Last night Sheiny and I DJ'd a wedding. It was for an amazing couple that I know, Ken and Anna. They met in graduate school. She, like he, is one of the most kind, beautiful, driven, fun-loving and gentle people I know. They are a fabulous couple and I was very honored to provide music for their celebration.
however...
I am not a wedding DJ. I'm not even a birthday party DJ. Unfortunately for these types of situations, my collection of music does not include pop dance hits from the last 5 decades unless they are beat-heavy house remixes. If you've ever found yourself requesting a song from a DJ in a club who generally spins vinyl and they don't play it, the reason is very likely because they just don't have a version of that song with them or in their collection at all. So when a friend asks me to play at a holiday party or wedding, I'm torn. I want to be there for them to fill their request because I love them and my friends are fabulously supportive. But for me, it feels a lot like wearing a prom dress. Though I may look great, it's slightly itchy and rides uncomfortably up the sides. It just doesn't feel like me.
I play underground House music, a genre which I've found most of the American public more willing to eat dirt than listen to. I have a lot of theories about why this is true, and I feel that part of my destiny is to change that. One way to do this is to remind popular American culture that shaking their ass is a form of celebration, and what better place to do this than a place where dancing is expected, like a wedding, holiday or birthday party. Unfortunately for me, what is also expected are a plethora of pop dance hits from the last 5 decades that are not beat-heavy house remixes.
Luckily for myself and my friends, there is a fabulous computer program called Final Scratch, and an even more fabulous guy, that knows how to use it. With Final Scratch, you can map mp3 tracks to a record and spin it on a turntable just like any other piece of vinyl. Sweet chocolate decadence! Shein, myself and F.S. have DJ'd a few dozen parties together in the last two years. I have a love-hate relationship with them. In many ways they are really fun and rewarding. In many other ways, they are very stressful and a lot more work than you may realize.
Inevitably, we don't have quite the right music. Shein is a fabulous hip hop DJ. Actually, he's a fabulous DJ in general. When practiced, he can pick up anyone else's vinyl of any genre and play it like he wrote the stuff. Sat night, he was elegantly mixing Mark Farina's Mushroom Jazz 2 and Mushroom Jazz 4 together. Currently, hip hop is his specialty. Thus, his F.S. playlist is heavily accentuated with hard-core hip hop beatz. Ken and Anna didn't have a good idea of what they wanted, but there were very specific about what they didn't want. No country, no YMCA. And no hip hop. Thus, most of my evenings last week were spent downloading a more general selection of popular dance music.
Inevitably, we encounter at least one technical equipment-related problem. It could be anything. A forgotten power strip, the wall plug that is not grounded, a missing headphone tip, a broken speaker stand. Usually we just don't have the right cables to plug everything in. Audio cables and their equipment counterparts vary in length, quality and type. Bishop is so used to me stopping by his house at the last minute to pick up some random piece of equipment that we don't have, he probably sets up his schedule to keep himself within 2 blocks of his apartment every time I have a gig. On New Years Eve at Capital Club last year, I ran around and called 6 different places at the last minute to find an XLR to RCA cable that was longer than 20 feet. At Diller's birthday party on Friday the 13th, it took us 2 hours to do a 1/2 hour job because the orbits of the moon were intersecting crookedly with the earth's polar magnet. At the wedding, I had a corrupt file that was crashing F.S. every time we tried to open a directory with over 200 of the songs I had spent all week downloading.
Inevitably, I freak out and curse myself for not being more prepared.
Inevitably, Shein twiddles some bits and we pull it off just in time.
I've been learning to DJ for over 4 years. I remember Rebecca West once saying, after 6 years as a DJ that the more she learns, the more she uncovers how complex it really is. It took me 5 months to be able to consistently beat match. It took me another 5 to understand programming, and an entire year after that to be able to apply it on the fly. I started early on to give myself 'dj homework' and realized that I was very slowly teaching myself this whole crazy thing as if I had an imaginary DJ How-To, one chapter at a time.
My current chapter in my imaginary How-To is called 'Understanding Vibe'. Like all good How-To's, this chapter begins with the definition of 'vibe'.
Vibe
n : a distinctive emotional atmosphere; sensed intuitively;
n: Slang. A vibration.
Or more specifically, 'What can I play that will make these people dance?'
At the wedding this weekend, we were playing Retro and Motown hits that had the dance floor packed. But there were moments when a very prominent member of the wedding party asked for music that only a few would appreciate. The DJ was faced with a choice: ‘Do I put on a track that I know will clear the dance floor?’ This is a very difficult decision for a DJ to make. In general, modern American culture needs the safety and security of a few others dancing to feel comfortable enough to put themselves out there. It takes great skill and a little magic to get an empty dance floor filled. Once you have the vibe there, the last thing you want to do is let it go.
But a wedding is not a club, and Saturday was for me a little lesson in just that.
In a modern underground club, there's an inherent trust that the DJ will provide. If they don't, then you don't follow that DJ elsewhere. If they do, you'll follow them everywhere. A person knows they had a great time dancing in a club when they leave saying ‘I couldn’t get off the dance floor’. At a wedding party, people trust the songs, not the DJ. A person knows they had a great time dancing at a wedding when they leave saying ‘They played that one song that I love’.
Even though I know I can’t, I strive to touch every person in the room when I play. When building a play list for Ken and Anna, there were two very special people that I forgot, my Grandma Pat and my Grandpa Dick. Now that Grandpa is gone, there are two things I remember most about him. He always used a teeny bit of tongue when he kissed the ladies, and he and grandma were fabulous Ballroom Dancers. A cleared dance floor was an empty canvas for their magic.
I’m not a wedding DJ. In fact, I’m not a DJ at all. I’m a poet. I re-arrange songs, like words, in ways that sound beautiful. But the next time I play at a wedding, if I ever do, I’ll remember that the vibe is not about the celebration through dance, but the celebration of love through dance. On second thought, that’s the very same thing we’re celebrating each week at the club.
