crosstraining
Saturday night -- Crowd wasn't biting on much of the music that the early DJs were playing. You could excuse it as it still being early. Arlington venues are problematic because of town bylaws that dictate a midnight closing time; so you need to get your party started early but everyone likes arriving fashionably late. So, 9:30 rolls around and it's a decent crowd, but they're still getting drinks, still talking, not dancing. It's understandable, but it makes it a little challenging to gauge the vibe and figure out what the crowd's into.
A friend of mine asked what I was planning on playing and I replied, "depends on who shows up."
There are times, when I'm trying to find my focus, that I look out at a dancefloor, lock in on a friend, and I try to figure out how to keep them going. They are proxies for my crowd and if I play to them, then I figure that others will follow. So, after getting the floor started with Stromkern and Covenant, I took a look around and noted, "well, there's badriyaz, nepethe01 and dancer. I guess we're going belly-dancing." Natacha Atlas went on soon afterwards, followed by Dead Can Dance, an old Juno Reactor chestnut and an excerpt of a This Morn' Omina track that I thought would work but was probably overreaching that night. Crowd was looking for comfort food, and they fled from anything unfamiliar.
I'm typing up playlist notes to e-mail to deftlyd and the other two DJs from the night, trying to parse out our chicken scratch. I'm looking at mine and realizing that, given the amount of old hits I have on there, it's nothing special to me. But to the folks who were out last night, and keeping that floor going from 10 to close it was probably pretty memorable. Or so I'd think.
I spin again tonight at Ceremony for the return of Singularity. Will be doing both an early set and a late set, with fugbug and brigid. Don't come fashionably late if you can help it. You'll miss some of this Berlin techno that I've been itching to play.
Techno and beats tonight, goth and swirl last Saturday. Yeah, re-arranging my music between shows has been fun.
A friend of mine asked what I was planning on playing and I replied, "depends on who shows up."
There are times, when I'm trying to find my focus, that I look out at a dancefloor, lock in on a friend, and I try to figure out how to keep them going. They are proxies for my crowd and if I play to them, then I figure that others will follow. So, after getting the floor started with Stromkern and Covenant, I took a look around and noted, "well, there's badriyaz, nepethe01 and dancer. I guess we're going belly-dancing." Natacha Atlas went on soon afterwards, followed by Dead Can Dance, an old Juno Reactor chestnut and an excerpt of a This Morn' Omina track that I thought would work but was probably overreaching that night. Crowd was looking for comfort food, and they fled from anything unfamiliar.
I'm typing up playlist notes to e-mail to deftlyd and the other two DJs from the night, trying to parse out our chicken scratch. I'm looking at mine and realizing that, given the amount of old hits I have on there, it's nothing special to me. But to the folks who were out last night, and keeping that floor going from 10 to close it was probably pretty memorable. Or so I'd think.
I spin again tonight at Ceremony for the return of Singularity. Will be doing both an early set and a late set, with fugbug and brigid. Don't come fashionably late if you can help it. You'll miss some of this Berlin techno that I've been itching to play.
Techno and beats tonight, goth and swirl last Saturday. Yeah, re-arranging my music between shows has been fun.