Right folks, the account of my 250 song playlist 18th last night. Upstairs in a rugby club, no roadie, and a playlist that was well outside my comfort zone. To say I was apprehensive would be spot on. Anyway, I carried subs and tops upstairs, and mindful of what someone had advised me, I took the big ones which will stack straight on each other, rather than using poles or tripods. Good move. I took the smaller of my playout cases up. Bad move. On plugging it in, the mixer had no power, so rather than trying to take it to bits, I carried it down, and brought up the big ( heavy and cumbersome ) case. That reminded me why I like the Denon 500 mixer so much. I haven't used it for a while, and it's a great piece of kit. I plan to replace the mixer in the small case with a denon soon.
So, I got all the kit upstairs and working, and set about the playlist. By dint of spending over twenty quid on downloads, and raiding my daughter's CD collection,( good job I've got a CD drive attached to the Cortex, eh? ) I walked in with over two hundred of the songs on the playlist, so felt reasonably confident. I said earlier that the playlist was outside my comfort zone, but that's not wholly true. Lots of it was stuff I'd played heavily in the past, and my only total ignorance was some of the Metal, and a new one on me, Skapunk!! ( I quite like some of it, I've got to say )
I'd spotted a few bunches of songs where I could play related stuff I'm fully conversant with, and for the early part of the night did exactly that, since many of the punters were slow to arrive. ( And many never arrived at all. The place was never packed. ) When we got onto the buffet, a few more folk had arrived, and suddenly, one track set them off dancing, Wheatus-Teenage Dirtbag. I quickly followed that success with some I'd been holding back for such a moment, Limp Bizkit-Rolling, Bloodhoung Gang-Bad Touch, Papa Roach- Last resort, and we were away. At times, I feared for the kit, cos this "Moshing" puts me more in mind of third fifteen rugby without a ball, rather than dancing. The trusty DSB proved resilient enough, and my speaker placement turned out to be sensible.
The crowd were brilliant, and I got asked for Gangnam Style very early on, closely followed by Barbie Girl!! Both went down a storm, and with me being guided by requests, the playlist, and a bit of intuition, things went well. I was short of about half a dozen songs on the playlist that were requested, and a couple that weren't on it, so I'd say that was more than acceptable. Quite a few punters complimented me on my music library, and song selection, so that was nice. At times, it even looked like I knew what I was doing, especially when I followed the requested songs from H.I.M with a couple of my choices from Rammstein, Du Hast, and Buck Dich. They went down a storm, as did Prodigy. ( I'm getting a bit worried though. I'm beginning to like Rammstein. ) Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, LMFAO, and Pink proved floorfillers, so nothing out of the ordinary there, and when the birthday girl requested Mud, Mott the Hoople, and Bowie, I could coast for a while.
A couple of songs surprised me, particularly one I've had in my collection for ages, Andrew WK-Party Hard. I got that on a compilation, and have never played it. Wow! The floor filled with everyone doing a sort of Punk macarena, at double speed! Weird. I don't know if this is normal or not.
All in all, a very satisfactory gig, very enlightening and educational. The punters were well behaved and suitably impressed, The paymaster ( Dad ) was very very happy, asked for some cards, and gave me a twenty quid tip. Nice. Turns out the Mott and Bowie comes cos he was good friends with some of the Spiders From Mars, and also Ian Hunter.
Only downside to the night was carrying a full rig up and down the stairs.