Psychomusic¶
593 words on Music
Tonight I DJed at a party organised by the students of the psychology department. I already did the same at two of their parties this summer and now got another go at their christmas party. This one was in a tiny club in town rather than in the department’s garden, so it was better for DJing and partying. The guy I DJed with actually organised everything. And what’s really odd is that he’s really nice and friendly and all but I strongly disagree with his taste in music (and that’s polite Sven speaking). I just so can’t relate to it, that I’m always surprised that he’s just a normal person when talking to him.
In a way having this mix of DJs is quite interesting. As – certainly – the audience was split into people liking his style and people liking mine (and those drunk or indifferent enough to like both). That way at least half of the people enjoy the music at any time (and the others possibly hate it) and everybody gets to enjoy the music at some stage.
Surprisingly (to me anyway) there was a good crowd – and this being a psychology party, most of them were girls – and the club was full, so things were fun. And people were keen to dance as well. They even danced to Love Is All although I’m pretty sure that very few people actually heard that before.
Each of us played two sets, my first set – starting things off early at 9:30 – obviously wasn’t too exciting. Both because I had to settle in (and get used to the quirks of the equipment - no level metres on the mixer, broken lights on the record players, a CD player which required you to use the remote to switch it to ‘time left’ mode, a computer line cable that was broken on one channel) and because few people were there. But I quite like that. It lets me play slightly unknown stuff, fulfill those special wishes of my friends and not be intimidated by people leaving the dancefloor just because I played something halfway obscure.
Still, people were dancing at the end of that, so that was great. The second set I played – from 1 to 3 or so – was really fun. I just went straight for all the popular recent indie stuff (Strokes, Raconteurs, Libertine and so on) at first, throwing in a few less known tracks, then went on a trip to the past (Pixies!, Rolling Stones, New Model Army) and finished with a turn to German bands (Robocop Kraus – a nice bridge because they’re singing in English – , Sterne, Tocotronic, Mediengruppe Telekommander and Wir Sind Helden to finish).
I could obviously add more rants, like how I actually used three media (LP, CD, computer) this time, how I enjoyed being able to put my 7″es to good use and how I ended up having records with me which seemed such good choices when I packed but obviously weren’t suitable once I was there (nobody but me seems to like or even know Patrick Wolf – and while I still think it’d be brilliant to play the beginning of the Mogwai Government Commisions record with John Peel saying Ladies and Gentlemen, Mogwai,
most people will neither appreciate the band nor the announcement. Und so weiter und so weiter.)
So – great night, and a full six hours left for sleeping, waking up, showering, breakfast and getting to the department to listen to a talk. Uh-oh!
