DJ Swiss Army Knife
SXSW is in full swing here in Austin, which means a lot of happy hours. I did one at an apartment building last night for a UK tech company. It was a DJ gig, and the analog house sound interface wasn’t cooperating, so it’s the first time I’ve had to use Bluetooth.
Now, I will say that the Denon Prime Go Plus deck is kind of a total Swiss Army knife. I’d never even used its Bluetooth feature before. Otherwise, I was going to have to use my phone, because it looked like the house audio inputs had never been hooked up or used at this apartment’s lounge, which makes sense, because historically people were probably just using Bluetooth / phone.
As it turns out, I got there about 30 minutes before I was supposed to get there, which turned out to be a good thing, because it took us an extra 45 minutes just to figure out the sound, with every cable and adapter known to man of zero use. I was going to have to take about a 40- or 50-foot run, but it turned out I didn’t need any of that, and the Bluetooth connection was solid all night.
The other thing is, earlier in the week, I was kind of taken by an ’80s indie playlist that Apple Music put out. My Denon deck streams Apple Music, and I’ve started to use that pretty much exclusively, whereas I used to make pretty curated playlists of owned music that were always twice as long as the set was.
Yesterday I spent a while compiling a list of songs using that playlist as the base. One of the things you can’t do when you’re streaming is get all your BPMs just right, and I typically like to stack them from low to high. This is the first gig I’ve ever played with 100% no regard to that, and it was super fun mixing this stuff in and out.
In my mind, I’m kind of a single-deck DJ, where I’m not mixing beats and stuff like that. I do that occasionally for sure, and I can do it, but most of what I do is based on what I’m feeling and what’s coming next, and that was certainly the case last night. Most of this is not that mixable in that sense.
It went off great because I was feeling it and because it all kind of came together. I started early and finished late, which is always a good sign.
I think the biggest thing you have to be conscious of when you’re a DJ is staying true to what you feel will work while making sure the hosts are getting what they asked for, and last night it all worked. I found a groove, and those kinds of nights are fun. I just love all those songs, and it 100% came thru.
I could do a lot more like this for sure.
Set list: About a Girl-Nirvana Lorelei-Cocteau Twins Ceremony- New Order I Will Dare-The Replacements Teen Age Riot -Sonic Youth I Wanna Be Adored -The Stone Roses Waiting Room-Fugazi This Charming Man-The Smiths Just Like Honey-The Jesus and Mary Chain So. Central Rain-R.E.M. Love Buzz-Nirvana Tell Me When It's Over-The Dream Syndicate Molly's Lips-Vaselines Our Secret-Beat Happening Swallow My Pride-Green River Puke + Cry-Dinosaur Jr. Feel The Pain-Dinosaur Jr. Heaven or Las Vegas-Cocteau Twins Slash Your Tires-Luna The Unguarded Moment-The Church Original Sin-INXS Pictures Of You-The Cure The Cutter-Echo & The Bunnymen How Soon Is Now?-The Smiths Temptation-New Order People Are People-Depeche Mode North, South, East and West-The Church Boys Don't Cry -The Cure Listen Like Thieves-INXS The Killing Moon-Echo & The Bunnymen I Got You-Split Enz Regret-New Order T.N.T.-AC/DC A Night Like This-The Cure Seven Seas-Echo & The Bunnymen Message In A Bottle -The Police Bizarre Love Triangle-New Order Head On-The Jesus and Mary Chain Seconds-The Human League Numbers-Kraftwerk True Faith -New Order Love on Your Side-Thompson Twins Talk Talk -Talk Talk Nobody's Diary-Yaz Rescue-Echo & The Bunnymen Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)-Squeeze Private Idaho-The B-52's It's My Life Talk Talk Crazy ICEHOUSE Left of the Dial The Replacements (Keep Feeling) Fascination-The Human League What You Do To Me-Teenage Fanclub Enjoy the Silence -Depeche Mode Kundalini Express-Love and Rockets Boing Boom Tschak-Kraftwerk Good Times Bad Times-Led Zeppelin Words-Missing Persons The Gap-Thompson Twins One Step Ahead-Split Enz