Alright, very busy weekend for me with Red Eyes on Thursday – that was a free gig put on at Carpark which was a blast, I knew we had this weekend on but I was having such a good time I just got plastered and sweaty anyway. Red Eyes was bringing some especially deep tunes so I was taking in some pretty heavy liquids from a number of sources.
Then the next night I was DJing with Control as Soul Science in the second room at Coherent for an event called Flammable which we were hooked up with through our Brazilian DJ connection, DJ Rafa.
It was pretty weird. To me, I’m a real DJ so I turn up and play, but it wasn’t the greatest situation. I’m not sure if that second room is really appropriate, but hey, my names on the flyer so I gotta do my thing, and deal with the circumstances.
Basically, the speaker is right in your ear, there is no monitor. You’re having to turn your headphones right up to compare with the speakers and it’s no good for your ears at all!
As a DJ playing out it’s not the greatest experience to be unable to give a good performance because of the circumstances. I know it’s professional to try and do your best, but it’s hard to enjoy it and get into it if you’re unable to give a good performance and that translates to the crowd.
People pick up vibes when you’re on the decks.
So I dunno. Sure I want to play more gigs, sure I want to get my name around more – and I DON’T wanna be one of these candy ass young dudes who only wants to play when it’s all perfect and there’s a big crowd and I get to be Mr. Awesome. But I dunno about that.
Then it was Zpak’s gig, again at Coherent the next night, “War Games” which quickly disintegrated into a war zone. It would make grown men weep. A lot of courage was shown by the crowd because the level of DJ skills presented I can report was not of a very inspiring standard!
There was clearly a problem with the DJ set up and – from my experience playing at 11.30 – the monitor and the sound of the bottom end of the main rig were so loud it was really disorienting, I felt rotten to even dare to make any excuses but as most of the other DJ’s were similarly unspectacular . . . well it pretty much ended up a wash out, and me being the bastard I am, I was fairly smug about it to be honest!
It’s not every day you play along side some of Auckland’s top DJ’s and they end up looking average!
Ho ho ho.
So yeah. Three days rockin and rollin with the beats and I’m fairly well taxed. I think there’s an observation to be made about playing other peoples parties and that is that when you’ve come through putting your own parties on and you finally get to that point where you’re not just only playing gigs you put on yourself, you cant always expect the kind of diligence and responsibility that you hold as a standard at your own gigs.
Ultimately, it’s a privilege to be invited to play at a party and get an audience for what you do, but I suppose I also thankful I can recognise the difference between whats a good idea and what is a potential situation for difficult circumstances to dictate.
