We just received a test pressing through for Instruments Of Rapture Part 3 and thought we could pass the love onto one of our faithful blog squad. In return we're asking you to give us your best DJing anecdote / request from a punter whilst in the mix. Try and keep them short and to the point ... the funnier the better.
Just fire your suggestions in the comments of this post (with some sort of contact email) and we'll decide the worthy winner on Tuesday 21st July. A glorious test pressing will be mailed to the victor.
42 comments:
nothing special, just the usual discoboys/heater/something harder/something faster or i leave/could you play this or that shit please/demands.
whatever,
'heavy love' is a gem!
regars,
marcel
This is the one that springs to mind the most, it was at the Lonsdale, Notting Hill some time last year..
A girl came up to me and asked for 'some MJ' while playing 'Don't stop til you get enough.' About half an hour later, she approached again me during the GW edit of Cathedrals and whined 'come on its my birthday.. how bout something we can dance to?'
Later on in the night when I had slowed things down a bit she came up to me during a hip hop tune I forget the name of and yelled 'Yeah! this is more like it' and started doing some sort of body bopping in front of the turntables.
All I could do was laugh.
jandleman99@yahoo.co.nz
"Ya got any Eagles"?
Apart from the usual R&B pests I have had a few memorable approaches.
'What else ya got?'
'Got any Frank Zappa?'
'Do you take requests?' -not really - what do you want? - 'Dunno, anything other than this shit'
'Have you got Hungry eyes?' - No - 'Jesus, what kind of a fucking DJ are you!!'
God bless the public!
contrabanddjs@gmail.com
Jesus, where to start!?
While playing Tom Moulton's 12" mix of Inner Life on Salsoul a few years back, some toothless, council house dwelling cretin sidles up to the booth and says...
"Can you play some disco this is shit"
info@polaroidclub.co.uk
Playing my usual weekly at a lounge... I'm playing some upbeat deep house and a guy comes up and goes, "can you play the new Kanye?" (which at the time was Stronger, which cause of the butchering of the Daft Punk sample, I personally refused to play).
I tell the guy "no, I don't have it" and get back to a blend.
When I look up from my records, the guy is still standing there, but now in an outstretched arm he is trying to hand me, and I'm not making this up, a PINK iPOD MINI. I must have had the biggest look of disbelief on my face cause he shoved it towards me expecting me to use his iPod in my set.
I told him I didn't have a cable to run it into the mixer (still trying to be as polite as possible). He then proceeds to tell me, "you really need to up your game, bro."
I'm pissed at this point, drop almost immediately into some acid house and whatever else I can read that will scare this guy away cause I knew my crowd would still be fine...
Finally, as he's heading to the door, I grab my copy of Discovery, and play "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" the second he steps out of the lounge so he could hear it as he walked away but would have to turn around if he thought it was the Kanye. :D
I forgot some contact info...
djmertz at gmail will work just fine
I was playing records in Pivo in Edinburgh when this guy comes up to the booth and asks "geez a shoat, mate?" I point to a random guy sitting over at the bar and tell the guy that he's the area manager and is a complete twat with no sense of good music and no way will he let you play records - maybe another time. The guy says "that's my brother, ya radge" oops!
lel@mongokorps.com
Whilst playing a soul/funk set type thing early doors, and during some James Brown "Give it up or Turn it Loose" (orig.), some young-ish girl trotted up to the DJ box and request something 'funky'... I just looked at her with a sympathetic look and said ok, just for you.
A load of young riff-raff wandered over to the booth and one of them reached over and moved the pitch control up to +10. I turned round and asked him politely what the fuck he thought he was doing, to which he replied 'making it like the Wigan Pier innit'.
Nice chap.
Here's a nice one from across the pond that actually happened a few weeks ago......
I was playing some downtempo and hip-hop in an early evening set at this nice dive bar in Brooklyn when some hipster kids who look like they stepped out of 1982 asked me to play some real hip-hop while I was playing "Bonita Applebum" by ATCQ. I of course replied, "this is real hip-hop." Then they asked me if I had the new Lil' Wayne. Like a reflex, I literally laughed out loud, hard. They called me a dick. I said have a nice night and proceeded to segue into "Real Hip-Hop" by Das EFX.
Geez, kids these days.
I was Djing in Glasgow at the Sub Club and a guy came up absolutely off his nuts.
"CAN I HAVE A PINT?" he shouted his eyes rolling around.
"What?" I said.
"CAN I HAVE A PINT OF LAGER PLEASE?" he shouted back at me waving a fiver.
At this point I realise that he's so out of it he thinks the DJ booth is the bar and I'm the barman. He then asks the lighting guy stood next to me the same question as he thinks I aren't going to serve him.
I then turned round to get a record out of my bag and whilst doing so he'd reached over and took my pint and left a fiver on the mixer.
He never came back for his change.
Only in Glasgow.
simon.thisisnotanexit@gmail.com
Forgot the contact info.....
msquaredcreative@gmail.com
Ha ha ... these are quality. There's gonna be too many to choose from I fear ...
G ;)
i played adamski - killer and a guy came to the booth and was yelling at me:"ey thats george michael, you gay!
or the usual stuff:
can you make an announcement that it’s my birthday?
I don't know who sings it and I don't know the name of the song
hey, where can I buy drugs?
cheers from germany
stephan
ooooft i forgot the contact:
chillo24@hotmail.com
Playing at my old residency in montreal, i was approached by local man about town 'Chuggo'.
He got my attention, and showed me a CD,
"hey, my album just dropped, you wanna give it some play?"
to preface things, i had just mixed in GW edit of Raw DMX, and i replied
"what kinda music is it?"
"similar to this....a bit nastier"
"do you sing on it?"
"I RAP ON IT!"
he left the cd with me and dissapeared for a bit,i scanned through the CD. Put it aside. He returned with two pints. Gave me both. And said,
"Track 9, cue it up"
i paused....looked at the half full dance floor....
cued up track 9
I said, 'are u ready?'
He pulled out a staff with a skull on the end, which had somehow escaped my attention earlier, and nodded.
I played track 9
He basically lip synched to his own track, which, words can not do justice.
Thankfully
he has a youtube channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPeHk4WMWpY
ston.paul@gmail.com
please, play something with "more rhythm"...
pretty priceless.
Not really an anecdote nor a funny story, but I was changing records in the upstairs of a nice bar, very chilled and such. Started playing my new copy of a Gamm record, think it was Todd Terje mix of Michael Jackson, which I was rather chuffed to have (first time playing it and all), when some twat falls over and knocks loads of candles on the decks... cue melted wax pouring on the record and quickly hardening. Dare say the record was ruined and I was in a stinking mood all night, as I couldn;t use one of the decks due to the needle being fucked. Not one of my better moments.
True story from this weekends garden fetival in croatia: was on the Resident Advisor Boat Party with Rub n' Tug playing the night away.
A group of guys (from Glasgow)we had befriended thought things could do with being a bit more techy- hard hitting, he marched up to the dj's and proclaimed: "play something that'll make me feel SICK!" the record that was currently playing played to an end followed by a few minutes of silence which seemed an eternity.
Heads were turned in dismay when suddenly in dropped:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfVJ11GXzXQ
hearing is believing- certainly made an impression on the remainder of the party.
Another favourite of mine is the private function where you repeatedly get;
Punter "do you do requests?"
dj: "depends on what you want but yes"
punter "good then turn it down!"
favourite repsonse to put them back in there place
"any quieter mate and this would be a sign language disco!
I've got too many to count but one that springs to mind, along the lines of MKM...
I was playing "Real Hip Hop" by DAS EFX. You know, the one produced by DJ Premier.
and a girl comes up and is like,
"Do you have any REAL Hip Hop?"
I used to hire a guy to stand in the booth with me to deal with girls. I used to pay him in beer and it was like his dreeeam job. (My personal nightmare).
He used to make up stories like, "Oh yeah, he has that record but the craziest thing happened, he was driving on the highway and his records were in the back of his truck and his best copy of "My Humps" flew out of the back and got hit by a bus. He's got Big Daddy Kane..."
Oh yeah and this one...
"Excuse me, could you turn this music off."
Off?!
Sorry to hog space but my man Corry just reminded me of these...
"Ahh, I see you're playin' Annie Lennox"
"Yup."
"I f*cked 'er"
Once a guy stole two of my records while I was in the bathroom and he left with his two chicks.
Somebody to me was like, "Hey Eddie, I think that guy took some of your records."
So I run outside and put my hand on his shoulder... "Hey, whatcha got there?"
"Oh, I thought they were menus.."
I'll leave the climactic section of the story for my close friends only;)
I was playing the early set in a local club and some dude sways/struts (pissed up, bad attitude) up to me and demands that he plays some jungle in the middle of my house set.
"I don't think so mate" I say, he then looks at me very seriously, "I'm Mickey Fu$#in Fynn and I wanna play!"
he was so convincing I almost wanted to believe him but with my limited knowledge on jungle dj's I knew this guy who was A: sporting a hearing aid in each ear and B: black was an imposter to a very White Mr Fynn (and of sounder hearing)
grinny38@yahoo.co.uk
grinny38@yahoo.co.uk
Yes! These are all amazing, gonna have a tough time picking a winner methinks, although the Annie Lennox and Enya ones are doing it for me at the mo ;)
@ Eddie C......
I was playing the Pete Rock remix of Das EFX. Love the original as well.
That quote about Ms. Lennox is hilarious.
"Do ya have any proper Jazz instead of this Weather Report shit?"
While playing "Just Before The Dawn" by Aphrodisiac at a venue in the North East some years ago.
Adrian.
"Do ya have any proper Jazz instead of this Weather Report shit?"
While playing "Just Before The Dwn" by Aphrodisiac in a North East venue some years ago.
thanks...
Adrian
Some G.I. Jane and her crew traveled from the north of Japan to the club I was playing in. Usually the club was full on hip-hop. Anyway, she asked if I had any Avril Lavigne whilst I was playing Ester Phillips. Told her to fuck off whilst smiling, as you do..
"Have you got any Rod Stewart?"
I could only stare open-mouthed as he looked the spitting image of someone doing a Rod Stewart tribute act himself. Eventually I reply
"No."
"That's OK. Do you want some cocaine?"
i was djing at a private party with an open bar. i was playing some house and people were dancing. when up comes this guy (with his liquid courage) and says there is no one dancing and points to the dance floor which has lots of people dancing. he then trys to hand me a cd of the quad city djs - C'mon N' Ride It (The Train). i tell him i don't have a cd player and point to the turntables. he says no play it. so i put the cd on the turntable and say it doesn't work. he just keeps pushing the cd at me when i just take it and throw it like a frisbee on to the dance floor.
i djed at a wedding... i am NOT a wedding dj, but the couple wanted to have house music at their reception. so they had a band for the family that didn't want to hear house. so the band played until midnight or 12:30. then i was going to start at 1 am. so i start and it is going well and people are into it. i think i was playing a joey negro track or similar disco house track when a guy walks up and says "i saw johnny cash in concert last week.... do you have ring of fire?" i just did a double take... now every time i think of that song all i can do is think of that moment.
another one:
i was djing at a coming out party. i was playing and a girl asks me if i have any disco while GQ- disco nights was playing. all i could do was look at her and say what do you mean, that is disco. she looks me dead in the eye and says no it's not. can you play some REAL disco...
sassafrassound@yahoo.com
True story. Two years ago at a residency of mine in a large club, a skinny young man wearing track pants and a denim jacket approached the booth and said, with a thick, authentic Russian accent, "sir, I would be most pleased if you might play the newest Michael Yackson record."
I couldn't fathom which one he was referring to and asked if he knew the name of the song. He wrinkled his face, thought for a moment and said, "Ahh! Well, it sounds like this: 'dickadee da da dum dum dum.' You know it. You do. It's famous!" I shook my head politely, trying to keep a straight face and welcomed him to come back if he remembered.
He returned 3 more times in the next hour, each time trying more earnestly to sing the melody of this new MJ release. It was so hilariously surreal I had to try harder and harder to keep my composure.
As I was cueing up the last song of the night, suddenly, he sprinted to the booth out of breath, rattled the plastic divider, and shouted victoriously, "sir! I have remembered the song. . . .
and it is BILLY'S JEANS!"
I collapsed.
And then played the hell out of it for him.
italodisco@gmail.com
"Will you play faster soon?"
A woman about 2 meters in size asked me that as I played a dubstep track after 5 hours of 130bpm Techno before my set. o.O
haha, I stumbled upon a blog that covers nothing but odd request:
http://www.canyouplaythatonesong.com
quite a while ago....went out one night with few of my mates to this club in Düsseldorf, called Harpune. Dominik Eulberg was playing that night. Already not expecting to much from his set, we were actually shattered how bad the music was he was spinning...so one of my mates, at this time a regular of the club, went up to Dominik, pulled his shirt, until he turned around having a big "what?!" written on his face....my friend then very seriously asked him: "Uhm, Dominik....have you actually ever played at this club?!"
Dominik's expression after this bone-dry comment was priceless. He was so shocked he fucked up the next mix real bad....
Morris
thisismyspamaccount@gmx.de
I played a bar on millenium eve, playing classic funk and house music,
this girl comes up and says 'can you play some abba', I tell her we have not got any so no.
she keeps on asking, and thinks I am just winding her up, finally she disappears into the crowd and I forget all about her.
About twenty minutes later she returns and thrusts a cd at me - 'I had to go home and get it' she says
with a smile on her face -
I could not believe it.
so what could I do I played 'dancing queen' .
Baresi
nice coincidence as just yesterday we decided collectively to write down all the stories we shared for last few years - here's what i personally remember just now (in random order):
***
-do you have xxx?
-no.
-but you DO have internet here, no? (in a surprised tone)
***
-can u play xxx?
-i don't have it, sorry
-ok, let's see what else you have (and the girl starts goin' through my friends' bag)
-what about this one?
-i played it minutes ago (it wasn't true, but come on :))
-hmmm (she's back at the bag), what about this one, then?
(my friend got irritated a bit so he goes:)
-you know i love this record but i haven't paid royalties for this month for this one so it's unplayable right now
(she thought deeply about that, said "ok" and left the booth...)
***
-hey, why you djs are so saad and long faced? why don't you just dance and have fun with us???!!!
(my friend was a bit tipsy, so he goes:)
-you know what, i wouldn't laugh because i had this operation few years ago and i have wooden legs now so it's really not so funny to hear such comments...
(girl immediately got really sympathetic and sad and apologized)
***
girl comin' with a phone turned on playing a ringtone PUSHIN' it to my friends' ear: -CAN YOU PLAY THIS ONE??!!!
***
-some "black music" (while playing soul/funk/disco/oldschoolhiphop for few hours)
***
-sth slower (worst version -"play sth slower, 'cause my pig got sweaty"... (sic!))
***
-sth faster
***
-sth to dance to
***
-sth 'for the hips'
***
-sth else
***
-abba (how come you don't have it / but it says disco on the poster / what kind of a dj you think you are)
***
-kanye/50/2pac...
***
-mj (once there WAS mj on and when I said that, the girl went: "ummm, i KNOW! but i just wanted another song")
***
-infinity (got to know what she'd been on about few months later watching mtv in a cafe or sth)
***
-completely senseless reqests like trance, techno, beny benasi or whatever after 1-2 hours or more of funk/soul/disco stuff...
***
-here's 10/20/50 zlotys (=>3-13 euros) and we want to hear De Mono (polish poprock shit like think of Bryan Adams for example - the comparison doesn't do justice to any of them but both so unthinkable in my bag)
random quotations:
-ok, what's next? (repeated 3 times in 15 minutes after every transition)
-u guys having fun? (with a tone suggesting he was not)
-when do you finish? (after some 30 minutes in the mix)
-why so short? (@6am when they started playing @10pm)
-you a dj? -as you can see -ok, u know djing was always my dream, u think i should give it a try? -i think so. (guy starts to climb up lol)
-can you play xxx, 'cause we came to this town from 200kms away and we are leaving just now...
[end of part 1]
and last saturday (i don't know if it's as funny in english as in polish)
big guy comes up, thuggish type, but with a smile and goes:
-you know man, i don't come from a big city, i'm a redneck actually. so, maybe you could play some redneck tunes for me and my girl. i mean your music is really ok we would just like to hear sth familiar. (i try to hold the laughter avoiding a fight and ask) -like what? -i dunno really (i try harder to hold the... ...and he produces 3 titles i never heard about - i think one of them was "seeds of love" by black or sth. so i say i'm sorry and he goes "don't feel offended man i just wanted to hear some redneck music, see ya")
there's like 3 times more but i need to refresh my friends' memories to write them all down
and now i need some sleep before gettin' up to some REAL work before goin' to a club in the evening
AND
last but not least
check those 3 love letters Mr. Krime [PL] & Jim Dunloop [GER - hence the added poor german translation i suppose] got during a set:
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f62/onekrime/img139.jpg
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f62/onekrime/img138.jpg
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f62/onekrime/img137.jpg
rough translation (untranslatable grammatical errors, sorry):
1) YOUS ARE DICK!
2) GET OUT OF THIS TOWN LOSERS! / NO TALENT!
3) YOU SUCK TOTALLY!
must I assure You they are good or great all the time? :)
ok, that's it.
*************************************
nice blog, good edits, awesome mixes!
keep it up guys!
all the best & 1 love from Poland (where You do have a few serious "fans") - You should visit some time :P
olgierdo@o2.pl [end of part 2, the last part]
I forgot about:
-do you have sth with a chorus?
and last tuesday:
-Respect, man! It's good to see some vinyl! (pointing to Serato controls...)
aaaand...
it's so relieving reading all the above posts (and the link someone posted)
will be easier to turn politely people down for few next times :)
thx for the stories guys!
(personally smiled @ +10=Wigan & @ you need to up your game & @ LAGER PLEASE! & @ guy w/ stuff w/ a skull
but AnnieLennox & Rod Stewart are best one-liners and Enya would make me laugh hard if I was there and heard the request)
and sorry if 'twas supposed to be one story only :(
Excellent peeps - a heavyweight selection of anecdotes there.
We'll be making a decision later today and we'll do a new post with the winner ...
Thanks again.
"Do ya have any proper Jazz instead of this Weather Report shit?" While playing "Just Before The Dawn" by Aphrodisiac at a venue in the North East some years ago. Adrian.
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