Something I’ve failed to write about recently is my love for music and more specifically, the fact that I began DJ’ing dances at Austin Grill for Charm City Swing back in June of last year.
I’ll be testing out my style on dancers at a new venue, Avalon Dance Studio, this evening. Who knows how it will go since I’m so inexperienced, but one can only hope for the best.
I have to give a lot of credit to Alan Chung for getting me started with the initial library and list of files that work and don’t and what-not, but I think I’ve strongly developed my own style in the past three months. Up until then I was simply going with what was tried and true. But style is an important thing for a DJ, otherwise you don’t have much of an identity. I don’t have a handle on the swing scene enough to know what style to classify myself as, but I know it isn’t all that typical to what you’ll hear at a dance.
Part of it has to do with spontaneity. I throw shit in my set all the time that I know is danceable but might or might not work, and it almost always works because people aren’t expecting it! “Dude, he’s fucking playing INXS!” Hell yes I am! And you know what? It may not be classic swing but you can dance your ass off to it and have fun. This isn’t an original idea of mine, I’m simply acting on what I saw Alan, Sommer, and others do, but outside of Charm City Swing I don’t see it happen very often. Or if it does, it’s hidden. A lot of DJ’s hide the new and funky stuff at the end of a set. The classics are simply the classics and you have to put something other than classic swing in order to please a larger audience. There is nothing wrong with it and I wish more people did it.
I don’t get around a lot in the swing scene (I just don’t have the time), and I’ll freely admit that fact, but I’ve been to Jam Cellar twice and both times, nothing moved me. And you know what, there are other people there that think the same thing yet they never say anything to anyone, most specifically the DJ. The same thing goes for a lot of what is played in the Lindy Living Room at Boston Tea Party, where I’ll be this weekend. I can only handle so much classics. At a certain point you’re worn out and need a bit of variety.
Reverting to communication with the DJ, it doesn’t happen often with me, but when it does I’m always grateful that someone out there has the guts to say, “Hey you know, this just doesn’t work for me.” Even if you are a “professional” DJ, I think you could learn a thing or two if there was a better method of communication with the dancers. You can’t always rely on whether or not people are dancing. You can dance to anything, but does it really move you?
