On Djing...

damn that sounds fun

:) the handful of people who are into it seem to have a good time.

and last night was rough. the weekend crowd just wants to sing / scream along to hits. i did ok in that department but definitely had some periods where i lost the floor. it's more stressful because the poppier tracks are 3 ish minutes long so i'm mixing, finding the next track, mixing, next track, etc. spent half the time needing to pee very bad. also had a really entitled requester at the end who i yelled at. he requested david guetta (pronounced david "goota" i guess, idk, i found that pretty funny and pretentious in the moment though) 3 times 15 minutes before i'm ending. literally 3 minutes before i'm wrapping up he barged into the booth and said the dance floor was looking a little sad. no shit bitch it's my last track that's the point. i yelled at him "get the fuck out of my booth" and basically pushed him out which is a no no but god damn i was not in the mood to put up with that shit.

there is a gate that i leave open because the lock is a little wonky but i will probably make sure it's closed after midnight now.

another friday night. shout out to boxedjoy, tim f and stevie d for helping me beef up my playlist. jury's out whether or not i play any david goota

I feel like I've improved as a DJ recently. I got called up to do a last minute gig last night and I'm listening back to the set now and it's so fun. It's not so much the song selection, just the blending works really nice

awesome :)

that's gratifying, wtg.

ok that was the first friday night at this club that went really well. i'm finally playing more of what works for these people and really lighting up the floor. so much joy last night! many singalong moments. funny to be playing these huge pop tunes that can sound so slick and crass on their own and instead have this communal almost sacred experience. not to be too over the top about it but it's true. those faces! god, just beautiful. i was really being outward facing and performative too, not usually what i'm best at but for some reason i just slid into it last night.

two highlights. going techno for a minute with tiga's "easy," which is based around the lyric "i don't want to work for my money, i want it to be easy." sick production on it too but a different thing from the buzzy electro house that is an anchor for this floor. people kinda like "what is this?" before the lyrics set in and them everyone is hands in the air.

and dropping "forever more" to a happy settled in group of dancers after last call again, just kind of bathing in the yearning.

still gotta work on the 'i have to pee so bad' situation. hard to bust it to the bathroom when all these "ft. tiesto" kind of things are 3 minutes. speaking of, i'm not familiar with the guy's work at all and have no idea how he's rated here but some of these collabs he's doing lately (charli xcx and then this one called "voodoo") are reliable bombs. anyway i discovered there are outhouses on the side of the club that are usually open, just need 5 minutes tops.

maybe something from this for the break

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQWg-XCvDBRy47PvRHs1wItoChZplAa7awDpQ&usqp=CAU

I can get to the toilet and back in 3 minutes flat, but it’s never a stress-free piss.

lol i literally skipped the line on friday, begging this random girl to let me in front of her. she didn't look amused when i thanked her after.

my ex used to piss in jugs behind the booth no joke. i have too much exposure for that i think but it's crossed my mind. pee drama is real i could keep posting about it but i'll stop for now lol.

My top tips for pee drama:

1. Dance! Last time I played (a 3 hour set), I drank almost 2 liters of water and I never had to pee because I was sweating so much. I'm dancing all the time when I'm DJing.
2. Prepare a minimix of two or three songs so that you have a couple of minutes of free time without interrupting the flow of the mix.
3. 'Paradise by the Dashboard Light'. Gives you time to pee AND smoke (if that's your thing).

ha i guess that’s the nice thing about a low stakes happy hour. the bathroom is close to my booth so i just put on a longish track and do my business without too much trouble

did my usual happy hour tonight. had a couple people come up and tell me they loved my set, and even the host (who can be kinda catty sometimes) told me that the people he was chatting with told him they loved what i was playing. nice little confidence boost! i’m booked to do the “christmas” party next month and i am really psyched about it - it’s always been a dream of mine to do a xmas dj set!

also pro-tip: if you’re using DJM-REC on your phone to record your set, don’t try to take an instagram story while you’re recording or it’ll pause. just learned this the hard way lol. (gonna review what actually recorded and post it on the mixes thread at some point)

oh that's really nice to hear dr, way to go. xmas set sounds like fun!

last night was fun, i had a sing/dance-a-long with a random girl to kylie "spinning around"

As 3 am rolled around, I wondered if I would need to wrap up, but I kept playing for another hour.

!!!

I play in a band and when I tell friends the gig starts at 9p, they're like "but that's my bedtime!"

From my experience it’s hard to get a dancefloor really going until 1/2am - venue/genre dependent of course.

was doing my usual sunday thing at the record store, playing jazz funk, disco and deep house vinyl to a crowd of mostly disinterested normies shopping for adele and bon iver records. these dudes come in and are speaking italian, come up to me as i am wrapping up the set. store closing in 20 mins so i’ve stopped mixing and switched to mellow exotica and brazilian type stuff

the store doesn’t have a listening station, they could tell i was wrapping up so they very apologetically asked in broken english if i could audition some disco and krautrock records for them (so they could hear condition)

anyway we get to talking, turns out the older one is beppe loda

whaaaaaaaaa

note to self, always talk to the italian guys who come in at the end

yeah he had proper cute goofy old guy vibes. we were talking about the cosmic jokers record he had grabbed and he excitedly took out his iphone to show me his sms chatz with harald grosskopf

the other wild part cane up while talking to the younger guy (bit older than me, so maybe 50?) who is a local balearic / disco dj who i knew of via reputation and several mutuals. turns out the used rane rotary i randomly stumbled upon and took home from my local guitar center belonged to this guy (not beppe) before it ended up with me.

it was all, um, fairly cosmic. too bad i have no real social media with which to document these crazy occurences, but at least i have ilx

oh wow! he just played here the other night but i didn’t go

yeah they played here last night. i was completely unaware, i have no insta but apparently the local party scene is 100% insta-centric now

actually that’s probably not such a new thing, but i have been totally out of “the scene” since pandemic

i think i'd read about it from the IG story of a local DJ i follow. there really is this mega-resurgence of parties here over the past year it seems. pity i don't actually go out dancing very much lol

Just saw he played with Lovefingers. I met him on his first visit here, I think Andrew (Lovefingers) still lived in NYC but it was my often partner Tropical Jeremy Campbell who first brought Beppe to NY for a bunch of shows and did a little tour with him. I saw him at PS1 Warm Up and during one visit we had him at our Dazzle Ships party doing a psychedelic motown set. He's a super friendly and funny guy, even if my interaction with him mostly involved gestures. Tracks he played regularly that I copped as my own standards include The Runner by the Three Degrees and L'Ectrique's Struck by Boogie Lightning.

i was at that PS1 set! i went out and bought “struck by boogie lightning” shortly after that set myself, lol

ha, great minds I guess!

The Runner by the Three Degrees was one of my first ever record purchases but it was probably a good decade later that i even clicked it was a Moroder production. they were HUGE in the UK and famous for being Prince, now King Charles' favourite act.

Three Degrees singer Sheila Ferguson is on record as saying "He ruined my love life, and I'll have no problem telling him next time we meet. It's ruined my sex life. I walked over to this guy one time [at a disco] and said: 'Would you like to dance?' and he said, 'I can't dance with you, you're Prince Charles's favourite.'

sorry, thread derail...

worthy anecdote.

The second guy I ever slept with was a member of the Three Degrees fan club. He showed me the newsletters! That sent me out buying all their 45s from the local second hand shop (I might have been a little besotted). They have an extraordinary B-side called “I Like Being A Woman”, with a Sheila Ferguson spoken section that could only have been written by a man.

there’s a calibre cover of “collage”, very linear (and boring, imo) modern dnb. there’s a string of youtube comments with ppl lauding his songwriting. sad to say i am in those comments, complaining that he’s ripping off the three degrees arrangement of a james gang song

this is all to say (in the spirit of derailing) that “collage” is the only three degrees song i have an opinion on

the disconet mix of “set me free” is aces

"When Will I See You Again" and "TSOP" are kind of undeniable imo. I'm also fond of the Moroder/Faltermeyer era: "Starlight", "The Runner", etc.

From my experience it’s hard to get a dancefloor really going until 1/2am - venue/genre dependent of course.

I know this to be true, and yet I still always wonder...what is everyone doing until 1 or 2 am????

Out drinking? Disco napping?

Waiting to get drunk enough / pingers to take effect…

Which begs the question - why not start earlier :D

Things certainly get started much earlier in Glasgow, for example, when most clubs shut at 2 or 3am.

4am mostly now.

Want restrictive laws that mandate everything close by midnight to prevent unwanted pumpkinizings. I’ve finally reached the age where my attitude is “nobody on earth needs to stay up til 4AM. Go out earlier and go to bed at a reasonable hour, you goons.”

Ted Thursdays: Nothing good happens after 2am pic.twitter.com/gGMZbENL0P

— HIMYM (@OfficialHIMYM) May 30, 2019

My Friday bar sets are 10pm to midnight (although I usually do a warm up from 930), and it’s always frustrating to have to end when the night is at its peak. They’ve started letting me extend by another 15 minutes or so, but it’s not enough, dammit.

I’m on tomorrow night straight after the England/USA World Cup game, which they’re showing upstairs, so that will make for a very different vibe. Curious to see how my Seven Nation Army/Glad To Be Gay mashup will land.

i do 9:30 to 1:30 at the gay bar, feel like it's about perfect tbh. fridays the floor starts filling up before 11.

the late nights are probably the hardest thing for me. once a week is ok, my body treats it like an anomaly and readjusts. twice a week back to back and it's like jetlag, takes a day or two for me to get back to normal.

Curious to see how my Seven Nation Army/Glad To Be Gay mashup will land.

ha ha ha! i hope this is actually a thing.

Yeah, I did it, and it landed fine. Just a couple of drops of the TRB chorus into Seven Nation Army, but the first drop kinda recontextualises its second verse, if anyone was listening that closely! It comes just after 52 minutes in the recording of last night's set.

I definitely used to pee in jugs when i DJed a lot.

Longest I ever DJed was 9p- 4:30a or so— my last track was Closer Musik’s “Ride Me” to about seven couples essentially dry jumping on the dance floor. One of my finer moments tbh.

Well, preparing tonight’s Christine McVie tribute mix was fun; Everywhere into Don’t Stop is a particularly satisfying transition.

last night was weirdly intense, i did well i think. part of it was i took a whole edible instead of half and was pretty high. another was that i had a few disparate groups that i was trying to please. and another is that i have an awkward relationship going on with the resident queen. it's a long story but the gist is that she asked to draw me, and me being naive and bored, sent her sexy videos. bad move, never shit where you eat. i had to tell her i wasn't interested in being flirty. she is petty, annoying and talentless lol and she's always pushing boundaries a little bit with me. i've been super polite so far. at the end of the night last night she was gabbing my ear off about how she appreciated that i played things that no one knew in between more popular tracks. it was veering into backhanded compliemt territory. i had to say, hon i don't mean to be rude but i'm dead tired and have to get up early tomorrow, but thank you!

i wish there was a good place i could go on about music i'm discovering and playing, i'll do it here i guess, have to mention something even though i gather most people itt would grimace if they heard this. i've always hated the black eyed peas have avoided playing any. but i got a request for them last night and i have a new one "pump it louder". it totally won me over, switched me 180*, wild and creative stuff, what a banger. i don't think you're supposed to be discovering music while you're djing generally speaking, but it was fun! it's amazing how much people pick up on your body language when you're playing something. if you're engaged with the track, people are so much more likely to engage with it. i'm someone who can't fake that, which is why i can't play stuff i don't feel in some way. but i'm stretching that a lot lately by expanding what am into.