On Djing...

I love this! 83-84 Italo has a special place in my heart.

so cool

wow dr i'm so happy for you

tremendous

What a dream

that sounds amaaaaaazing i wanna go to the next one so bad

same

that sounds amazing. bocce! italo! glow in the dark!

do post a tracklist when you do it

:) :) :)

i didn't keep a tracklist, but off the top of my head and in addition to what i already mentioned i played:

- lots of the "big" italo tracks ("hypnotic tango", "take a chance", "dirty talk")
- some deeper cuts (helicon - "you...see", angie care - "your mind", laura angel - "if you want")
- "magic fly" (duh)
- a couple petrus/malavasi joints ("the glow of love", peter jacques band - "going dancin' down the street")
- the 1978 version of mina - "città vuota"
- honorary italian amanda lear - "fabulous lover, love me"
- closed out w/ this v sensual ballad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AMpZGNx5EE

maybe i'm still riding on the high of last week's bocce gig but i had my regular happy hour gig last night and i feel like i played a really confident, technically smooth and fun set. i'm self-critical about my abilities to a fault but after my set i was like...idk maybe i'm halfway decent at this thing after all?

also re: this from my post about the italian club:

several people were like "we gotta get you on the dance floor at some point!"

this may actually be happening next month :)

same

I spent the night recording a two hour mix in my new spare room. I'm so excited to share it with you guys

I avoided this thread for years because I was always afraid it would turbocharge all the bad feelings I’ve felt about my dashed amateur dj aspirations, which never went beyond my bedroom. Having come to terms with that, I’ve really enjoyed reading this thread. It’s fun and inspiring to see people embracing meaningful opportunities to dj out and I appreciate everyone sharing these stories. Way to go ilx dj massive!

Same

lol I was the same as you but just stumbled into an opportunity

I do this thing at a local bar where it's me and a couple of turntables, I bring a variety of stuff and encourage others to bring in their own records, then we make a DJ set out of it. it's all over the place but evey time I think I get a little better. it's something I've always kind of dreamed about but didn't think anyone would really be interested in. but I think there are lots of people who are really into an idea like that, you just need to find the place to make it happen.

The manager of the pub I've been playing at monthly has gone on maternity leave and a new guy has come in to replace her.
Suddenly I find my slot has disappeared from their promo calendar, so I emailed in.
"Ah yeah, sorry we forgot to say we're itemising the entertainment at the Bell, so we'll be concentrating strictly on garage and drum machines bass going forward. Big apologies".

Well needless to say, I wasn't too pleased at the unceremoniously ghosting. Naturally, I understand they want to go for a more student-based market and it's not as though I was bringing hordes of people in every Thursday, but still, it would have been nice to have been told.

Last night I decided to commiserate, drink a few beers in my new little home studio room and put together a mix based on the kind of house/disco grooves we often used to play out there

https://on.soundcloud.com/DG3SY

frogbs, that's lovely. Very similar to the thing I was doing. I'd often get a friend or a fellow dj to guest with me, so it was a great way to improve and keep me on my toes

yeah it's fun when my friends show up, especially the music dorks who you know have always wanted to do something like this. you can just bring 'em behind the decks and tell them to pick something out. i love making it interactive like that, it's cool when people show up with obscure records because they always wind up being really cool. like obviously it's a risk telling people to bring their own jams but the people who do put more thought into this than I do

I can relate dog latin. My thursday ghosted me too, in January. (The bar is currently closed lol.) After just taking a break from it all I’m currently knocking on new doors. A few vague possibilities. It was nice going back through old posts recently and remembering I’m a good dj. I don’t know if you need to hear this or not, but you are too.

Local coffee shop hired me to do a Saturday afternoon mellow set — looking forward to having a chance to play tracks that don’t sit well in the more upbeat sets I’ve been doing — like Wings’ “Arrow Through Me,” Air’s “Femme d’Argent,” Sun Araw’s cover of “December” by Teenage Fanclub, etc.

I would go to that

i'm playing at the italian club tomorrow, on the big dancefloor. there's a sit-down dinner that's happening first so the evening will basically be a social hour, followed by dinner, followed by dancing, and the whole evening is a charity fundraiser for an animal rights org. i'm pretty excited about it all, buuuuut...

the host of the party gave me some ideas of things he'd like me to play that i'm feeling a bit stymied by, tbh - like a lot of things he suggested i'm happy to play (madonna, gaga, blondie, etc) but he also mentioned this one current-day italian rock band, i listened to some of their songs and i think they're awful. he also mentioned neil diamond and asked if i could play "murder on the dance floor" as the last song of the night (tbh i'm at a point now where i just never need to hear that song ever again, and i like the damn thing). idk, just feeling vaguely annoyed by his requests - but also maybe i'm just being a brat, and it'll probably all be fine.

had my usual happy hour gig a couple days ago, not as well-attended as the last few i did but still fun. had a few ppl ask for song IDs, and the guy who runs the bar's kitchen (who also occasionally DJs) proposed we play out together sometime, which was cool - don't know him super well but he always says really kind things about my sets. maybe i'll take him up on it! feeling very "seize the day" about things in my life lately.

you're not a brat, i'd be more than vaguely annoyed

yeah I am done with Murder On The Dancefloor as well. Can you play all the Neil Diamond/Italian rock stuff at the start of the night so it's out of the way? Or save it til the end, and tell him you're leaving it until everyone is drunk and ready to sing and dance along? That way you don't have to think about this stuff as part of your set in the same way

there's always Neil's synthpop phase:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b9bWNA1dKs

ok glad it's not just me lol

yeah i'm def gonna start out the night on the more rock end of things, and the dinner may start out as quieter ballad-y stuff that slowly builds into a groove by dessert time or so, leading into the disco bombs portion of the evening

i believe i have found a way to breach the neil diamond impasse at the very least:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msWuL-g_KA4

(i would rather eat glass than ever, ever play "sweet caroline" in any of my sets, for the record)

oh there's an italo disco version of that one too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUA2rVQ-feE

ha! nice find

so my bar closed in march and forfeited their liquor license (weird utah alcohol laws).

i've tried two other gay bars. one basically shooed me away. the other expressed some interest but now they're ghosting me.

i'm tired of dead ends. fuck this city into the ground. can't wait to ghost this place after it's ghosted me so many times. i don't vibe with anyone here at all. such a lame scene, juvenile and not for me anymore, i never fit in with those douchebags anyway. ready to hang up my hat for a while. i've been mostly listening to metal and rock lately anyway. time to drop all the frustration and move on with my life.

xp to NickB - I thought you meant an italo cover of 'Sweet Caroline'. That would have made my day!

Ewww lol no! There is a Fun Fun version of I'm A Believer though. It's... not great

sorry things are so dispiriting map <3

tho tbh your post flashed through my mind at my gig yesterday after a woman not once, but TWICE, requested that i "play music that people know"

and someone did, in fact, request "sweet caroline." i told him i didn't have it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

DJ Ötzi version is the only one you need:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFq2v5MC4YA

SO GOOD
SO GOOD
SO GOOD

haha ty dr. i'm ok with it tbh. sort of just want to be a fan and not feel like i have to 'keep up on electronic music' all the time. i'm thinking seriously about a pretty radical career change too. if i ever want to dance i'll probably try to find an amateur modern dance troupe or something. no pressure no social scene bs just move around emotionally to music some time before 9 pm lol.

and hmm yeah i can see that gig resulting in some dispiriting requester situations. good luck and godspeed.

got another one tomorrow, all I know is I'm gonna start with Cups by Underworld and at the end blam Rydeen

ok this one was kind of sweet, basically my deal is if you bring in vinyl I'll play it almost no matter what it is. I'm the "professional DJ" so I'll figure out how to make it work (or not). anyway this one guy came who was mentally handicapped and maybe looking for an excuse to get out, so he came out for this because he had exactly one thing on vinyl - a boxset of Bitches Brew by Miles Davis. he won it in some raffle. he was pretty excited we were playing "his" record, apparently unaware he'd brought in one of the greatest jazz recordings of all time lol