Ideas for spinning in lounges

[White Tiger]

I've got a new Saturday night residency at an upscale lounge. The instructions are "not too much hip hop or house". Of course when the crowd (25 - 40) gets there and starts drinking, they want hip hop, and request it. I'd just do more electronic music but as I mentioned earlier they don't want too much house (general term they use for electronic music). I play some rock and some classics but I'm having a hard time really getting the party started b/c my main weapons have been taken away (aka house/EDM and hip hop!).

What would you guys play? I've been dropping 80's/90's classics and stuff like Treasure Fingers "Cross The Dancefloor". I'm not really enjoying myself though as I don't really feel like I can really do my thing. I started playing a little too much vocal electro house the other night and the manager said the music was "too clubby". So I started playing top40 the rest of the night and ended up sounding like every other dj in town.

So...I'm looking for some music suggestions that fill the aforementioned criteria. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Jester]

that doesn't sound like much fun man...if they aren't paying you much and you aren't enjoying yourself i would i would suggest seriously looking for somewhere else where you WILL enjoy yourself. If they are paying heaps then i guess you better suck it in lol. Good luck anyway man

[White Tiger]

Thanks. They're paying pretty good ($300 for 10pm - 2am).

For the most part the staff (including the managers) have been diggin' my sets but under different conditions I'm a hell of a lot better. It's just frustrating knowing that I could blow their place up if they'd let me.

And yea...as soon as I find a club to play at instead I'll probably jump on it.

[Jester]

I'd just suck it in then dude. use the lounge as a base then when u get into some club let loose the dogs of war. we are lucky in a sense that when we approached the owners of our bar the only stipulation we had was that we can play whatever the hell we wanted, and they were cool with that though. Still a bit of a compromise with my own town sets but DANG, even if the crowd are gagging for it u still cant step it up...geez

[Damien1138]

check out Empress out of Brooklyn. she has some lounge to her groove. Portishead is also good

[djxsquizet]

check dj enferno out he is mixing about the same stuff you sayin not to much hip hop, some rock, old school stuff and more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlJoGSV8UV8

hope the vids help

[JesC]

Play some 80's New Wave or Synth Pop, you can never go wrong with that, just stay away from the cheesey 80s Come One Eileen


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXLHUThBib8

[olafmol]

simply play "lounge"music...you know, the laidback stuff...

[White Tiger]

Thanks guys!

Good call on the Enferno vid! I've seen those but forgot all about them.

I can't just play 'lounge' downtempo type music b/c even thought they don't want hip hop or house, they want it to be energetic.

[DvlsAdvct]

There's always trip hop...

Daedalus has some good mellow blippy stuff, Massive Attack, Portishead...

But still.. they don't want electronic music and they don't want hip hop, what do they want?