The people shouldn't always have their say
I rubbed my eyes and emerged last night from the home arrest imposed by my new digital cable (Can't! Stop! Watching! TV!) and joined Christian for one of them fancy iPod jukebox hoedowns that they have here in the big city.
I was pretty excited about it, but we quickly realized that letting everyone have 12 minutes to play stuff off their iPods is not necessarily as good of an idea as it sounds. I had to wait about two hours before my turn came, and I can honestly say that in all that time, I heard maybe 3 songs that I actually would call "good". Most of it was, at the very least, music that was not the kind of stuff you'd want to hear when you're out for a fun night (Tip: when DJing at a bar, no one wants to hear ambient electronic music), and a good portion of it was flat out bad.
What I was going to play was this:
Dizzee Rascal, "Hype Talk"
Belle and Sebastian, "Your Cover's Blown"
Johnny Boy, "You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes..."
...but then the pretty girls got to me and wanted me to play more dancey stuff. And I can't resist the pretty girls. They're so pretty. They made me play this:
Ladytron, "The Way That I Found You"
The Jesus and Mary Chain, "Far Gone and Out"
Pulp, "She's A Lady"
Still nice, but not my intention.
Point being that the iPod DJ nights depend as much on the DJs as any night does. It's easy to be optimistic and think that giving people control over what they're hearing is a great way to hear fantastic new music, but democracy is not always the best way to go about everything.
5 comments:
That Johnny Boy song just kills me. Pretty girls be damned (and most of 'em are), I say stick to your guns.
Great idea, Christian. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. I'm always in favor of totalitarianism, as long as the leader is someone that I agree wholeheartedly with.
For a while, I was actually considering playing a set of songs that all started with the beat from "Be My Baby":
The Rondelles, "Be My Baby"
Johnny Boy, "You Are the Generation..."
The Jesus and Mary Chain, "Just Like Honey"
The Positions, "Back To Me"
But that would have meant playing The Positions, and I didn't want to be That Guy.
Gosh I dunno, if you're gonna be into totalitarianism, you might as well be into self-promotion - after all, isn't that what totalitarianism is all about really?! ;)
Never heard of this iPod dance party nonsense though - sounds fun...or frustrating...or boring.
Isn't that just like any bar where there's a jukebox? You put in your quarters and pick your songs, which finally get played right about the time you're getting ready to leave, hours later.
Then everybody (except the token old biker geezer at the back of the bar) gets pissed at you because you chose the full length 37:00 version of the Allman Bros' "Mountain Jam" from the Fillmore Concert CD...twice.
Somewhere I have an MP3 file of a Paul Oakenfold concert that for inexplicable reasons was recorded as a single track. I think it's two hours long. Guess it's a good thing I don't have an iPod. ;)
-Scott
> Isn't that just like any bar where there's a jukebox?
Well, sort of. But it's more like a bar where everyone brings their own jukebox. So instead of, "Well, I guess the best thing on here is the Georgia Satellites, so I might as well play that", you have people bringing in their entire collection of their favorite songs. So theoretically, you're hearing a great variety of people's favorite songs instead of whatever happens to be on the jukebox. So theoretically, the music is much better than with the jukebox. Theoretically.
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