Friday night between and 8 and 9pm at the Blagrave Arms in Reading town centre - not a pub usually associated with any form of dance music to my mind, and not a pub that really ever has anybody in it whenever I walk past, for one reason or another.
But it had a handful of people in for my debut, which is probably perfect, I am too accustomed to bedroom DJing on my industry standard decks and mixer so playing out on a different set of equipment, not too different but different all the same was a little bit of a challenge and challenge is good.
I guess playing at 8pm on a Friday is never going to be the ideal time - too late for much of the post-work crowd, too early for most of the night-out crowd but it was perfect for me to test myself - and the promoter, Tim Sharpe, could not have been any more welcoming or encouraging.
I played house music, as you would expect, I managed to bring it down from a starting rate of 126bpm to 121bpm - my kind of speed! I even had a dancer or two, and a couple of compliments, a couple of friends asking me the name of the tune I played.
I did make a few errors. As I said I was used to my equipment, not somebody else's, and I knocked the master volume up too much once, but even better than that, at one point when I was trying to mix the next tune in, I could sense something wasn't right, I could feel people looking at me and in their eyes 'sort it out' and Tim kindly pointed out that I had knocked the loop button, oops.
But for a first set, I think I did well and most importantly I enjoyed it.
I have definitely taken my first step, and a good one it was.
And now I am just looking forward to my next opportunity.
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