Oh my. A thread about club DJing. Ahem.
I think I was barely 17 when I got my first ever residency in the back room of the Freemason's Arms in Consett (it's still there wouldja believe it!), doing 8pm-midnight for the princely sum of £30 paid from the owner's amply stuffed top. In the course of saving up to buy my first Martin smoke machine I saw some incredible sights, some of them right in front of me - in exchange for playing a factory girl's requests..
I quit that having seen too many scuffles & eventually ended up in a 'fun club' called Duffy's. Now that was a serious eye opener. Unlicenced doormen, spaghetti western style fights, smashed up fixtures & fittings... young lads getting their heads stoved in against a wall or pillar by bouncers.. oh it was lovely. One Sunday morning - after my 20th birthday when I'd had a 'few' drinks I went up to the club to collect my big box of records & found the cleaner near the DJ booth. In each hand she held gory 'his n hers' evidence that a couple had apparently achieved .. let's call them 'intimate relations' eh... in front of the booth. I said "that might explain why the records were jumping more than usual last night". Ick. For the record, as memory serves I don't know how anybody managed that - it was so over capacity in the main room most of the night. Fire regulations? I'm sure they'd heard of them.
Those days were definitely fun though. Great friends were made & the team spirit of a well oiled nightclub workforce is totally unlike anywhere else I've ever worked. The work was great fun but even more fun was what happened after hours. The staff parties, the lock-ins, the after-parties were just amazing. All totally irresponsible of course but isn't that all part of what being young is about? Heh.
The 'pinnacle' of my club DJing days was probably warming up for Graeme Park in a provincial club where the usual fayre was 135+bpm noisy trance & techno. He wasn't well received by the locals
I never bothered to put in all the graft needed to land a gig in a
proper club though. Yknow like people have actually heard of LOL
I'm now 51 & after doing a gig in a clubby kind of bar back in April I really wouldn't mind swapping my mobile rig for a pair of (somebody else's) Pioneer CDJs. Just rocking up with a USB stick & headphones in my pocket - hell yeah! Not sure my body could cope with that many late nights of a weekend, every week though
I certainly don't get entitled to the kind of lie-ins I got when I was in my 20s now! Big plus points though.. I might manage to escape ever hearing Sweet Caroline or Mr Brightside ever again!!!!!!!