How To Be A Dope DJ

DJing unusual Gigs: sometimes you should take a gig just for the fact that it’s a little bit out of your comfort zone.  last saturday i DJed the haftime show for the Atlanta Rollergirls.. it was lots of fun.  They do their “bouts” at the Yaruba Shrine on Ponce.  Pretty interesting place.  Everyone was really nice.  I wasn’t sure what i was gonna play so i started with a new track from the Santigold album (i’m really diggin’ that lately.)  From there i hit some remixes of some old stuff and kept it pretty much booty shakin’ stuff.  There was a kid there that was dancing up a storm and one of the rollergirls came out and joined him, it was a pretty cool scene.

the Rollerskating itself was pretty cool.  The scoring took a little bit for me to figure out but eventually it made sense.  I took a look at the program and they had given me a pretty big spread.. probably more than i really need but i ain’t mad.  If they ask me to do this one again i think i’ll take ‘em up on the offer.

Sometimes when you’re DJing you get set up in a place that’s not right next to your power source..  not that big of a deal because you DO have one of those long, orange thick-guage extension cords in your cable bag, right?  The big thing though is that you can’t have people kicking your cord..  first of all they’ll make a big deal about almost falling down and second of all you don’t want to lose power mid-gig.

The solution?  Duct tape of course.  We’ve already discussed bringing tape, now we will discuss what to do with it. Taping down cables is an art in itself.  If you do it correctly you will look like you know what you’re doing because 1. you’ll have a neatly arranged cable on the ground and 2. you’re thinking ahead.

A properly taped cable will look like it has an uppercase letter “I” on top of it.  The above picture with the hot pink duct tape should illustrate pretty well.  You basically hold the cable tight and to the short top and bottom of the “I” first.. once you’ve got that you run the long strip right over the whole thing.. depending on how wide your duct tape is you may have to do 2 or 3 vertical strips.

Getting some duct tape this is bright and colorful is recommended so it stands out.  Even the best taped cable will leave a bump in the walkway so it’s best for people to see it clearly.  One thing to be careful of though is if people have hardwood floors.. that tape can mess ‘em up..  I learned that one the hard way.

so i took a gig this year for new year’s eve.  if you’re in atlanta and looking for something to do we’ll be at the Marlay Public House in downtown decatur on ponce.  no cover..  should be fun.  i made a flyer for it too.

Re-Edit.

sometimes as a DJ you have to create your own content.  i made a DJ friendly version of the song “in all my wildest dreams” by joe sample.  it’s super mellow.. prob how i would wind down a party mad late.