I guess i come from a different era ... And a different scene ...And not a conventional route to the booth.
My first encounter was in the late 70's with West Indian Blues Party's ... I lived next to a Jamaican family that had built a huge sound system.. 4x twin 18" Bassbin scoops ... 4x quad 12" Mid's ... 4 x 8 tweeter with 4 horns ... For anyone who knows this scene will know that's a pretty epic system .... So my love was for the sound system first.
I grew up around the system... Partys ... Sound Clash ... Toasters ( Mc's ).... HUGE BASS
By the time i was 13- 14 i was working my ass off to get money together to buy bit's of kit to build my own sound system.... At about the same time hip hop was just breaking in NY and a few dudes from NY come to my school on student exchange and brought this new music with them .... I was hooked !
So with Sound system almost finished I started doing street party's ( Block Party's ).... Everyone come to dance ... No crowd reading skills needed ... You drop a beat and people would dance to it ... Break Dancing And Body Poppin all over the place
...pretty much all the music i played was import due to the fact that hip hop and Electro had not made it's way to the UK mainstream at that point... By the time i was 15 i had won a remix comp on a local radio station and was guest dj most weeks on a Friday night show... I had never been to a club at this point !... I was 15
I won't bore you with the rest of the story ... But by the time i got into a dj booth in a club i was already known ... And people who come to the clubs i was Djing in come to dance and have a good time ...NOT to see me .... To Dance ..... No crowd reading needed .... It's almost like crowd reading was invented later on.
I do have a bad story about guesting at a club in a provincial town in the mid 90's and trying to introduce the crowd to Speed Garage .....lol .... not a pretty sight ... This club was more your ABBA and Chart nonsense stuff ...... About 20 people got it and went nut's ... The rest left and went to the other room .... I played hard to the 20 people and we had a great time
...So i don't even consider that to be a horror story.
So i dunno ...I guess if you play good music people will dance ....Attention spans seem to be shorter today.
Sorry for the long story .... just wanted to put my experiences out there ... Some here might get it
Peace
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