Cross a DJ with a Nerd, you get a Seb.
Archive for August, 2003
I Wanna Dance With Some…Anybody
Aug 15th
Being a dj is fun, and I love it. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s not all mirrorballs and celebrities and waking up in other people’s underpants. No. Sometimes you have to work for it. Take last night’s gig for example.
I turned up to play a two hour set at my regular Wednesday night venue. I was freshly scrubbed, my record box was filled with good tunes, and I was all ready to get the disco loving masses a heavin’ and a stompin’.
All well and good, except none of them wanted to stomp or heave.. I played, and they stood there, bobbing up and down on the edge of the dancefloor. .
Okay, said my inner dj voice, sometimes it just requires something a little more. They just need a little push. So I played a great big hugely popular floor filling ‘get-up-and-shake-it-now-before-the-boss-notices-and-sacks-me-for-the-love-of-god’ kinda tune, followed by a ‘scream-cos-ya-love-it-this-never-fails-me-did-I-mention-I’m-prepared-to-offer-monetary-incentives’ all time favourite. Three guys immediately leapt onto the dancefloor. I sighed with relief.
The three guys then proceeded to walk directly across the dancefloor and vanished into the crowd. Evidently it was a desperate need to cross the room to get more beer, rather than a desire to gyrate lewdly in front of their fellow bobbing punters on a dancefloor that had previously only been graced by the occasional tumbleweed. Dammit.
By this stage of the night, the venue was getting quite full, and I was beginning to look somewhat, shall we say, not very good. This was when I met helpful girl.
Helpful girl walked up to the front of the dj box and yelled “Drahhkikkyppglflug!” at me, then gave me the ‘thumbs up’ sign. I quickly flicked through my record box for a record of that title, remembered that I didn’t have any Albanaian Fluglehorn classics, and turned back to her, giving the universal sign for ‘confusion mixed with mild indifference’. She rolled her eyes, then walked round and clambered up beside me.
“DIRRTY!! BY CHRISTINA AQUANERIL!” she bellowed at close range, rupturing my ear drum.
“I’ll try..” I lied back.
“NOW!!” yelled helpful girl. “AND HEAPS MORE R N B!! EVERYONE WILL GO OFF!!”
“The front room plays RnB all night..” I offered, helpfully.
“I CAN’T BE F**KED GOING OUT THERE!” she screeched, obviously shocked at my suggestion that she walk ten metres. I nodded sympathetically.
“Well, I only play house out here. Sorry babe.”
She gave me her very best glare (the one, I suspect, she reserves specifically for insincere dj’s), then turned and disappeared into the bobbing masses. The positive thing about this, was while she was distracting me, the dancefloor had acquired a few people. Not people in search of beer on the other side of the room, but people dancing. I nearly wept academy award acceptance speech tears right then and there.
My faith in disco humanity renewed, I did what any self respecting, progressive, forward thinking dj would do to in this situation. I played Kylie’s ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’. As soon as the first ‘La la la’ came out, a trio of Japanese girls pogoed into the middle of the floor and punched their fists in the air, carrying on in a manner usually reserved for the discovery of new Hello Kitty merchandise. This was all the encouragement the rest of the crowd needed and they piled onto the floor, all pretending that they too were big Hello Kitty fans, discovering a new range of faux-fur lunchboxes. Two tracks later the Japanese girls had pushed their way to the front of the box and were moshing and grinning with all their might. Thank god for Red Bull.
So another tragedy averted, a floor slowly filled and a night well done.
The moral of the story… we’re nothing without Kylie.
Sigh.
La, La, Fucking La
Aug 10th
….Now don’t get me wrong, I am a HUGE Kylie fan. I’ve bought every single in one form or another, framed posters adorn the walls of Chateau Seb, and, via subwoofer, the thumping bass of the “Fever” album has been loosening the dentures of the lovely ladies downstairs for many months….
But the gay scene’s current obsession with the woman is driving me mad. No matter how much you play, there’s constant requests for more. They can’t wait for it, either. It has to be now. It doesn’t matter that you’ve played it three songs before. We want our Kylie. Give us our Kylie.
At times I have become too scared to catch the eye of people on the dancefloor, who up until recently would wink or smile at me, but now just mouth K-Y-L-I-E. Now, sure it’s ok to want to hear your favourite artist on your big night out, but when thirty people ask you within a two hour period, during which you’ve already played three Kylie songs, it just gets a teensy bit frustrating.
Since the release of ‘Light Years’ two years ago, my blood pressure has risen sixteen points. I just don’t think I can cope much longer.
It got to one of the other dj’s so much, he had a little sign made up that says “PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR KYLIE. YOU ARE IN A GAY CLUB. OF COURSE WE ARE GOING TO F**KING PLAY HER!!!!!!”, which he displays proudly as he plays.
A few weeks ago I got a bit smart, and during a set decided to exact revenge on the crowd. I played “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”, and of couse the crowd screamed louder than they had at any other point of the night.
I played it through, then mixed in “Can’t Get Blue Monday Out Of My Head”, then the instrumental, then a bootleg mix of it, then the live version, then the ‘vs’ remixes, the single edit, the instrumental again, and finished off with the original extended mix. Forty three minutes of the same song. That would teach them!
Except it didn’t. They screamed their heads off the entire time, then lined up to compliment me when I’d finished. Many still speak of it as the ‘best night ever’.
She’s five feet tall, lives in another country, has no idea of my existence and is slowly turning me insane.
I wish her sister Dannii all the success in the world.
Cinderfella
Aug 8th
Thanks to Miss B for filling in a little blank spot from a few saturdays back (see the last post…). Apparently someone stole one of my shoes while I sat dribbling in the corner. Miss B very kindly retrieved it for me and replaced it on my foot in a Cinderella/Prince charming moment. For this I am forever in her debt. It’s just that I think that she grabbed the nearest shoe, rather than tracking down the one I’d lost, so I now have one chocolate brown trainer (mine) and one gold stilletto. Somewhere out there a tranny is step-lurching her way through a Whitney Houston number to rapturous applause…