On Djing...

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.

Our task tonight is to quell the teenage rampage, which has grown from a few people about six weeks ago, to a full scale invasion last week. From my point of view as a DJ, they’re enthusiastic and appreciative, but for everybody else they’re an annoyance which has started to deter some of the regulars. They’re all lads apart from one girl, half of them don’t buy drinks, some of them smuggle in their own drinks, I’m told they get up to God knows what in the toilets, and some are under age - the staff were completely caught out last week when about 20 of them entered at the same time. So this week, there will be ID checks on the door, which we’ve never had to do before, and my set is going to swing right back to the old school (tbh I’m sick of having to play Freed From Desire and Show Me Love every damn week). The best of them are welcome, but the worst of them can sod off to Spoons!

map, personally I’m all for talking about specific tracks on this thread; I find it interesting. Hearing you also on the effect of body language; after the warm-up, I rarely stand still and expressionless. It’s an act, but also it’s very much not an act.

cool mike, i also think it's interesting and want to hear others' thoughts on their favorites or notable "moments" etc.

good luck reigning in the little shits! lol

Well, that was a bit more bloody like it! The little shits didn’t get past the notional velvet rope, and the people inside were massively up for it, in a way I’ve not had for a few weeks now. (I still had to play Freed From Desire though.)

Oh, and I totally fucked up the One More Time/Insomnia transition that I’d been so proud of in rehearsal, but my fuck-up was kindly received, so hey.

happy hour tonight was holiday-themed so i made a playlist of all Xmas/winter-y songs. tried to avoid the more obvious stuff you hear everywhere. the host told me that one of his guests thought i wasn’t playing enough holiday music. idk i’ll let you be the judge:

Low - Little Drummer Boy
Nico - Frozen Warnings
Ryuichi Sakamoto - Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
Saint Etienne - California Snow Story
Claire Hamill - Icicle Rain
Siouxsie & the Banshees - Il Est Né, Le Divin Enfant
Paul Haig - Scottish Christmas
Thick Pigeon - Jingle Bell Rock
Sy Mann - Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
Tricia Marks - Christmas Calypso
Lord Executor - Christmas Is a Joyful Day
Celia Cruz - Jingle Bells
Rotary Connection - Christmas Child
August Darnell - Christmas on Riverside Drive
Boney M - Mary’s Boy Child
Universal Robot Band - Disco Christmas
Dizzy Heights - Christmas Rappin’
Hot & Sassy - Christmas Strutt
Billy Jackson - Have a Happy Christmas
Electric Jungle - Funky Funky Christmas
Yoko Ono - Walking on Thin Ice
Cristina - Things Fall Apart
The Cure - Let’s Go to Bed
Mental as Anything - Apocalypso
Captain Sensible - One Christmas Catalogue
Sally Shapiro - Anorak Christmas
Saint Etienne - I Was Born on Christmas Day
Loleatta Brown - Christmas House (Dance With Mix)
Sisterhood - The Rocking Disco Santa Claus
Future Shock - Santa Left Us Microchips for Christmas
Can - Silent Night
The Damned - There Ain’t No Sanity Clause
Shonen Knife - Space Christmas
Jan Terri - Rock n Roll Santa
Darlene Love - Marshmallow World
Dean & Britta ft. Sonic Boom - He’s Coming Home
Kate Bush - December Will Be Magic Again
Cocteau Twins - Frosty the Snowman
Broadcast - Winter Now
Claudine Longet - I Don’t Intend to Spend Christmas Without You
Laura Branigan - Gloria
Sandy Marton - Merry Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year
Weather Girls - Dear Santa (Please Bring Me a Man for Xmas)
Material with Nona Hendryx - It’s a Holiday
Prince and the Revolution - Another Lonely Christmas
Rufus Thomas - I’ll Be Your Santa Baby
The Bionic I - Disco Claus
David Walker - Lucky Christmas
Dolly Parton - Hard Candy Christmas
Stevie Nicks - Silent Night
Yoko Ono - Listen, the Snow Is Falling
Gloria Lynne - On Christmas Day

Super cool (winter pun intended.) I used to spin a happy hour like this where anything was fair game. Claudine Longet, Rufus Thomas, and The Damned in the same set is right up my alley.

i like that playlist, i think you are going to have to interpret that guest's comments as meaning "you're not playing enough music i recognize and i don't care enough to pay attention to what you are actually playing", which is the sad reality of much dj'ing in my experience

yeah, i'm pretty sure that's what they meant too. i'm kinda used to that by now lol. i did have a large swathe of xmas classics on hand in case anyone requested anything, but nobody did. probably could've thrown a "christmas wrapping" or the like in there, i guess.

i'm usually not so genre-promiscuous but i feel like playing a set with a unifying theme allows me to do that in a way i maybe otherwise wouldn't think to do. it was fun to play more song-y than track-y too, not as much fussing over matching/cues.

i'm kinda used to that by now lol.

yep.

that sounds like a fun project and glad you enjoyed it. as for me i'm greatly relieved i don't have to do anything christmas-y this year.

last night i got a request for the white lotus theme song lol. i haven't even seen the show.

feel like many songs or artists 'hit' because people, most of whom are younger than me, are consuming media i'm just oblivious to. i don't watch any tv, it's not a brag, i just don't, other than train ride videos on youtube to calm my anxiety. i can see how doing so could make me a better dj at my bar but it's just not gonna happen. as of now there's end-of-year list stuff i need to comb through.

that's like every youtube of a 20th century pop song ... "LIKE if [streaming tv show / video game loading screen / viral advertisement] brought you here"

happy hour tonight was holiday-themed so i made a playlist of all Xmas/winter-y songs. tried to avoid the more obvious stuff you hear everywhere.

Love this playlist! Some of my favourite Christmas tunes and some that I don't know and will have to check out.

Claudine Longet - I Don’t Intend to Spend Christmas Without You

Have you heard the version by Margo Guryan? It doesn't have quite the same swinging arrangement (and accent) but I love it a lot.

Sandy Marton - Merry Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year

Once in my extremely brief DJ career I did a Christmas set and played this - after about a minute a woman came up and screamed at me "This is shit!". Is it the only Italo Christmas record?

another christmas offering for ye:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mom7usa42rs

I only have two other Italo Christmas songs:
David Walker - Lucky Christmas
Key Band - Christmas Time

And there's Sally Shapiro - Anorak Christmas

I'm just discovering this Spanish gem from 1986: The Christmas Rap

Italo but not Disco: Christmas Is Now Here

Yello did a version of Jingle Bells but it's super cheesy and possibly the worst thing they ever did?

Sandy Marton - Merry Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year

Once in my extremely brief DJ career I did a Christmas set and played this - after about a minute a woman came up and screamed at me "This is shit!"

what a disgusting savage, never heard it before but that’s a great track!! thanks for sharing, hope you screamed back “YOU are shit!”

yeah margo's version of "i don't intend..." is tops, too.

i also played that david walker track, it's so good! one of my favorite discoveries while i was putting the set together.

the sandy marton track is hilarious and great - a xmas-themed rewrite of his biggest hit single that i'm not even sure he sings on?

I have been deeply immersed in a collection of ~3000 records that I got from a dead friend (technically the group of his friends that administer his estate gave them to me for indefinite storage), we will probably give most of them away in the future but it's been fascinating to alphabetize/organize them and realize they are basically a snapshot of 70s/80s DJ history. At the same time, I've been reading this (great) book of interviews, and the crossover % between records mentioned in the book and stuff that's in the collection is high

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/10763917-the-record-players

e.g., call me a noob but I never realize that Cerrone totally rules

also wild to see the crossover between the (recently bumped) italo poll and this collection, hey Fun Fun is fun!

cerrone is fantastic

i played disco edits, funk rock and house music at a brewery tonight. as soon as i started playing house music there was a fight. mission accomplished!