Play That Funky Music White Boy
Today I co-hosted Lindy on Sproul! And played DJ, photographer, and danced to my heart’s content - in short, I was in full multitask mode.
I built the playlist the night before - good thing too; making selections on the fly is hard. Heck, I still was changing the order every few songs or so.
My DJ cred is rising - I did it wholly from the swing collection I’ve been building for weeks from torrents and whatnot - I ripped one of the standard CDs just in case, but ended up not using it.
However, these formed the majority of the playlist. The real cred came from putting some of my own spin in - my hits and misses that weren’t “standard” swing songs. And I had more hits than misses, so I have something of an ear for it.
The breakdown:
Hits:
- Little Richard - Tutti Frutti - People were surprised, but excited, the dancing worked well and it was generally fun
- Queen - Crazy Little Thing Called Love - Everyone knew the song; It just happens to work well for swing
- The Beach Boys - Fun Fun Fun - There was a general excited cheer and it turned into a swingin’ beach party for two minutes
- Van Morrison - Brown-Eyed Girl - I was a little shy about this one (after a miss or two) but after encouragement by onlookers, I played it, and it totally rocked. Totally worked for swing too.
Misses:
- Blondie - Sunday Girl - It’s a swaying sort of song, thought it would work - it was only mediocre though, so it counts as a miss
- Norman Greenbaum - Spirit In The Sky - Too blues-y. Awesome song though, so it passed, but only just. Another near-miss
- The Seatbelts - Car 24 - James called it “Elevator Music” - and he’s totally right, it didn’t work at all. Full booch on my part
I didn’t get to try The New Pornographers - All For Swinging You Around because I opted against it. May try later, or may discover that it’s just a bad idea.
Overarching lesson: Go with standard swing tracks or danceable classic rock that people know, and it’s hard to go wrong.
Overall, the general energy of the day was high, which was good. The peaks in energy were on my hits though, so that rocked.
If I do it again next week, I’ll do a similar list, mixed differently, change up the energy levels, and pick some more personal flavor with a better understanding of what really works.
DJ Barak in the hizzouse.
Crossposted from photonzero