Me and another guy did that this summer.. for seven weeks we put on a
club-event we called "Bass" every saturday..from 10:00 at night til 3:30
in the morning (up until two weeks ago..they sold the place). I dont
know if you should worry about what the audience like and not... if you
just make it clear that you will be playing this and this sort of music
the people who apeciate it will come and the people who dont will (or
atleast should) stay away... atleast thats how its SPOSED to work.
We played hiphop (no comercial stuff at all..mostly VERY underground
stuff like Living Legends, Lateef, alot of british hiphop etc), acid
jazz, alot of instrumental/avant garde hiphop (shadow, krush, fanatik,
vadim, mark b etc.), old funk and even drum'n'bass..and believe it or
not, everyone seemed to be satisfied. Actually that surprised me every
week, cuz there was allways a VERT strange combination of people...
super-trendy (shallow?) trainspotter-types, hiphop heads, techno/house
people, middleaged alcoholics and junkies (the venue we played at is
sort of a dive)... they seemed to like everything! (ok...one guy
complainted once when i played one of the more repetetive Mark B tracks
;)
> At the same
> time, I have to recognize that dnb might not fly over too well at first.
Idealy (SP?), you shouldnt have to worry about that...as i said..play
the music you want to play and the right people will (should) come
along.
> not own any Icey, nor do I intend to buy any, but can somebody point me
> in the direction of some of the better stuff out there that could
> actually have cross-over appeal? Maybe I should even dabble into the
> better side of big beat...
Two tracks which became like anthems in our club was Major Force's -
"essential dub" and Booker T & The MG's "melting pot" (what is it about
organs anyway?)... you just CANT go wrong with uptempo, funky stuff.
As for hiphop..even the most retarded jocks should be able to apreciate
the old Tribe, De La and Jungle brothers albums... and Black Eyed Peas,
Ras Kass, Latyrx, Camp Lo and Jurassic 5 should be pretty safe, playing
it wont hurt your credibility at all and it probably wont scare away
anyone either.
Ah..i just remembered..the other resident dj at our club played the hell
out of Dj Krush and Toshinori Kondo's "ki-oku"... you should defenetly
give that a try!
> Also, does anybody have any tips on how to bring a non-traditional crowd
> into the more intelligent side of electronic music? We know that it
> won't be overnight,
I think it will happend by it self..just stay away from Dj Vadim, Mikah
9, Autechre and Anthony Braxton the first night ;)
> and we'll probably have to still deal with the stupid
> "play some spice girls" request, but we want to expose people to all this
> music we constantly discuss on this list.
Dont worry about requests.. you dont even have to make up excuses..just
tell em straight up that you dont take requests...unless you actually
think their request is a good idea of course. the stupidest things
people asked for during our club's existance was "Type 0 Negative" (now
how can someone even THINK we will play that after hours of nothing but
hiphop and jazz?), "Smokie" (horrible horrible horrible. absolutely ALL
middleaged norwegians listen to Smokey -and sing along of course- when
they are drunk. Quite possibly the worst band in the world) and, quote
"those remixes of old disco songs" (what the fuck?)
good luck.
beside