Beyonce “Crazy In Love”
Chi-Lites “Are You My Woman (Tell Me So)”
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
– Alphonse Karr
Is your favorite ‘new’ song, not really that new? No matter how hip, new school or bleeding edge you are, listen to the radio these days and you can’t avoid samples, interpolations and re-works of the classics. Imagine if commercial radio were formatted the way a DJ mix-show might be, playing the originals and the original ‘inspiration’. I experiment with this premise every now and then in my live sets.
DJing has always been an interesting activity for me, a balletic, high-wire tightrope act, balancing the desire for creativity with the public’s desire to dance to the ‘hits’. A pride surrendering, (often) thankless avocation, nearly every club-goer thinks they can do a better job than the DJ. How much better they think they are is often proportional to the ounces of alcohol imbibed.
Increasingly, crowds pressure DJs to spin the 20 to 30 ubiquitous songs being played on commercial radio and TV at the moment. Many people want to hear exactly what they’ve been listening to in the car on the way to the club and will listen to again on their ride home. They want the DJs to not only play the songs, but to play them all back to back and when the DJs played them all through, well, play them all over again.
what do you think