I’ve just woken up, and it feels as though we’ve actually had another day in between yesterday and today. We got to bed at about 4.30am, which is actually pretty civilised for MLX. In previous years I’ve left the venue at 6am. Today I did also wake up at 9.30am, which is insane. So I ended the insanity and went back to bed.
But now I am awake, and needing to do some quick DJ prep for tonight’s set. Mostly because I played all my guns last night and am left with the same old spooge for tonight.
Here’s last night’s set:
MLX9 Friday 27th November 2009, 1am-2.30am
title artist bmp year album length
Rag Mop Bob Crosby and the Bobcats 164 1950 Bob Crosby and the Bobcats: The Complete Standard Transcript 2:15
San Francisco Bay Blues Lu Watters’ Yerba Buena Jazz Band with Barbara Dane 160 1964 Blues Over Bodega 3:42
Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho Kid Ory and his Creole Jazz Band with Barney Bigard, Helen Andrews 160 1946 Kid Ory and his Creole Jazz Band 1944-46 3:13
St. Louis Blues Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra 183 1939 Ella Fitzgerald In The Groove 4:46
Leap Frog Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra (Luis Russell) 159 1941 The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-1946) (disc 7) 3:00
Davenport Blues Adrian Rollini and his Orchestra with Jack Teagarden 136 1934 Father Of Jazz Trombone 3:14
Madame Dynamite Eddie Condon and his Orchestra (Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Condon, Sidney Catlett) 176 1933 Classic Sessions 1927-49 (Volume 2) 2:56
For Dancers Only Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra 148 1937 Swingsation – Jimmie Lunceford 2:41
Flying Home Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra 197 1942 Lionel Hampton Story 2: Flying Home 3:11
Savoy Lucky Millinder and his Orchestra with Trevor Bacon 166 1942 Anthology Of Big Band Swing (Disc 2) 3:05
The Back Room Romp Rex Stewart and his 52nd Street Stompers 152 1937 The Duke’s Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2) 2:49
Sugarfoot Stomp Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra 244 1939 Live At The Savoy – 1939-40 3:09
Stomp It Off Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra 190 1934 Swingsation – Jimmie Lunceford 3:09
A Viper’s Moan Willie Bryant and his Orchestra with Teddy Wilson, Cozy Cole 153 1935 Willie Bryant 1935-1936 3:26
Shortnin’ Bread Fats Waller and his Rhythm 195 1941 Last Years (1940-1943) (Disc 2) 2:41
It’s You’re Last Chance To Dance Preservation Hall 179 2007 The Hurricane Sessions 4:31
Shake That Thing Mora’s Modern Rhythmists 227 2006 Devil’s Serenade 2:58
Savoy Blues Kid Ory 134 1950 Golden Greats: Greatest Dixieland Jazz Disc 3 3:01
Call Me A Taxi Four Of The Bob Cats 175 1938 All Star Jazz Quartets (disc 2) 3:13
Jump Through The Window Roy Eldridge and his Orchestra (Zutty Singleton) 154 1943 After You’ve Gone 2:42
Jumpin’ At The Woodside Count Basie and his Orchestra 235 1939 The Complete Decca Recordings (disc 02) 3:10
Keep On Churnin’ Wynonie Harris 146 1952 Complete Jazz Series 1950 – 1952 2:56
Big Fine Girl Jimmy Witherspoon with Roy Eldridge, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Vernon Alley, Mel Lewis 156 1959 The ‘Spoon Concerts 4:55
Every Day I Have The Blues Count Basie and his Orchestra with Joe Williams 116 1959 Breakfast Dance And Barbecue 3:49
C-Jam Blues Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis 143 1999 Live In Swing City: Swingin’ With Duke 3:34
I followed Sarah Farrelly, who is one of my favourite party DJs. It’s a pleasure to step into the DJ seat after her: she builds the fun, and then I come and play in it.
The last song was a joke. Because I’d been trying very hard to avoid my usual party-favourites. The room was very hot and humid and the dancers, though trying very hard and full of exchange beans, were really having trouble keeping their energy up. So I tried to work a pretty sharp-angled wave. There was also a pleasingly diverse crowd – lots of noobs, lots of old sticks, all the states represented – so I tried to work those tempos. This was only the second night of MLX and the first late night, so I wanted lots of energy (this IS FUCKING MLX MOTHERFUCKERS!), but I figured the peeps wouldn’t quite be at their most lindy-crazed just yet. It was a super-prime set, and I felt very lucky and excited to have it. So I tried to do my best. I also used my ‘DJ standing up because the dancers are standing up’ policy, and it worked. I find I lose my DJing nerves faster and I feel more connected to the dancers. I also figure there’s something interesting to look at if you’re not dancing – down the front of my shirt as I bend over to check the computer.
I tended to avoid the ‘safety songs’ with simple lyrics and hi-fi familiarity (eg Blip Blip and its ilk) and to go with the big, fat swinging big band. Because this is lindy hop, yo.
Playing For Dancers Only was a tactical decision. It was nice to play it not because it’s a safety song and I knew it would work, but because I was thinking ‘ok, I need some high energy, big band classic swing of a moderate tempo, something familiar but also something with serious staying power and iconicism*’ And that song was just perfect. I like it because it makes me think about Frankie Manning. Then, of course, Flying Home also reminds me of Frankie, because of its role in the Spike Lee Malcolm X biopic. And it’s also carrying the iconic weight of twenty years of post-revival lindy hopping culture. They’re also both really great songs, and I think that sometimes we forget how great our overplayed favourites are. So I tried to use them both not as safety songs (as I’ve said), but as great songs in their own right. I also wanted to revive a tiring room after a couple of what I think of as Chicago tracks.
Basically, though, my set ‘theme’ (if there was one) was big bands playing in big ballrooms to crazy crowds. Hence the Ella live at the Savoy stuff, Flying Home and so on.
Savoy has been (re)popularised by the Silver Shadows, but it’s also a standard. But it’s not always a song every scene plays a lot, so I like to use it. And, of course – Savoy! I don’t play it that often, but the Silver Shadows reminded me of it. Which is nice.
By that stage people were kind of frazzled and hot, so I shifted gears. Back Room Romp is a song I overplay, but which not everyone else does. It has a mellower energy in the beginning – tinklier. But it has a steady, chugging rhythm with funky upenergy flourishes that make you want to dance. So it gave the kids an energy rest, but also an energy injection of a different type. This is part of my working what I think of as an ‘energy’ or ‘mood’ wave as well as a tempo wave. I like to pound the dancers with high energy songs, but I also like to mix the styles and types of high energy to move their mood around as well.
I came in with Sugarfoot Stomp just one song too early. They needed something about 160 or 180 in between to build things a little. This is a great song, but it’s a bit complicated and ‘fussy’ for such a high tempo if you’re not really ready for it. But it has great energy (live! Savoy!) and it’s familiar. But it’s not a version I hear very often. It was a bit of stunt DJing, really, because I wanted my average tempos up a bit.
Stomp It Off always sounds mellower and slower when I play it after a hardcore faster song, so I like to use it to trick dancers into higher tempos. It’s also fully sick. I had intended another build from here, but the room was HOT and people really weren’t recovering as fast as they usually do in a cooler room. So some very familiar Willie Bryant.
Shortnin Bread was my concession to the current Fats Waller fad. I love that man, but I’m not always convinced he works 100% with every crowd. But I freeking love this song. I think it’s one of his very best dancing songs. It always goes down well, and it did this time. It’s another song that doesn’t sound as fast as it. It also has that lovely chorus at the end which is kind of furiously crazy and awesome.
Here, the energy was high, but I felt as though I was just about to push that barrel over a cliff if I kept going, so I switched it up. The Preservation Hall has that lovely, chaotic New Orleans instrumentation and improvisation (which Fats heralded in that last chorus), but it’s a slower song. It’s simple, melodically and vocally – there aren’t many words, really, but they’re repeated. And the message is perfect: “it’s your last chance to dance, so get up!” It made the crowd crazy. Sweet. I have played this for crowds where it’s died. I think its in-your-faceness requires a larger, more robust crowd. I wanted to stuff in some ‘charleston’, so I played a lesser-played version of a familiar song. It was a bit too fast for this tiring crowd.
Savoy Blues was a recovery song, with more of that New Orleans flavoured style, but I think of it as a transition song, leading me from NO to classic swing. Call Me a Taxi was a strange choice in retrospect, but it has that lighter, easier feel than the previous face-kickers, and it also feels slower than it is. It has a lovely melody and really invites you to play.
Jump Through the Window is a song I used to play all the time, but had left behind for a while for a break. The recent Frida/Skye performance clip has popularised the song, so it’s a good one for the crowd. This chunked the energy up again. The Taxi song had given them a rest, and many people were ready to go again.
I didn’t play Jumpin at the Woodside intending to provoke a jam, but it has kind of Pavlov’s lindy hopper effect. I played it because it’s a really good song, and it builds on the energy of the Window song really nicely. At the end of that jam (which I didn’t watch), I moved straight to an ‘everybody dance!’ song because I don’t like to overdo jams. And that one was kind of lagging – not much crowd noise. I also like them to want more than to get tired of it. The Churning song is overplayed everywhere. But it’s a great builder/spanker. It’s at this point that people got their second wind and went insane. It was crazy. The dance floor was jammed, and people were losing their biscuits (in a non-vomit way)
So I figured it was time for more dirty southern sounds, maybe some sort of Kansas activity. Live Jimmy Witherspoon was the go. It was interesting playing him at this point, mid-set, because it changed the way I listened. It’s a live song and it’s in the middle of a performance, so it feels as though it’s carrying on existing energy, with lots of crowd energy. The lyrics don’t come in for a while, so it has that ‘holding pattern’ feel for a while. But the instrumentalists are mad-awesome.
As you can see, I was going hi-fi here. I wanted to change the energy in the room, to shake things up and kick the dancers into a different mood, so they’d be distracted and get over their hot-and-sweaty tiredness. It worked.
They were then utterly shagged, so a super slow Basie live track to let them breathe.
Then, seeing as how I was plumbing the favourites, I figured I’d play the most overplayed song in all of christendom. It went down a TREAT. And then I ended!
So I guess I did play a bunch of faves, but I used them in a different way. I was proud of myself for not just defaulting to them in a moment of panic, using them as a crutch. I actually used them for their own awesomeness and relationship with other good songs. The fact that this was also my first set of the weekend is probably another contributing factor: I like to open a weekend with faves and party songs. But it was a late night, prime lindy hopping territory, so I wanted to play solid lindy hop. Avoid the jump blues for the most part, and go a little easy on the eccentric or smaller group sound.
Tonight’s set is later – 2.30-4 – so it’ll be slightly different. I’ll see what’s happening at 2.30am, and play it by ear. I’m hoping for some slightly different stuff – the more interesting eccentric, small group and unusual songs. Earlier jazz (ie late 20s and earlier 30s) and more complicated rhythms. But I’ll really wait and see.
*Is that a word?
