To sum up last night? “Hilariously Horrible” is a good way to describe it.
Back at BOOze 6 a few weeks ago, my friend Rai (Rachel) had asked me and my friend Jerry to spin some vinyl at her upcoming birthday party. Apparently our mutual friend Kramer would be DJ’ing as well, so we’d have the modern music covered; She asked us if we would bring our decks and trance/breaks/house records. They were apparently renting out the bar for the night.
In *my* mind, this is how I envisioned the night to go: Jerry and I set up our decks a little before 9 — people are showin up, some I know, some I’ve just seen around. One of us plays for a little bit early on while people are just socializing and drinking — then Kramer starts playing some of his music, people dance, and then every 30 or 45 minutes we rotate around. I was fully aware that not everyone would be into electronic music and so I figured they’d just chill out while Jerry or I played, and dance when Kramer played. Everyone’s happy.
What REALLY happened was so ridiculously far from that I couldn’t help but laugh.
We got there at slightly before 9. Jerry showed up right after that. Kramer and I set up my decks on a pair of tables grabbed from out in the bar area. They were about waist height, and were JUST barely large enough to accommodate the mixer and both decks (when I say “deck” I mean Technics 1200 SL-MKII Turntables, btw).
Kramer was playing some various music — just rock, classic, oldies, etc. whatever. I heard Fleetwood Mac at one point. This woman who was apparently intoxicated ran across the dancefloor and jumped up onto the stage where our decks were setup, BARELY making the jump (it’s about 3′ high). She was like “…I made it!…” I remember being REALLY afraid right there that she was going to lose her balance, pitch forward and spill her beer all over Jerry’s $700.00 mixer (Tascam X-9). That would have been REALLY bad because we’d have to convince a drunk woman that she just ruined some VERY expensive audio equipment.
Kramer played for a little while, and, just fucking around, I threw on “It Takes Two” by Rob Base and EZ-Rock (the instrumental version). Kramer cut over to it, and so I was like “uh…ok.. I guess I’ll play some more stuff!” so that played for a while and a couple people were dancing to it and started complaining because there were no words. (I swear…I think this is a Midwestern thing, because I never remember hearing complaints like that back east, but I’ve heard it more times than I can remember out here.) So, because I am *so* slick, I sampled the “It takes two” loop, looped the sample on the mixer, and flipped the record over to mix the original version back in. I think Kramer had cut over to a different song because he didn’t know what I was doing, but he cut back over a moment later. It was awesome.
In retrospect, i *really* wish I would have brought more of my early 90s dance vinyl. I have a sizable collection of those old classics, and I could have done some really fun stuff with it. I’ve got Humpty Dance, Wrex’n'Effect, Salt’n'Pepa, Madonna, Ace of Base, and many others. I do this wicked mix when I go from It Takes Two into “Slave 4 U” by Britney, and then mix that into “Express Yourself (remix)” by Madonna. From there I think I could probably do “Bizarre Love Triangle” by New Order, and then whatever else….. there was a lot more potential there for doing some crazy remixes of things. But I wasn’t asked “hey will you bring your decks and DJ some early 90s dance?” I was asked “hey will you bring your decks and DJ some techno for us?”
After that I think Jerry and I went back and forth, playing a few different breakbeat songs. We played “Insomnia” by Faithless (that sample is REALLY close to what it sounds like, but not exactly), “Beachball” (DJ Icey remix), a breaks remix of “Black Dog” by Zeppelin, and a breaks remix of “Days go By”. I think Kramer then mixed into something on his side, a DJ Sammy track or something, and people were actually dancing. I was pretty surprised by that. Gave me some hope for the night.
Anyways — 10 oclock rolls around…. then 10:30… I’m sitting on the stage with Jerry while Kramer plays. Jerry’s playing “Bomberman” on his cellphone. I was SOOOO envious of him. He sucks. I txt’d some of my friends a few times. Rachel STILL hadn’t shown up yet. Her friends had been there earlier to put up some decorations, so I knew we were in the right place at the right time… but neither Rachel nor anyone else I recognized was there. I txt’d her brother and after about 15 mins he said they were on their way. Apparently Rachel took a long time to do her hair. Having known Rai for 5 years, that really didn’t surprise me.
Rai showed up, I went down and said Hi to her. She looked good as always. I swear, for having already had two kids you would *never* have known. One of my friends, who had never seen her before, described her as “the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen in real life.” Craziness.
Anyways — I had a drink and sat with Jerry some more while he played Bomberman on his cell phone. We were waiting for a moment to play some more. At one point I was like “ok, no one is dancing, so fuck it — I’m going to play some Drum n Bass.”
Now if you have never heard drum n bass (sample: “Can’t Punish Me” by Dom & Roland) before — imagine a standard hip-hop breakbeat 33 RPM record but sped up to 45 RPM. There’s a lot of really dark bass sweeps usually (at least in the stuff I play), and some good sub-bass hits. *Technically* most bpm counters will register the tempo at somewhere in the ballpark of 185 bpm. But it really depends on how your brain registers the measures. Most Drum’n'bass enthusiasts are familiar enough with it to hear it at half that tempo (~93bpm). You can tell by watching people dance to it. If they’re dancing really fast, they’re hearing it at 185 , if they’re dancing slowly, they’re hearing it at halfspeed.
(“Bombs over Baghdad” and “Hey Yaa” by Outkast are *almost* drum’n'bass breaks. Outkast really bleeds into that genre a little bit. It doesn’t have the bass sweeps or anything, but the rhythm itself is very similar)
Anyways. So I started playing some Drum’n'Bass (Angels And Fly (club mix) by High Contrast), I mixed in some DJ Shadow hip-hop breaks, and then back into another instrumental track. Kramer mixed in Bombs over Baghdad. I kind of cringed because I had two records going simultaneously — there’s a lot of noise as it is; and he was bringing in a TOTALLY different track, un-beatmatched, and a lot of the frequencies were overlapping. I stopped my records really quickly to clear it up.
Around midnight I think, Jerry and I were chilling out with Graig, just sitting on the stage hanging out. The wet-t-shirt contest was getting ready to start so all the contestants had to change into their contest-shirts (standard cotton white-t-shirt). All the girls decided that they would face away from the crowd, *towards the stage* to take off their tops and bras and put the white shirts on. I remember commenting to Jerry that I wondered if any of the girls even realized we were sitting there. Needless to say, the three of us were entertained for about 5 minutes.
So the wet-t-shirt contest started. There were 5 contestants altogether. They were all facing the crowd and dancing; I really don’t have much clue what each one of them looked like since we were all just getting an eyeful of shakin’ ass. It was nice shakin’ ass though. One of the contestants won after a couple minutes, and she got her $100. (*that* must have been nice….). I wish I could write more about this, but it was seriously only 5 minutes altogether.
A little while later, Kramer passed it back over to us. The plan was I was going to play 5 records, and then Jerry was going to play some records after that. I figured that was pretty reasonable. I started out with “The Ultimate Seduction” (sampling the vocal sample in the very beginning, to use later). I actually had a bunch of people dancing to it, which made me think maybe they were all drunk enough to not care (that was partly why we waited for so long.). I mixed into “Feels so Good” by Jon the Dentist. After about a minute of that, most of the people had cleared off the dance floor. I have *NEVER* understood this, but for some reason, people don’t like to dance to that song. I think the song fucking rocks — the break hits hard and it’s got a solid build and everything. It’s even clubby! But whatever.
At this point Kramer kind of shot me like a “dude..what the hell — people aren’t dancing?” look. I was like “I dunno.” It’s a mid-western th ing I guess?
I mixed out of that track into “Pray to Jerusalem (Euphoria Mix)” by Travel. This track was made popular on Kimball Collins “Club Nights volume 2″ CD. I got a couple more of those “dude……” looks from Kramer. He said people were complaining and a few had left. I said “ok, one more song.”
So I mix into “The Silence (Tiesto’s overplayed sunrise mix)” by Delerium. The mothafuckin’ SILENCE. This track is insanely classic. I think it might have the status of appearing on the MOST number of Trance DJ mixes EVER. I personally prefer the original version myself, but don’t mind this remix. My thought was “ok, if they don’t dance to this they aren’t going to dance to ANYTHING”. This song is pretty, it has sweeping pad synths, a nice solid (but not overpowering) beat, and VOCALS. It has fucking WORDS to it. And on top of that, the original version of the song is pretty well known — it’s been featured on Movie Trailers (eg. “Broke Down Palace” among others), so it’s not like I’m pulling some crazy-ass underground shit out here. The mix was virtually flawless, it was just like I had practiced. It sounded beautiful. But no one danced. Kramer announced he was taking it over and I was like “whatever man… just do it.”
In Kramer’s defense here, I don’t blame him. The job of a DJ is to get people dancing and to have a good time — it’s not a contest to see who’s got the best skill, or who can play the most inane underground stuff. It’s very machiavellian — if people aren’t diggin’ your flavor and aren’t dancing, then you have to play something else. I can accept that, as much as I may dislike it.
What was crazy though is that when he switched back over to the “regular” music, and I reluctantly packed up my LP case, the dancefloor was still empty. People weren’t dancing to this either! It’s one of those things that just make you say “wtf?” At some point, about 3 or 6 songs down, a few people came out and danced for a specific song, and then cleared off again.
It’s such a bizarre phenomena. I’ve worked at, and DJ’d at, several bars around the midwest, and it never ceases to amaze me how fickle people are about what they dance to. I had never heard the argument “I can’t dance to this, I don’t know the words” until I moved out here. Back home, when we would party, you WANTED to hear songs you didn’t know. You wanted that excitement of getting totally lost in a new song.
The best explanation I can come up with is that people want to know what they can expect from a song before they devote their time and energy to dancing to it. If you’re familiar with a song, you know whether or not you like it, you know where the breaks are, where the ins and outs are, etc. You know “the words”, whether or not there are indeed words. Unfamiliar music genres can be kind of scary, and I admit that the first few parties I went to I was a little uncomfortable. I guess I may have just been a little pissed because I *know* there were people out there who used to go to parties, and I didn’t see ANY of them dancing. Kind of made feel like “ok, why did I even bother coming out?” eh. whatever.
So anyways – yeah, Kramer took it back over. He said that we could try again shortly, but the gamer in me didn’t see that as being a worthwhile investment of time and/or effort. The people just weren’t into it. They were barely dancing to his stuff, which was far more widely palatable than the stuff Jerry and I were playing. So after about 20 or 30 minutes we reluctantly packed up, loaded my car, and said our goodbyes.
I did have a good time, it was fun to party and I at least got to play a little bit on that REALLY good system. (they had 9 15″ subs set up underneath the stage area….YEAH.) It’s rare that I get to play on a system THAT good. I guess on some level I walked away with a slightly better understanding of the people… but it doesn’t change the fact that I was pissed about it.
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