It's about 1:30 am as I write this and I've been working on tomorrow night's party for the last 3 hours, easily.
I'm geting music ready so that I'm prepared when teenagers are yelling at me to play whatever song is momentarily popular at their shitty high school in the Inland Empire.
I shouldn't care if people judge me for not having EVERY SONG EVER MADE, but I do.
I've found that my new problem lies in how best to stop these dissapointments before they start. I try to let people know as diplomatically and professionally as possible that they need to tell me about specific / obscure / totally-fucking-pointless-and-unpopular songs BEFORE i get to their house, because:
1) I cannot download songs off of illegal P2P services while I am DJing. I'm sorry. It takes way too much effort. I don't care if you have a wireless network available, I don't care if you do it all the time, I don't care if you are drunk and TOTALLY have to hear this song right now.
2) I cannot play YouTube or MySpace through a 2 channel DJ mixer. Again, I'm sorry. Actually - that one is a lie. I technically could. But I don't want to hear some shitty 96kbps streaming YouTube audio come pouring out of my 800 watt P.A. system at whatever drunken volume you are suggesting.
3) I cannot play CDs. If I were rich, I would have CDJs in addition to my Serato setup. But I do not. I am poor. If you buy me CDJS, I will totally play your sister's mix cd as loud as you want me to.
4) I cannot play songs off of your iPod. This is more of a matter of personal contention. You hired me to DJ your party. I will do a good job. I will try really hard to create a special environment for you and your loved ones to dance and make memories. I do it every weekend and I am very good at it. If you are socially awkward and scared to dance, that is not my fault. That is your fault, and the fault of whoever made you scared to dance and play and express yourself while you were young. You crowding around my mixer with your friends while skipping from song to song on your iPod makes me look and sound stupid. It makes you look and sound stupid. Just release control for one hour and trust me.
So I have people email me playlists ahead of time. Or give me Mp3 cds. Or regular CDs. Or original vinyl. Whatever. It's all good. Usually they do a shitty job. They either give me a 5 song playlist of top 40 hits that I already have (and then complain during the party because I don't have whatever random song is bubbling out of their drunk brain), or they give me an Mp3 cd full of HOURS of boring shit from their lackluster music collection that no one wants to hear.
Or I get a list of 60-70 techno songs from the 17 year old girl whose party I'll be playing tomorrow night. I can't find the majority of the shit she wrote down. The list is infested with MySpace-only dj's, obscure P2P memes, and totally adolescent go-nowhere techno jams with names like "Take Your Pills" and "Work This Pussy" produced by artists who's monikers all begin with DJ followed by a cutesy word with way too many constonants, like DJ Hixxy.
This would be way less weird if I wasn't negotiating the invoice with her very nice, very reasonable (if not indulgent) parents. I don't really know how to break it to them that based on her music selection alone, their daughter is headed down a dark path of shitty "massive" raves in Riverside, crytal meth tainted E pills, pimply guys in cargo shorts, and agonizing community college essays about drug law reform.
Fuck it. You can't save 'em all.
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