woebot's djing post

[dogger]

the main point i'd make (echoing what gutterbreakz said) is that the amount of freedom a dj has, to play what s/he wants, what s/he thinks will constitute a coherent set, and not submit to the "have you got anything i can dance to?" brigade, is in inverse proportion to the stature of the dj. so when villalobos turns up to play, the crowd respect his track selection - because most of them know who he is - and even tho he might surprise them by playing a harder/funkier/deeper set than they expected people are prepared to give him artistic licence. at the opposite extreme you have the wedding dj who is not expected or allowed to have any independent musical taste or ability and so has to be slave to the crowd...with a few excpeptions like mms' experience.

at my office christmas party last year the dj, who was playing a very standard commercial house set, was bombarded with so many requests and complaints that after about an hour he packed up and left...his parting shot being "i've played reading to 3,00 people, this doesn't mean shit to me!". so we were left with kasabian and justin timberlake from people's ipods (the philip sherburne mix i put on lasted about 6 minutes)...

 

[Logos]

This will sound like a serious grumpy old man "it was better back in the day" moan and its developing on points people have already raised, but I think your generalist young audiences have seriously lost the ability (if they ever had it) to pay attention to how the music moves them, and have faith that someone can give them an experience they've never had before.

Instead because of ipods etc they want the sensation of hearing the first few bars of a tune they know from the radio or whereever but I think thats it, I suspect they will be begging for the next request then. Its almost like a facsimile of enjoying music, an impression of it, rather than the genuine act itself.

 

[gek-opel]

My friend was telling me last weekend about Jukebox clubs in Russia- he managed to playlist a good half hour of solid minimal and was a happy chappy as a result. Is this not the alternative? The result being an aggressive mish-mash of competing tastes- not iPod clubbing, each in their solipsistic bubble, but clubbing as 6th form common room of competing tastes and ideologies messily rubbed up against each other- the anarchic potential of this has some appeal of course, but it totally mitigates against artistry or immersive transcendent hedonism. But I would rather music as ideological battle than music as tension-less personalised soundtrack.

 

[Landfill Elektronikz]

This will sound like a serious grumpy old man "it was better back in the day" moan and its developing on points people have already raised, but I think your generalist young audiences have seriously lost the ability (if they ever had it) to pay attention to how the music moves them, and have faith that someone can give them an experience they've never had before.

I dunno..I think that attitude was always there with the average mainstream party-goer. maybe the i-Pod generation has ramped up the intensity a bit, but it was always there. they never 'had it'. by the same token there's still plenty of young people with a deeper connection to music, who respect the djs role. i see them out all the time. its a minority group, but surely it always was...?

 

[Alfons]

Even though I haven't been in the "game" for very long (been playing out regularly for the last 4-5 years) I find that things have changed in the requests department. A lot of it is mp3 and internet related, i.e. people shove ipods in my face when Ive been playing vinyl all night long. Now I can understand this at a pub/small club party with free entrance and whatever, but I've had requests to play justin timberlake while playing at a big drum & bass night featuring dj's from abroad and an entrance fee. Who pays to get into a dnb club and expects to hear Justin?

Once a guy came up to me and asked me if I had any famous songs, I told him no this was going to be a techno night ten minutes later same guy asks if I have any techno remixes of famous songs. Another time a guy gave me a note saying that if I could play a Prodigy tune he would get laid:slanted:

 

[sufi]

it was a lovely night - matt kept the dancefloor rampant without resorting to bon jovi which is testimony to his dj skilz,

there is a tension i think generally between flopping out the non-challenging but danceable cheesy numbers for the lairy punters, and going for the higher brow selection that may satisfy the aesthetes, but the line will always be enforced by democracy of the feet & in this case there was no doubt that the multitude supported the selection both of the bot & mysterious brother of bot from the 7th of the 7th of the 7th well into the small hours

i guess maybe it's only lesser dj who will have to compromise with taking on crap requests or rolling out dexys

cheers then my babbers

 

[Landfill Elektronikz]

i guess maybe it's only lesser dj who will have to compromise with taking on crap requests or rolling out dexys

LOL!! I'll take that 'lesser dj' jibe on the chin, like the good natured chap that I am! But I still maintain that a wedding gig isn't about the dj ramming his tastes down the punters' throat, cos its not really about music appreciation its about everyone getting pissed and having a proper knees up. maybe you can slip in a few interesting bits from the left field, but if the bride specifically requests robbie williams (who I detest) then you gotta play it cos its her big day. its not something i could do on a regular basis or i'd go insane, but the odd gig for friends can be a bit of fun. its not even something i would specifically set out to do. but in my circle of friends i'm the 'music lover' so i get the job cos my services are free (apart from the unlimited drinks tab at the bar, natch) and they trust me to keep the vibe nice and within the realms of good taste and they don't wanna hire those jaded 'professional' wedding djs who are generally fucking awful. one of the highlights for me was about three years ago when, at the end of the night as i was packing up my shit, a couple of bar staff came up and said i was the best bloody dj they'd ever heard at the venue in question, cos they heard the same old shit week in week out and were really surprised by some of the things i was playing, even though it was all within the framework of mainstream dance/pop...which just proves how bad the usual djs were!

 

[Woebot]

LOL!! I'll take that 'lesser dj' jibe on the chin, like the good natured chap that I am!

ha! well i'm with you on this gutter actually. i have no problem at all playing things like abba if that's what's been requested. but like elegato i only had what i had in my bag, and moreover people (even the ones complaining weirdly, perhaps in spite of themselves, lol) were bobbing about quite happily.

for me the $1000 question is if it is indeed the case that people are less happy to roll with it. all the tales up-thread of people having iPods brandished at them (and a memory-stick for fucks-sake) seem to suggest that's the case.

 

[Landfill Elektronikz]

i only had what i had in my bag

i would never dream of doing a gig like that unless i was packing my wife's cd collection!!

for me the $1000 question is if it is indeed the case that people are less happy to roll with it. all the tales up-thread of people having iPods brandished at them (and a memory-stick for fucks-sake) seem to suggest that's the case.

from my experience, having dj'd various wedding/office/xmas parties over the past 15+ years, i would suspect that ipod/download media has simply exacerbated what was already there. the normal rules of club etiquette simply don't apply.

i haven't done a wedding gig for quite a while now (prob because most of my friends are now married...or divorced!) but having read this thread, if i was doing one today i'd probably make sure i had a spare line-in with a mini jack cable at the ready to accommodate all those ipods being brandished at me!!

 

[don_quixote]

i may as well be a wedding dj by any other name (in that i'm on the other side from nick - it's 21st birthday parties and stuff), which is why i don't mind requests too much. you tend to fall into a groove of saying "yeah i'll play that" and then getting caught up with what you want to play again and so completely ignoring their request. hmmm.

usually i don't mind having a chat with them cos i'm almost always djing in a pair and the worst people aren't the people with requests, it's the "sound expert" punters who will quite happily come over and fiddle with your equipment, turning knobs that do fuck all and then will gurn at you as if theyve just made it sound so much better (as opposed to the guys who do actually know what they are doing and may be employed to do this) and expect you to be grateful.

 

[swears]

What's wrong with a DJ having a bit of vision and introducing people to new things? If you can't appreciate that, then why go and see them in the first place?

 

[DJL]

From experience I've found that when you are right there where everyone can get at you half your job becomes dealing with people in addition to playing tunes. I find that I'm usually left to my own devices music-wise until the alcohol has fully kicked in amongst the crowd and then a combination of intimidation and promising to play stuff (which you then mostly don't) keeps most at bay. I experience young university crowds around 18-21 and alot of them are getting drunk for the first time resulting in most of the abuse and comments being very funny! Having said that I've made a few good contacts resulting in more work through meeting people like this.

On the odd occasion when I haven't had any of this hassle and most of the crowd are on ecstacy or similar rather than alcohol its a whole different ball game. Being left alone to concentrate purely on the music with no interuptions has resulted in the most crazy and into the music crowds. When people pass their trust over to the dj you don't get those weird situations where lliterally the whole floor clears at the meer hint of a tune they are not familiar with. I think alot of people haven't experienced those transendental parties when everyone is as one together and there is no attitude and only have cheesy nights or school disco type things as reference points. What more cause to put on the real deal?!

 

[Don Rosco]

Frankly, I think doing wedding-style DJing, where you have to satisfy people from aged 8-80, from all different backgounds and places, is harder than playing an upfront set to a discerning club.

 

[bun-u]

I'm agreeing with woebot's and the others sentiments here. On Sunday (okay admittedly it was just ahouse-warming) I had two djs remove me from the selector position only to jack my turntable and replace with their mobile phone. I mean c'mon

 

[skim]

the worst people aren't the people with requests, it's the "sound expert" punters who will quite happily come over and fiddle with your equipment, turning knobs that do fuck all and then will gurn at you as if theyve just made it sound so much better (as opposed to the guys who do actually know what they are doing and may be employed to do this) and expect you to be grateful.

Oh, aren't they the worst? If the person doing the knob-twiddling owns the equipment (or is in charge of it) it's bearable, but it's hard to concentrate on what you're doing when someone's shoving their oar in and fiddling around with the mixer.

At first I thought it was a bit patronising (I'm a woman) but have come to the conclusion that interfering wankers will be tweaking the eq regardless of the DJ's gender.

 

[john eden]

What is quite good is when people come up and politely ask if you have a tune, and it's a good one, which fits in with the sort of thing you are playing. I regard this sort of thing as people who fancy having a chat about music, rather than interfering.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

I never bother the DJ, but once, during a Dave Angel set at the End, I was drawn to a button on a console at the back of the main room. Cue smoke for the next 20 minutes. Lots and lots of lovely smoke. Maybe too much in retrospect.

 

[swears]

A couple of my chums were DJing an end-of-sixth-form party at somebody's house to celebrate finishing A-levels, going to uni, etc. They were playing a few house tunes off CDs with a basic mixer, no pitch control or anything like that, just gain, crossfader and eq. This prick who had invited himself to the party and everybody had hated through school for being an arrogant, know-it-all-twat walks up to the decks and starts fiddling around with the mixer and amp controls, and is told to stop fucking around by my friend in rather serious tones. He then goes and gets a CD of tunes he'd brought to the party himself and while the DJs aren't paying attention, presses the eject button to take out the CD everyone else is enjoying (Stardust-Music sounds better with you) and goes to put his one on. My mate flipped out, grabbed him by the collar and just started slapping the twat in the face repeatedly. The crowd is shocked at first, then when started to laugh and clap when they realised no serious harm was being done. The twat is removed from the premises and his CD is thrown out of the window. It's wise not to fuck about with DJs, even at house parties.

 

[IdleRich]

I don't mind if people ask me for things - it makes no difference because I usually only have on box of records and I almost certainly won't have it - and if they do then great (plus I have to admit I've done it myself in the past).
Most annoying request I've had is when we were playing soul/funk/rnr etc in the backroom of a kind of eighties/electroclash/electropop type place. Everyone was dancing except for one guy who kept demanding I play something from the eighties - I'm thinking "there's a whole room with 300 people dancing to 80s stuff just through that door, why not go there?".

"it's hard to concentrate on what you're doing when someone's shoving their oar in and fiddling around with the mixer."

Worse than that, just dj-d at a kind of mini-festival a few weeks ago. The generator for the speakers conked out at some point and everything went quiet. Some bloke on drugs just wouldn't accept that it wasn't my fault (even though a load of people round the back were desperately working to get it sorted) and insisted on fiddling with every button that he could see and even grabbing the needles on the still spinning records. Guess you can't get too annoyed with someone when they are that out of it but those records are expensive.

 

[mistersloane]

My mate ( female ) punched a DJ in the face once at a bar in Brixton after an evening of inexorable music, I can't remember whether it was Simply Red or Lighthouse Family that caused it. It was wrong, none of us laughed, but none of us chastised her either.