Liked the music at Ceremony last Sat.

[S. Alexander Reed]

At 10:47 AM -0500 12/9/03, idlechic wrote:

>  > But I seldom hear that kind of variety because
>>  most of the DJs have their own "style" and maybe
>>  they are a little too focused on that? I think
>>  that having a "style" is a good thing, but you
>>  can do that and not alienate half of your
>>  audience. And I think that some of you just
>>  totally ignore what people write in the request
>>  book...but that's a goth thing, ain't it?
>
>that's an excellent way to get djs pissed off.  i'm sure you realize that
>it's impossible to please everyone all the time, especially a crowd of
>goths.

Naturally so, though I do know for a fact that each DJ on the night 
shift, in addition to having a "primary" subgenre or style, does 
enjoy and occasionally spin other things, and I think the point at 
hand is that while you can't please everyone all the time, by playing 
a greater variety of subgenres and styles, you're statistically more 
likely to make more people happy.

It's a really tough balance to strike sometimes, especially if you're 
trying to blend new and old.  People, regardless of what they may 
say, tend to gravitate toward old and comfortable songs they know, 
especially in the goth scene.  Part of a DJ's job is to introduce 
people to new music so that in three years we won't all be dancing to 
the same ten 1998 songs over and over again (this happens in many 
other cities).  It's hard sometimes though when, after having played 
even only 30% material that people don't universally know, clubgoers 
come up and complain about all the new and unknown weird songs.

So just as DJs do need to keep the notion of variety in mind, I do 
hope that people at the club can put a little trust in the DJs and 
the music, and realize that it's ok to dance to something you've not 
heard.  It's a good way to learn and explore music that might end up 
really doing something for you.  If you ran out to the floor to dance 
to New Order, why not stick around when it gets beatmatched into a 
Leiahdorus single?

And finally, one note of practicality about the request lists: the 
DJs get anywhere from four to eight full pages of requests per night 
(with about 35 per page).  It is temporally impossible for them to 
play 200 song requests in a night.  Ceremony is 5 hours long, and in 
the first hour, there generall aren't enough patrons or requests to 
warrant playing something off the sheet yet.  This leaves 4 hours in 
which to play requests.  Even if half the songs played are requests 
(which is a *lot*, given that the DJs must also take into account 
issues of flow from song to song and the avoidance of repeating an 
artist), that still means only about 30 requests can be played in a 
night.  It's just the nature of the night that what you write down 
*WILL* be looked at (all the DJs read the request sheets, I believe), 
but will not necessarily be played.  Not because it's a bad song or 
you're a bad person, but because there are 150 people there who are 
also requesting a few songs apiece.

That said, yes, the music last week was very good.  I especially dug 
the obscure Modern English that Matt whipped out.  And the DJ with 
the long blond hair - his name is DJ Hiem, or Jim.

Also, I'll be spinning at Ceremony this coming week.  I'd love to see 
droves of people there.

-Alexxxxxxxx
ThouShaltNot