Friday night was a fundraising party for a friend's gender reassignment "top" surgery. look it up. I haven't played for a crowd of what you might call actual "ravers" for a while, and had no idea what would and wouldn't go over. Thankfully there's a few standby tunes in my bag at the moment that seem to help me stay above water when things get confusing and hard to read on the dancefloor. That picture disc 45 12" rip of 'evil twin' is a fucking godsend, I swear.
I feel kind of out of touch with the all ages scene, actually (though this event was 19+, the crowd tended to skew a little in the direction of younger and quite literally more colorful. maybe just a harbinger of another imminent festival season?) I get how hard it is to put on a decent all ages event these days, but at some point soon I should really make a point of playing at one. I think it's been potentially as long as 3 years since I've done so. who knows, maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised at the degree to which the taste of younger dance music fans is starting to come around a bit. I know I was surprised on friday. Of course, I'd be remiss not to mention a theory: Grand Theft Auto. No, seriously. every time a new GTA game comes out, it MASSIVELY influences the musical taste of 15-24 year olds. And this time, the mere fact that soulwax, gilles peterson, and flylo all have massive chunks of in-game airtime to play whatever they want is a blessing from the rockstar gods upon the ears of everyone out there who's had just about enough of this "big room" nonsense. case in point- one tune that went over better than any other friday night was the original version of shadow child's '23', featured prominently on GTAV's 'flylo fm'. embedded below in case you haven't heard it yet.
tweet me suggestions for titles for the new mix series @realormemrx
-luca