Let's talk about decks, baby

[j4]

Happy slightly-belated birthday to mobbsy for yesterday -- and thanks again to you, lnr, and damerell for hosting such a great party on Saturday.

[Photos: by rejs | by Art]

It looks like the party was responsible for mpinna catching the DJ bug. I can empathise with that -- for all that I got in a tizzy about it beforehand, it was ace fun getting to play at being a DJ again for a bit. I'd done it a handful of times at PANIC while I was at Oxford, but that was mumble years ago, and I was sure I'd forgotten everything. Anyway, addedentry will confirm that I spent the entire afternoon rootling through our CD collection like a rabid badger while totally failing to come up with a set(t), getting distracted by all those lyrics and memories, and in the end just threw absolutely everything that I might possibly want to play in a great big bag and dragged it all to the Cow, and of course ended up only using about 6 of those 30 CDs. But still! We had a great afternoon of playing through our favourite indie choons, and got to the party in plenty of time. About an hour before my slot (hurr hurr) I was so nervous that I was all for chickening out; but addedentry chivvied me along a bit, and about 30 minutes before I was 'on' I finally scrawled down something resembling a set-list on the back of a napkin and then went for it.

As it was the "90th" (3x30th) birthday party, and I first met the birthday people in the 1990s, I took that noble decade as my theme. ... Okay, I admit, I'd've been quite likely to play a set heavily biased towards 1990s indie music anyway. But for once I had an excuse!

So I played:

They Might Be Giants, "Birdhouse In Your Soul"
Army of Lovers, "Carry My Urn To Ukraine"
Breeders, "Cannonball"

[somewhere in the middle of this, damerell popped up beside me and said "I turn 30 at midnight. Can we arrange to have no music at that point? You've got 5 minutes." After a bit of fretful clockwatching I managed a panicked but actually quite serendipitous segue into a short track:]

Elastica, "Connection"

[and then killed the music as the numbers clicked round to midnight just in time for damerell to shout "Fuck me, I'm thirty!" I don't know if anybody took him up on the offer, but it gave me the obvious link of "Naughty, naughty, very naughty!" ...]

The Shamen, "Ebeneezer Goode"

[There then followed 10 seconds of sample from the Bagpuss soundtrack CD, in which Professor Yaffle says something along the lines of "What a load of rubbish! I never heard such a silly, messy song." I just couldn't resist it. :-) This was followed (after a minor cockup) by one even sillier song before getting into the more mosh-friendly indie that I wanted to end with as an appropriate lead into mobbsy's set:]

Sultans of Ping FC, "Where's Me Jumper?"
Rage Against the Machine, "Killing In The Name"
Rocket From The Crypt, "On A Rope"

The best thing about DJing is looking out across the dancefloor and seeing loads of people dancing and singing along. It's partly the validation of my tastes in music (which is always nice, particularly from cool people); partly "playing God" (after all, as we know, God is a DJ) by controlling the room like that; but mostly, I think, it's just being able to have fun (and I do enjoy it once I've got over the excruciating nerves) doing something that lets other people have fun. I wish there were more opportunities to do this.

Comments

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Definitely. All of the above. Good set too, btw.

[emperor]

You certainly seemed to be enjoying yourself in the booth :)

It was a good set, too, if a little trendy for me ;)

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Army Of Lovers! Hurrah! Sorry I missed it.

[j4.livejournal.com]

You so should have stayed! Imagine, we could have had three Army of Lovers fans in the same room! :-D

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

The only Army of Lovers track I actually know is their version of "Crucified", but I like that.

[ Rereading Adrian Mole does tend to put me back into being fifteen and insecure about my coolness credentials. ]

[j4.livejournal.com]

"Carry My Urn..." had a bit of a cult following among certain social circles when I was at Oxford, due to its Flops (http://www.scbd.connectfree.co.uk/flops/index.html) chart status.

I really do like it, though, wholly unironically! And the rest of the album ("Gods of Earth and Heaven") is great too. But then, as addedentry will be itching to point out, I am a Sad Old Goth with a weakness for camp and Euro-pop, so Army of Lovers are entirely my cup of tea. :-)

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

That sounds great, I must hear you DJ some time. And I know what you mean in the last paragraph - I used to get that when I were a goth and DJed occasionally. "Dancefloor filling up to my favourite music! Look at all the happy* faces! Woo!"

* for goth values of happy

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

Heh... my set followed j4's, and I found the floor emptying as I played some of my favourite music. Most people who were there for RATM and RftC stayed around for the Dead Kennedys, but the dancefloor sort got less busy after that.

[lusercop.livejournal.com]

Very belatedly, piccies should be up here (http://photo.pho.be/sets/90th_party/index.html). I don't seem to have got any of Owen (M), perhaps he's just invisible on cameras!