So, on a whim, I accepted a gig playing a sorority conference afterparty in a hotel conference room for $100/hr. The girl spearheading the event said she wants to hear “club music, top 40, and the cha cha slide.”
I was thinking, “club music, okay, so I can get away with playing a 3-hr house set sprinkled with some top40 remixes.”
But, I’m not so sure she knows what house music even is.
And top40 makes me nauseated.
There’s supposed to be about 700 people.
What shall I do? I definitely don’t have 3-hours of the chacha slide or kanye. It’s not til november, so I can definitely prod around for some tolerable top40 music. She wants people to dance, and wants “club music”-- house can definitely do that, but I’m not sure what she wants exactly.
its easy money but its to compensate you for not having artistic freedom.
Black eyed peas, lady gaga rihanna, katy perry kesha, LMFAO and david guetta will be your staple for the night, have a mic on hand for shout outs but use the “i cant have the mic on and music on at the same time” excuse if some one confuses a mic for kareoke, i can never spell that word and i hate that it exists.
I do gigs like this most weekends and use it to pay bills and fund what i love.
Some people work in a call center, i do this.
Also while not artistically rewarding, being thanked by people at the end of a night for a job well done, even if not your first choice of music, is a rewarding experience, and these
gigs will let you practice the most vital of DJ skills, crowd reading and track selection.
reach deep into those record boxes, disco house, mashups, top 40 remixes…come on man…this is a good place to practice and get paid…and maybe some chicas like what they see…
go to the top FM stations in major markets and look at their playlists…
if you do some research on top 40, check crooklynclan or a similar site and you can really find some pretty solid house / electro remixes of most hits. build up some top 40, then drop a banger you know that fits and youll get a better reaction since its unknown but rockin the joint.
I’d probably do anything that would get my name out there and getting more gigs. At the end of the day, you still get paid, you still get to play music, you still get practice reading the crowd etc and if worse comes to worse, you can always work your DJ game on some girl at the party (make sure she’s of age though!). I doubt many of the big names in dance music started straight off the bat with a bunch of people appreciating their music. If they did, they managed to get into those social circles through people they must have met at one of those parties where they had to play “top 40” stuff.
so fun especially if you got your eyes on a hot biddy and wanna impress her. and little-to-no real work as mixing top 40 is all intro loops and quick slams and a few echo freezes lol.
Mashups and remixes for the win! And at $100/hr, who cares if you’re not playing tracks you like. That’s around ten times the average starting wage for just fading terrible tracks in and out. Sounds good to me.
Haha, thanks for the advice, I’m definitely going to load my harddrive with shit, and attempt to feel out the crowd. But, since they’re a sorority in atlanta, I would assume that most of the “clubs” they’ve been to play mostly house music. Hmm.
