Friends.
I don’t like hassling friends to come and see me DJ – I know most are not that interested in my music, though sometimes they are interested in a night out.
It was a quiet night in general – the Turtle was never that busy even in the garden, which you’d normally expect to be very busy on a reasonably warm night. It is a tricky time of year – students have mostly gone, it was Royal Ascot week and of course festival and holiday season.
I had that slightly sinking feeling that all promoters get when it looks like it is going to be a quiet night, though for us without any financial outlay to recoup, it is only a matter of personal pride and wanting the night to be busy for our own personal enjoyment and that of our guests.
It did still get reasonably busy, particularly for when I was DJing and I feel that I was much better this time, back on form – one totally cocked up mix but plenty of good mixes to compensate. Musically I had absolutely no plan, not even the first track, but I did play a fair few tracks from my latest mix, which went down particularly well. I did kind of run out of ideas towards the end though - the problem of taking roughly 1 million tracks with me.
In fact, one thing that I noticed which really pleased me was that the more underground I played things, the more reaction I seemed to get. When I played something verging on crowd-pleasing (for my standards!) or something rather tough, I’d lose people. I still think I am a long way from being able to read a crowd properly.
The main difference between this night and others was the lack of that little group of friends – even having 4 or so makes all the difference, as they tend to be close to the dancefloor, which encourages others to stick around and helps build a dancing crowd that little bit easier.
Oh and not to mention – no Ian Hills.
There are a couple of regulars though, including a young lady from Syria who spoke to English who danced for 4 or so hours solid, along with another young lady who seems to barge into me on a regular basis, especially when there are any other girls near me. Hmmm. We also had quite a group of Spanish people down there.
Next time we have one of my really close friends DJing, Ben Zagorski, which I am really looking forward to. I always say that, of course, but I am.
I assume I will be doing a minimal-laden warm-up, hopefully with a few friends in support this time. Or at least a few friends hassled/guilt-tripped/blackmailed into coming.
