iPod Rave
Last night I DJ'd a party for my mysterious and glamorous brother in the countryside. He'd insisted I bring only House music, though I inferred from his tenor that the real agenda was "Not 'Aving It", there were to be "grown-ups" there and therefore my natural instinct to play Ardkore should be suppressed. Accordingly I stretched the remit a bit and bought along some disco as well, Hamilton Bohannon's "South African Man", Manu Dibango's "New Bell", Class Action's "Weekend (the M&M Dub), Cultural Vibe's "Ma Foom Bay" and Padlock. However beyond that, with admirable restraint of ego, I did exactly what I was told and bought House Music.
It was a wicked party, in a marquee under the stars, with bountiful stimulants, beautiful women, and (for which I was partly responsible) a busy little dance-floor. I say partly responsible because from time to time, when his mood dictated I was elbowed off the decks by my bro. And why ever not?!? It was his party! Anyway I hope I'm continuing to convey my almost transparent degree of cooperation. What did amuse me a little was given my closely prescribed musical parameters I half expected he'd adhere to them himself. Not a bit of it!
What I wanted to mention however was a phenomenon which I hadn't experienced to such a degree. I've been playing parties and clubs for nearly twenty years now, and yes from time to time people would come and ask me whether I had such-an-such a record. It's par for the course really isn't it? Also the inappropriate requests: Queen? No, terribly sorry I'm afraid etc. However at this party, which believe me was happy and lively, the dance-floor was quietly bustling, I had a constant stream of people cajoling, threatening, huffing, and sulking with me; of people going through my record box and hooking out stuff for me to play (this happened two or three times), people insisting on different genres of music, either by describing them by name or inferring them by making clucking sounds, one guy gesticulating at me with his two tiny dancing fingers demanding deeper music, girls asking for Rick James and Stevie Wonder and perhaps most remarkably a girl who kept on insisting that I download a Justine Timberlake song onto my brothers laptop and play that. The whole, never-ending experience was utterly wearing and eventually I gave in, politely telling one particularly persistent girl that she was "really doing my head in". Most weirdly the party seem totally unaffected.
I thought the request for the download was the most globally illuminating, because of course our relationship to consuming music has fundamentally changed. Even back in those days when we used to complain that "oh everyone is a DJ these days" there was the idea that it might be an interesting thing to do to graciously submit yourself to another person's tastes and whims. In fact, doing just that is key to the pleasure of the dance-floor. You let yourself go ferchrissakes! What it really reminded me of was that most wretched thing ever, last year's iPod Rave at Paddington Station. The contentment! We can all listen to exactly the music we want to. In isolation.