sequencing rather than the mechanics of mixing. That said, the mixing part is where I have the most anxiety about getting it just right even though 99% of people won't notice either way.

wow dr umarell ... fascinating! haha

karl that is solid gold

gotta find that remix now 😀. dimitri is always high quality.

oh wait i know that one!! yeah it's bomb

tracer it's good to be aware of that thread i hope to be bumping it regularly

my set with c0lin aka _jed got postponed at the weekend, due to unforeseen issues at the venue, pretty gutted about it to be honest. We're hoping to reschedule within the month though.

I had a five min playaround with a club system on Friday night before I was working cloakroom at a venue, and it was quite intense. I had done a lot of prepwork on rekordbox setting up Memory Cues, lining up beatgrids, etc, but when I plugged in my USB it was not happening for me. I had did everything you're meant to do - create playlists, save in an order that suits (I know some people prefer to have planned setlists but I sort by BPM across a few different playlists), then export to device. I know my USB works cos I plugged into my boyfriend's laptop and it loaded up exactly the way I would want it to. In that venue the equipment is a bit older - it has actual CD drives so you can bring physical music.

I'm hoping the venue we're actually going to be playing at doesn't give me the same stress because I'm quite reliant on the sync button. I could probably manage to cue something up and blend for eight bars because my first ever bit of equipment was a rudimentary CDJ mixer from Gumtree with no digital features and I learned the very basics on that. But confronted with the physical difference of playing at home to playing in front of massive speakers, as well as the pressure to be competent to a paying crowd who aren't your same dozen pals who come sit in your house every few weeks, it would be better for my nerves to have one less thing to worry about.

That all said, this is just me getting in my head. The vibe at _jed's tea dance is much more about good music than skills (as it should be) and I'd rather just do soft fades than risk the galloping horses trainwrecks. _jed was actually reminding me about a time I saw him play out where he fumbled and didn't have a track loaded up in time and how nobody cared, and he's right: all I could remember was how good it sounded on the dancefloor when it finally came on.

very happy to hear that donna - we had a blast! sorry not to have got to meet you.

to boxedjoy:

so did the usb tracks not show up on the cdj displays at all? or you could see them and play them but there was no sync feature on the older cdjs?

you should be able to find out what make and model of cdj the venue will have, i'm sure jed knows or someone at the venue can check. i'm not sure when sync was added to the cdjs but most newer models have them (eg past 5-10 years). from there you can usually find the manual on the pioneer web site or just google for info.

is it an option to plug in whatever your current setup is into the mixer? that works ok if there is desk space, an extra channel on the mixer, and you aren't doing b2b imo.

I really love stumbling on those moments where different keys come together in unexpected ways. Like one track is in A min and the next track is in C min, but the bass line from track 2 playing under the melody of track 1 makes it sound like everything suddenly shifts to C maj for a few joyful moments before plunging back into the darkness.

Oh shit, I need to note keys on the sleeve & not just BPM!

To be fair, this kind of stuff is probably way easier to achieve in the digital realm than with vinyl

i was asked to fill in last night at the gay club where i'm doing thursday nights now. thursday nights are generally very chill there, but last night was nutso.

the floor was packed from 9:30 to close. i had to pee by 11 and didn't get a chance to go until 1:30 😬.

this place loves their requests. i had to turn most of them down as i just don't have them. quite a few i'd never heard of. at close about 10 people flashed me their phones requesting "believe" by cher over literally 15-20 minutes and i kept having to tell them i didn't have it. kind of an egregious blank on my part for the gig that i'm correcting this week. but i still saw a lot of happy faces on the dance floor and got compliments.

got one woman barging into the booth, grabbing my shoulder, holding her drink above my controller. i had to do a hard "no" on her - "i don't know you, don't touch me, your drink is above my controller, and no i'm not taking your request" lol.

this kind of gig is what makes charging $50 / hour or more a no brainer. a challenge to make the music sing when you're trying to do a service job as well.

That kind of entitled behavior is a nightmare

barging into the DJ booth, monstrous behavior imho

doing a happy hour this week and then another record store gig next sunday. i popped in there today to buy some records and the clerk who was there when i played last time told me he really liked my last in-store set :)

also i just found out about this bar that books lots of DJs who play stuff that’s kinda in my wheelhouse - thinking of reaching out to them to see if they have any weeknight slots open. couldn’t hurt!

happy hour tonight felt a little underwhelming. i didn’t feel super prepared going into it and my mixing was sorta sloppy (for various reasons). i ended up DJing five hours instead of the usual three (the DJ who goes after me had to cancel so i took over for them) and by the end of the fourth hour i was pretty much ready to leave. all the gays who came for the happy hour had cleared out by then so i was playing 122bpm bangers for like six seated ppl. an australian guy brought me some water tho, that was nice. and the chef who works at the bar seems to really like my stuff, he said next time i dj’ed there he’d be into doing a b2b kinda situation.

i’m still excited for my record store gig on sunday though, i’ve been buying a lot of disco 45s lately and i’m excited to play some of them!

how did your sunday gig go dr?

i've had unexpected situations and moods happen lately. last sunday afternoon, i really didn't think anyone would show up, but almost immediately after i started, 30-40 people rolled in, mostly boys. i believe the bar owner is sponsoring (or talking about sponsoring) the local gay sports league, and that was who it was. all the shirts came off and i had them going for about 30-40 minutes before they left. lots of eye candy and like 'what on earth am i going to play next'. i've been slowly adding tracks to the 'britney spears axis' of my collection but because i'm not super familiar with that stuff, and have no desire to listen to it on my own really, it feels a little like i'm faking it when i play it, and i never quite know which one is going to land. for the last half of the gig, a different crowd came through - people involved with a documentary series called 'mormon no more' - so we switched to, like, fun and soulful / inspirational house.

then last night, my gig at the gay bar went really, really well. i felt like i wasn't put together at all until i got there, and then something clicked (maybe the edibles i took beforehand helped). i don't think i played a single big top 40 club pop track the whole time, it was all of the house i've loved over the past year, lots of classic music company / defected type stuff. because i know all those tracks, it was super fun for me, and i felt enthusiastic about it the whole time. there weren't very many people there last night, but the energy was great. one guy danced a bit then came up to the booth and said to me 'you really love music, don't you?' i was like "yeah, i do," and he said, "you can tell." one of the best compliments from a stranger i've ever received.

awww that's awesome

what a sweet thing for a stranger to say! good stuff map

that is a wonderful thing to hear from someone on the dance floor! i’d be beaming. i watched one of your set videos on your IG and SLC’s got some real cuties imho!

nobody really came to the record store thing except a couple ppl i told about it but i still had fun. i really like the tactile experience of playing records even tho they’re a pain to schlep around.

i went to a fun italo disco night here recently and msg’ed one of the DJs afterward to tell her i liked her set, she wrote me a kind message back. feel like i need to be reaching out more to DJs, just to at least say hi and say that i dig what they’re doing.

also it’s high time i recorded another mix, it’s been a while.

I've started being a lot more vocal to DJs I like in recent years, no one ever really supported/backed me or ever told me they liked my stuff (but years later I've heard oh your sets at x or y were legendary) and I want to kind of be the kind voice that ppl aren't hearing. I want ppl to know I'm listening to their mixes and what I liked about them, the bits of their sets that stuck out to me and made me put my hands up.

That's a great approach, constructive feedback can be really hard to come by.

Sometimes a mediocre night can be salvaged from one bright eyed and friendly person coming up to me and saying how much they love the music.

Made my debut appearance on Resonance FM this week, slightly unfortunately it was a bit of a last minute request so I didn‘t have time to record a selection of tracks tailored to the station, but still it was something I didn’t expect to happen.

https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/devils-dancers-11-july-2022/

nice!

Picture is of the show’s regular host by the way, I don’t look that fabulous!

nice! i didn't realise you were you. :)

:)

or i did and then forgot? v. poor memory!

Banging mix matthew!

Oof, tortured journey!

I'm playing at a festival on Sunday!!

Keith, I'm not sure you would have known unless you'd cross referenced other posts elsewhere on ILX.

Nick, alas not the record, but finally getting a USB deck has unlocked being able to play a few killer tracks I'd never be able to afford.

Charlie, awesome, have fun

Yeah, that ones like £400 or something iirc!

What festival are you doing dog latin?