the CONFERENCE

Monday, February 05, 2007

theme #6

hello again!!

we kick off the season two with something happy and popular
party experiences
our experts tell you their best and worst mashup related
club or DJ experiences
but we are sure that all of us had funny moments like these
so we are really expecting a lot of comments on the board now

as you see we have a new member of our expert team
please weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelcomeeeeee team9 !!!!
we are very very happy to have you on board man!

so lets kick off the things
the season 2 of the CONFERENCE is ON

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the CONFERENCE team

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Can you relate the best and worst Mashup related clubbing experience you've had (Either DJ'ing at a club or a party and related to spinning Mashups/Bootlegs)

prologue by Simon Iddol

I would love to tell you amazing stories
about parties, bootleg crazed chicks, and dark and steamy VIP rooms
but I can't, dont have any stories? yet

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Adrian & the Mysterious D
One of our best DJ gigs ever had to be last year, when we threw our BOOTIE BRC party at the Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, Nevada. Instead of doing it at a big rave camp, we got together with our friends at Fandango, a camp known for its friendly bar and strong drinks. We had figured it would be more like a low-key "bar gig," with only a few people dancing. What we got far exceeded our expectations! The canopy was packed with people going nuts -- literally, just losing their shit -- over every mashup we played. At one point, Mysterious D stopped the dance floor cold to play Whitney Houston mashed up with Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" -- and the place just erupted! So many smiles that night! We DJed for nearly seven hours straight -- ALL bootleg mashups -- without repeating a single song! And the only reason we closed down was because Fandango was worried that they were going to run out of booze!

Our worst club experience spinning mashups had to be in early 2003, when we were booked to play -- ironically enough -- at a Burning Man-related party in San Francisco. The promoters were getting sick of the same old trance and techno played at all the Burner parties, so they booked us to "give their crowd something different." The problem was, their crowd didn't WANT something different! So while there were a few people who "got it" and enjoyed our set, for the most part, what they really wanted to hear was the same old trance and techno. The promoters never got more complaints than when they booked us that night. Less than a year later, they got out of the game and killed off their party. But just a month ago, we received an email from one of them -- he said that mashups were the only interesting evolution in nightlife/dance culture in the past five years, and that he's so proud that he was one of the first to "get it and try to wake up our tired little circles by having you spin for us." Four years later, that felt good to read.

AGGRO1
Sadly, no. I don't DJ and clubs in my area don't spin boots/mashes. Unless you count that Jay-Z/Linkin Park re-recorded thing.

ComaR
Best experience should be Bootie L.A last september cause I left
Paris on the friday evening after a full week of work, drove 2hours
and a half to play in a festival, slept 3 hours before taking a train
back to Paris, took a cab to the airport, flew 16 hours, took our
rental car, drove to The Echo to be at Bootie L.A on time for
openning.
Then I heard Partyben and Dj Paul V. playing lots of tracks I wanted
to play so I began to freak out.
Finally, I took the decks in front of a packed club and had a blast.
A girl gave me a note to thanks me for my set, specially for spinning
S.O.V (thank you Essexboy), others sent me mails or messages on
MySpace. Never had that kind of feedbacks before.
That was so unexpected and I was so exhausted I just remember it as it
was a dream... maybe it was :)

The worst experience... or experiences are every time I have to play
for an empty club and nobody's dancing... I suppose this is the same
for many of us.

DJ Earworm
The most fun I've had at a gig was probably spinning at some parties
for MTV's Video Music Awards in Miami. It was a crazy scene down there,
and so much fun.
My worst experience has to be when my computer's power adapter failed an
hour before a gig. Adrian (of A Plus D) saved me by loaning me his
computer at the last minute, and I hooked up my backup hard drive to it.
The gig ended up working out by the end of the night, but it was pretty
stressful there for a bit.

DJ Zebra
The worst first... it was in february 2004. I was playing in a big rock party in Paris, very crowded (1200 people) and the DJs expected me to play my mash-ups, specially the "Killing Boombastic". So i started with it and... i heard half of the people there shouting, they wanted me to stop this and play the original. So i stopped and played "Rapture riders" and... again, "get out, get out !". 10 minutes only, my shortest and worst set, so i went home. More than 2 years later, i played again at this party, and said in the microphone "You know what ? 2 years ago here, people didn't want me to play "Killing Boombastic. Do you want to hear it now?". Then everybody shouted "Yeaaaaahhhh !!!". So i had my revenge, and played an "only mash-ups set" for 1 hour, including disco and electro sounds, and people were crazy !
In 2006, i had so many good experiences that i prefer to tell this funny story.

Eve Massacre
Sorry, but I have no anecdote here. I liked it when people once started
singing along to Lionel Vinyl's Dizzee Rascal vs The Strokes bootleg.
and of course the occasional surprised look is nice too, sometimes of
joy, sometimes of disappointment, when people realise that it's not the
original version.

Go Home Productions
Best moment was when Chuck D came up and shook my hand after playing 'Union City Noise' at a CopyRight? gig in Amsterdam.
Played a couple of gigs where the students don't 'get' the bootlegs.
Simple solution is to tell them to politely fuck off and get me a drink from the bar.....you can say 'fuck off' politely you know.

Loo & Placido
One of the best souvenirs for us so far was in Budapest, on the island where the Tziget festival takes place every year.
A guy contacted me on a forum and asked if we wanted to come and play at his party, he told me it was a small thing with only a few friends and that it would be cool if we could come over.
When we arrived at the venue, it was a hot and sun shiny day in the early spring, which was already spectacular, and the DJ booth was under a big open tent which was looking realy nice.
As the guy told us it was a small party, we didn't expect much people to come, but at night, there was something like 1500 / 2000 people there that realy came to party, and it went completely crazy.
The people were so cool and receptive to any kind of music as long as they could dance to it, so we stayed there untill 7 oclock in the morning and then went to catch the plain directly without sleeping and when we woke up in Paris 1h30 later, we were wondering if we had a dream or if it was real.
It was realy one of those special moments that you can't realy describe, magic!

The worst experience was when we were stuck in a train (with nothing to eat or drink) for about 6 hours because of the snow, and arrived at the venue completely exhausted 5 minutes before we had to play and had a whole bunch of technical problems to start the set, that was a hard one.

Party Ben
My worst DJ experience was sadly one I was doing "altruistically." I volunteered to DJ at an early-evening dance for gay and lesbian youth, like queer high school kids, at a local school gym. I got there to find one CD player and a speaker on a table. I would play a song, then press eject and try to get the next CD in as fast as I could, with the kids all yelling at me. They were all in their own little cliques: the "punks," hippies, the hip-hop kids, the button down kids, the grungy trio who only wanted System of a Down. They all demanded their own kinds of music and that I not play any of the other kids' music. I thought "what better way to bring them together than with mashups!" Wrong. Playing Inhumanz' NIN/50 Cent only made it worse: both the hip hop kids and the punk rock kids ran up and demanded I play the "real" song. On top of everything, a kid was doing a drag performance featuring a medley of every single major Gwen Stefani song so I couldn't play any of them. Try DJing a gay party without playing Gwen Stefani. Sigh. I tried to do something for the kids, and left feeling like a complete loser. What I learned? Gay or straight, I hate 16-year-olds.

team9
I’m just happy when I get two tracks to mix together without stuffing anything up. I’ve had plenty of bad experiences behind the decks, not necessarily mash up related – my tip would be don’t operate turntables when stoned.

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that's it for this week
tell us your best and worst experience,
discuss the theme on the CONFERENCE FORUM

+++ the CONFERENCE Team +++

Written by Simon Iddol.

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