have you ever been forced to play for a lot longer than you intended?

normally, i always love to hit it for as long as possible. however, lately i've been bringing only smaller track selections with me, as with the new laws in full force, clubbing has been limited to 2am max on weekends, and midnight on weekdays. this brings for much shorter sets, and normally you also have to share the booth with someone else, so even shorter.

so anyways, i get booked for this gig last weekend. 3 hour slot, warmup. fine. it was a beach party, starting at 4pm, so i was asked if i could spin any downtempo or chillout to begin with.

i'm generally speaking a tech-house DJ, interspersed with minimal techno, acid, electro and whatnot, but i do have a soft spot for downtempo/chillout, and i've always wanted to play some of that stuff out, so i said yes.

so i'm thinking, slow stuff for a good half hour, then funkier/more moving stuff, but still not exactly dance music for another 20 to 30 minutes. then continue with house/tech-house at like 124bpm, slowly warming up, proper beach type tunes, etc.

so bear in mind, i'm only expecting about 2 hours of what i normally spin. of course, this will not go right, as nothing does when i spin.

so, a big misunderstanding with the event organizers got the gear at the venue 1 hour late. the people didn't mind, since it's a bar next to the beach, and the people there at that time were basically just chilling at the beach. however, i've basically missed what i had programmed as my downtempo/chillout time. hrm. i proceed anyways playing 2 tunes that aren't dancey. i noticed the people kind of like it, but are wanting a little more. so i play my first tech house track, and they respond well.

so fine, just play a 2 hour set, and be done with it. you're getting paid the same no matter.

riiiiight. the DJ that played after me was late. he called ahead, told us he was going to be a little late. fine, i have enough music with me to stretch far. or so i thought.

i ended up playing nearly 6 hours. i don't mind playing that long, i have played that long before, what really got to me was how not KNOWING i was going to play that long really threw me off. i didn't have enough music with me to make a flowing set. i had hours and hours of music, but not a versatile enough selection. why you ask? well, while people are still chilling/the place is half empty, you sure don't want to waste your best tunes. you want to save those for when a crowd is formed.

however, after playing nice and soft for these people, by 6pm, they wanted harder stuff, they wanted to dance. so, i can give them what they want, tire them out, and basically get really ahead of myself before the people have gotten here, or, stay slow, and build progressively, risking the people present getting bored. (they don't appreciate a nice warmup here, everyone just wants you to bang it out)

had i brought my entire collection, i would have had with me enough older, yet not so known tracks to play for them and make them dance, wand have my newer gems stored for when the crowd formed. but i didn't. i was only expecting 2 hours of spinning.

i had to resort to dropping a track i would drop for the big crowd ever so often just to catch the growing crowd's attention, and mix it with whatever i could find in my case in order to not create a flow discrepancy and stretch my collection 3 times further than i had originally planned. the result? fucking wierdest/worst flowing set i think i have ever spun. my mixing was pretty good (the CDJs, aside from getting there late, we're quite fucked up, and the mixer was pretty shot as well) but i hated the flow. there wasn't much i could do though. i did rock it pretty well once the people had gotten there, i managed to string together all the tracks i had "saved" for that time, one behind the other. this was only about a half hour to 45 minutes worth though.

so, has this ever happened to you? what are your views on this?

i learned from now on to bring as much fucking music as possible with me. and big respects to the guys that spin for that long every time. my legs hurt like a mother****** afterwards.

/really long post.

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check out my guest mix for OndaSonora Podcast (aug.2009)