Gig at El Bar.

So I finally did it. Played my fist "professional" gig. I did 10-12 at a place called El Bar. It is an underground place, all right. It is in fact so underground it is quite hard to find the damn place. It is under a popular restaurant called "El Azteca" but the door is not marked. The door is a big metallic thing that looks like the entrance to an industrial meat locker more than anything. It was in fact the former storage area for the restaurant.

The area inside is pretty nice however, nicer and bigger than I remembered it. It is well decorated. It is darkly lit, relatively small and definitely has this "underground-je-ne-sais-quoi". Jeff, the owner, is an interesting character. Tall, bald and talkative, he is a lawyer by day and a bar owner at night. He opens the place Thursday through Sunday as a hobby.

When I got there, one of the resident guys wanted to know how to hook my system up to their sound system. I said I didn't need anything but a regular headphone jack for my audio card. He looked at me in disbelief, smiled and said "my kind of DJ". I was up and running in no time. The sound system was really decent. However the sound from the booth was too squewed towards bass and the highs were emitted from another spot in the bar. People who came told me that the sound was just fine.

At around 10:30 a lot of the folks started showing up. The place, though small got semi-crowded but never full. Reggie, my trainer and mentor when it comes to all things DJ, showed up with a camera and filmed a good bit of the session. The picture is extracted from his tape.

It has been useful for me to look at the video. The mixin is good alright, I'll say, I rock! :) Of course beat matching is not the issue with software. The real challenge is putting phrases together. I have 80% hit rate on that front. (damn I am good).

The experience reminded me of the first time I jumped out of an airplane. During preparation in the military, they teach you on the ground to count in your head, VERY SLOWLY, 1001 1002 1003... all the way to 1010 and then you pull your chute open. The reason is that adrenaline accelerates your system while your perception of time remains constant. To an outside observer you seem to go really fast, while in your mind you are just going at normal speed. See! these special effects in the "Matrix" with bullet time and all are based on a real biological effect, adrenaline accelerates you, so others slow down with respect to you.

Well, I remember jumping out of that plane and counting REALLY REALLY slowly in my head. I was quite sure I had made it to at least 12 solid seconds. I was so proud. By the time I got on the ground the video showed 3 seconds. How embarassing. Yup, that's adrenaline.

Well I had an overdose of adrenaline on Friday, I have only really recovered today, Monday. I was walking with the butterflies in my stomach for most of the day on Friday. BTW, I REALLY DIG THAT FEELING... You feel alive. I was being nervous about something silly, a DJ gig for God's sake, I was nervous about a DJ gig!. It is a feeling I like actually. My heart was beating fast all day, I tried catching some sleep but couldn't.

And when I got there, what do I do? I ordered 2 vodka red-bulls, back to back, just to get in the groove of things. What a mistake! That just wired me up some more. I should have just ordered beer, and a chamomille chaser or something. The result of that adrenaline rush? on video I can see clearly that I mix a record every 45 seconds like a rabbit on speed.

I hadn't finished a mix that I was already looking for the next thing in my crate. Setting it, beat-matching it and putting it in as soon as it is set and so on and so forth, repeat.... I smoke cigarette after cigarette.

The result wasn't that bad actually, I mean musically, it was good. People gave me props on the musical selection. Heck I have been listening to this crap since 1986 and done more Ibiza than I can remember :). The music was good, I was just playing it at warp speed :).

One of the downsides is that there is almost no pause between the phrases. It kind of sounds like one of those meddley's from the 80's you heard on the radio, when you would listen to 4 seconds of a song and then it went into something else for 4 seconds and so on. I need to let the groove develop, time to let people catch on the music they know and appreciate the music they don't know. Lesson learned. Next time I need to count to 10, 10 times before I even think about counting to 100 to then mix the next song.

Well at least I got a few fans.

First of all THANK YOU BRAD. You are the ideal fan Man! All by yourself you made my night! You were really encouraging. I knew you would dig a lot of the music, since we grew up with the same stuff. It was really nice of you to come with Michelle and so profusely support me. Brad, as I write this, I am actually ripping a live album of "Simple Minds". Next one's for you mate! You'll like it!

Reggie sort of feels like a coach and doesn't mince his words when he gets to music. See Reggie was one of the super-star DJ's in ATL in the 80's. He came down from NYC to mix and was very succesful. So he has been counseling me through the whole thing. He was full of "do this, do that, well done, what was that?" etc etc, he even got me a chicken sandwich to eat mid-way. In fact he is the main reason I got the courage to pursue this hobby. So THANK YOU REGGIE.

I got some props from the resident DJ, and the owner which felt good. They liked the way I overlaid stuff. It was fun to have people I didn't know come and requet stuff. One guy came and said "you seem to know your house, do you have old classic house?". I dropped "can you feel it" from Mr Fingers and the brother smiled wildly.

I dig this DJ thing. I am glad it is done. Saturday was a downer from all this excitement, Sunday I got back on my feet and then ... my laptop died. At least it didn't roll over during the gig! More on that in another blog entry.

See you next gig!

DJ RedBaron