I Sold My Soul.. How Can I Get Something Out of It?

[bigfootspartan]

Soo, last night I might have had one too many. Anyways, got talked into DJ'ing for a medical conference. I'm broke as, and they're covering the whole weekend (admission, hotel, food) so I couldn't really resist. Downside, they want me to play 5 hours of Top 40, since, as we all know, the average Canadian student looses their balls for The Black Eyed Peas, Miley Cyrus and god knows whatever else is on the radio.

However, I also see this as a chance to maybe open people's minds to some better stuff. Obviously most kids will get angry and be like "Dude, whatever this shit is switch it back to Fergalicious, thats good skanking shit" but I'm figuring maybe I'll get a few to enjoy something outside their normal realm of listening.

Anyways, anyone else been in this kinda situation. How do you go about balancing keeping the general happy while still throwing in something deeper? Should I look for remixes of top 40 tracks, or maybe make a few myself?

Edit: Also, redirect this wherever it fits best. I was going to throw it in the mixes forum until I realized it was actually just mixes in there

[hutyluty]

Play all the top 40 hits just 8 times slower. Madness

[Ayatollah]

throw in some bland, Chrispy-esque remixes of top 40 songs and go from there... also me personally I would steer a bit away from the "deep" stuff and just play some more accessible dubstep since you're playing for a mainstream-oriented audience. you know, rusko, emalkay n shit

[deadly_habit]

play what you're getting paid for not what you want to in this case
you prolly could bust out some vocal tunes though or remixes

[bigfootspartan]

Play all the top 40 hits just 8 times slower. Madness

"But I swear this is Miley singing, she just sounds like a bassline..."

throw in some bland, Chrispy-esque remixes of top 40 songs and go from there... also me personally I would steer a bit away from the "deep" stuff and just play some more accessible dubstep since you're playing for a mainstream-oriented audience. you know, rusko, emalkay n shit

That's what I was figuring. Obviously doing the really bro stuff wouldn't work, but I doubt the deep stuff would be kosher either. Anyone have any recommendations for that stuff? I was thinking some of Seven's tracks maybe, it has some groove to it and the bass shakes everyone off their rocker.

[bigfootspartan]

play what you're getting paid for not what you want to in this case
you prolly could bust out some vocal tunes though or remixes

I think that's what I needed to hear but exactly what I didn't want to hear. Still all it takes is one too many pints and I'm doing what I want... I warned them when we made the deal haha.

[zerbaman]

Just drop remixes of tunes they would know, yeah it may not be the exact stuff you personally like, but it will definitely be a starting point for bringing in some deeper tones. Play some deep/tech house, that normally always goes down well with these types

[Sharmaji]

a gig like that is just a job-- so do your job and make the client happy. Who knows? might lead to more work. A couple of wedding DJ's i know each pull about $1500/gig-- and can fit 3 into a weekend. That leaves you Monday-Friday to make music for you, and 12 hours over the weekend to simply play music that makes other folks happy. Not a bad split.

[X_S_]

Play like what I see joker remix then lead into something similar. Then go back to what ur arse is being paid for lol.

[EDN]

Automatic DJ software


...Maybe a backup catalog of things people might request.

[bigfootspartan]

a gig like that is just a job-- so do your job and make the client happy. Who knows? might lead to more work. A couple of wedding DJ's i know each pull about $1500/gig-- and can fit 3 into a weekend. That leaves you Monday-Friday to make music for you, and 12 hours over the weekend to simply play music that makes other folks happy. Not a bad split.

Wow I didn't realize weddings could be that lucrative! Sounds like a really good deal to me.

Yeah when they asked me what equipment I needed the first thing on the list was 'a list of what kids listen to now a days'. If they don't get back to me on that I guess it'll just be my regular stuff .

[Recessive Trait]

play what you're getting paid for not what you want to

doing anything else would be kind of douche baggy. do you really think medical conference attendees want to hear dubstep? they don't.

[amphibian]

You could get away with more poppy dubstep - try stuff like Emalkay - When I look at you, Skream's let's get ravey remix of La Roux's track, In for the Kill. You could also try the Rated R album by rihanna which I think is ALL dubstep, written by Chase and Status. Not my kind of music - but a perfect example of Dubstep really entering the mainstream.

You've also got Rihanna's G4l (gangsta 4 life), which uses the beat and bassline from a west coast artist I believe. I actually don't mind this one at all - and kudos to Rihanna for stepping outside the pop boundaries.

These are artists said crowd can relate to, but it's dubstep - so you could easily work this in without it being a problem, and noone will be the wiser.

[vries]

Love gigs like that. Though most of mine that were like that we set up ourselves, so we had a bit more freedom in our track selection.

Couple of things that pop up in my mind:

-spend the time to find out what tracks are hot right now that you'd love to play. Not sure how much time you spend listening to the major radio channels, I know I can't be bothered most of the time, but surely there's at least a couple of tunes out there that are actually worth playing.
-select some of your own favorite shit, but make sure that it's relatively easily accessable, if that makes any sense in English, ehm, make sure it gets the girls moving. If we're talking dubstep tunes like Rise The Temperature or Up In The VIP allow you to follow it up with something a little deeper while they're still shakin' their thang. Shit like this works really well:

-mix in some old classics that everyone loves but haven't heard in a while. Don't know what the scene's like over there, but here things like Ginuwine - Pony, Blackstreet - No Diggity or some old Beastie Boys shit still get people goin'

[zonetrooper5]

Could play some of the following songs:

Rusko - Your on My Mind Baby
Katy B - Katy On A Mission
Magnetic Man - I Need Air

Also throw in some Snoop Dog and get some bitches and whores yeeeehhhhh.

[Drop_Dead]

Egypt - In The Morning.

[hutyluty]

Harmoniniminiminimixes

[Grimace_dubs]

lol emalkay? Do you really think that'd go down well?

I'd say play top 40 all night long and then throw your favorite dubstep tune in at the end, last song, and wheeeeeeel that shit back

[ninjadog]

My brother in law's wedding had no effing Dj and my GF had a great idea of hooking up a laptop to the PA and playing youtube vids for music.
Since both families were hardcore christians the silverbacks left quite early and I put on some dubstep, it went over way better than I thought. It auctually got people bobbing their heads and a lot of "what is this?" comments by people who never heard it before and were digging it. Even some of the bridesmaids started dancing. The icing on the cake was my snobby bitch sister inlaw hated the music and hated her boyfriend for liking it, and no one would let her put Akon or whatever top 40 shit she likes back on.

Man I should become a wedding DJ!

[makemerich]

all you get is money.
at least you crossed the threshold , i still battle every day and when someone wants to work with me and throws a contract in my face i run the other direction.

i would say try having two personas, obviously the you one that has the quality shit and the one they want you to be, just dont be an over achiever and save your mojo for your real shit.