On 4/10/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I'd like to know other people's opinion about
this.
I was discussing this phenomenon with a friend -
DJs playing in restaurants
and other types of places (cafés, some types of
bars, etc.) where dancing
is clearly not a possibility and the DJ is not a
necessity.
My opinion was that, overall, it's annoying and a
negative side affect of
the popularity of "DJ culture". As I'm sure many
of you can attest - the
human jukebox gig can really be a drag. I had one
gig that ran for a while
and was good but eventually turned into that.
Near the end of my stint I
was told that someone there was about to threaten
me with bodily harm
because I played something that was a bit
leftfield. Essentially you
couldn't just ignore it. I was trying to tell my
friend this - these types
of gigs allow trendy restaurants to bank on DJs to
raise their hipness
factor and charge more for mediocre food. I know
one local DJ who ranted
about DJs bringing down the "scene" by playing in
coffee bars. A few weeks
after this I saw him spinning in a "upscale"
beauty salon! Turns out he
seems to have a regular gig there.
His opinion was that he's been turned onto a fair
amount of music by some
DJs in his city (Vancouver) that he's heard in
restaurants. Now, he's a
producer himself and isn't shy about finding out
about music he likes. I
doubt most others in restaurant would do the same.
They eat, they talk
over the music, they pay their bill and leave. My
friend is not a DJ, has
never played records to an audience anywhere so he
doesn't know the
experience.
I suppose if you're getting paid you're getting
paid but I feel there's
something just not right about DJs becoming so
ubiquitous.
a (good) deejay has the power to set or alter the
mood and atmosphere
in any room. now, i dont know about playing
somewhere where
conversation is supposed to be going on at a normal
level, such as a
restaurant. at that point a deejay would be
essentially doing muzak.
but in a bar or coffe house or something like that
where music can
play relatively loudly without bothering anyone, it
can be very
powerful, even if the people that it is having
effect on are not aware
of it!
im much more skeptical of stuff like corporate shops
having deejays in
them. the puma store in the yuppie outdoor urban
mall in the south
side of pgh does that, it is extremely weak.
tmo
