You turn me on, I'm a radio

Last Saturday's playlist went like this:

Talking Heads - I Zimbra
The Meat Purveyors - Round and Round (a bluegrass cover of Ratt's heavy metal hit from the 80's)
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Honeybear
Loose Fur - Apostolic
Family Fodder - Deep Time
Spank Rock - Bump
Stereoloab - Eye of the Volcano
Danger Adventure - Langley
The Free Design - Bubbles
Stephin Merritt - Sounds Expensive
Nina Simone - Here Comes the Sun
Laurie Anderson - Big Science
Hank Williams - I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry
Bobby Bare Jr. - Adorable Beast
Björk - It's Not up to You
Sufjan Stevens - Sleeping Bear, Sault Sainte Marie
Les Innocents - Les Moutons
The Essex Green - Snakes in the Grass
The Pansy Division - Luv Luv Luv
The Headlights - Centuries
Low Skies - You Can't Help Those People
The Wolfgang Press - Sucker (young mix)

And I got two compliments from strangers. One said he really liked my eclectic mix (he had a request, but we didn't have it, and I didn't end up with time to insert an alternate selection). The other said, though the word was overused and he didn't want to contribute to that, my combination of Nina Simone and Laurie Anderson was "genius". Yes, a stranger called me a genius on the phone. This does not happen to me terribly often. So that was gratifying.

Sometimes I think to myself, why do I want to be a DJ? I got into it mainly because I like music, but there are other ways to express that. A big part of being a DJ, I'm beginning to realize, is that there's an audience, and you are trying to give that audience something good to listen to. You are trying to make them hear something that they hadn't heard before, or maybe hear something in a way they hadn't before.

So think I like this gig.

Labels: playlists

posted by Tony at 10:04 PM