This is a bit of a long post about this really perplexing (but funny) situation I experienced recently, but I feel like the story needs a bit of context. Besides, what good is an internet rant if it’s just a few sentences?
I played a live set at a club on Saturday night; it’s primarily a restaurant/bar in the evening but half of it is a night club area with a dance floor, where different groups DJ on weekends after the restaurant closes. I’ve eaten there a few times in the past (amazing yakiniku) but I didn’t really know what the vibe of the night club side was like. I went about a month ago when some techno DJs were playing, it was actually really cool and there were a decent number of people there. So I was asked to play between two local techno DJs and I put together a live set on my hardware setup. The club was not that busy this past Saturday. Not a big deal as long as people there seem to be into it, I finally started finding opportunities to play live last year, so I’m just grateful to be able to do it.
I was on for a little over an hour. About halfway through my set, this girl comes up to the booth, leans over the little wall that separates the booth from the dance floor, and says “Hi. This is really great. Can you play something different, something that my friends and I can dance to?”
My instinctive response was “I’m not a DJ.” because I assumed she would understand what this meant.
“Oh is there a DJ around somewhere?”
This type of situation is difficult for a few reasons: it’s loud, so it’s difficult to have conversations and explain things to people. I’m playing a structured live set that I’m trying to keep interesting and on-time, so again, kind of hard to explain this when I’m trying to focus on what I’m doing. And I’m just a bit socially awkward in these situations; I’m perplexed that she doesn’t understand that I’m not DJing, and I don’t want to be rude, but it’s difficult to explain to someone if they can’t see the difference between turntables and drum machines/synthesizers. And I know people who aren’t in the scene might not be able to tell the difference, but this is just not the time or environment for me to explain that to someone while I’m playing.
So I say “I’m playing live music. I’m doing a live set. I’m not DJing.”
“So you can’t play something else then?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
She walks away. About 15 minutes later a different, similar-looking girl comes up. She leans into the booth.
“Hi. It’s our friend’s special night, can you play something like faster, with more energy?”
At this point, I’m kind of annoyed. I know she’s with the same group as the previous one. So they seemingly just decided to send someone else up to the booth to see if they could do a better job at persuading me to do something that I’m not even capable of doing.
“I can’t, I’m playing a live set.”
“So you’re not going to do it then?”
At this point I stop making eye contact with her.
“No.”
“But it’s our friend’s special celebration.”
“That’s cool.”
She walks away.
A few minutes later I noticed the dance floor went from having 20-30 people to just half of that. After the set, my friend told me it was some big birthday or bachelorette party or something, and the whole group just straight-up left after the second girl walked away. It wasn’t a busy night, so it felt considerably emptier after that happened.
My live sets are very structured as I build them from tracks I’ve produced and create transitions between them, so it does have a similar flow to a DJ set, I’m not doing an improvised set where things get really weird and experimental or anything. Everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves and people were dancing consistently throughout my set. My last live set before that was a few months ago at a more underground gay club, basically the most legit place for techno and dance music in my city. The club was very packed throughout my set; everyone seemed to enjoy it and people were very complimentary to me afterwards. So I’m fairly confident in the quality of my music; I’m not worried that those girls were asking me to change what I was playing because my music is bad or anything. I think I just assumed that when people see a club advertising a techno night and explicitly putting “Live Set” on the flier, they know what they’re getting into.
And yet this group didn’t understand that. Maybe they assumed this place was going to be like one of those generic clubs where the DJ plays upbeat EDM and pop song mashups and transitions to a different song every 30 seconds, or something like that. It was just a very weird situation. I really didn’t want to come across as rude, but they both acted like I was obligated to adhere to their requests, which is pretty rude if you ask me! I mean, if you’re gonna go to the club, learn some etiquette. What DJs even take requests anyway? This isn’t a wedding reception. DJing is a craft. You go to the club to let the DJ take you on a journey, you don’t try to dictate where it goes. The same thing applies to live sets. But it was just hilariously absurd. I was really dumbfounded; I had no idea how to explain twice: No, I cannot just play “something else”, this is music that I made, being played live out of the things I made it with, which are clearly not CDJs or anything resembling turntables!
All in all, it was a good night. The rest of the small crowd enjoyed it and everyone was really nice, I’m just grateful for the opportunity. Does anyone have any similar stories? I wouldn’t be surprised if this sort of thing happens regularly.
