DJam Blues Playlists

Time for another couple of playlists. I’m in that happy post-blues-weekend place, with a little time at leisure, so it’s time for a long-overdue post or too. I’m aware also that it’s been far too long since I updated the blog, and that the blues content of is somewhat lacking so far… so to kill two birds with one stone, here’s some of the music I’ve been playing at DJam Blues this weekend. Please forgive the fact that I’ve omitted the track lengths – my logs are currently lacking that vital piece of information, and I’m not sure it’s worth the effort of filling it in by hand. That should be rectified for the next time I publish a playlist.

Friday Night

We had a nice mixture of people to the event – from brand-new blues dancers, through to some very experienced old hands. My focus in this set was on energising the room, but without making the music too challenging – in essence, to play a nice solid set of tunes and rhythms to gently get the atmosphere going, but without relying on too many classics that the other DJs might want to play. All in all, I was very happy with the outcome.

Saturday Night

A longer set on the Saturday, with more competitions to break things up. Extended breaks like that can sometimes disrupt the atmosphere you’ve been working so hard to build up, so it helps to be aware that that might happen, and have some good crowd-pleasers ready to get things back on track. Organising a snowball can help too, but we didn’t need that here.

My main set had ended a little before eleven, with Screaming Jay’s wonderful I am The Cool. At the point I picked up again, it was packing up time – the wee small hours, with  a few of us die-hards left relaxing, chatting and enjoying the music. I put on a last few slow mellow tracks to bring the evening to a suitable close… and everyone got up and started dancing again. There’s a time when people just want something slow, beautful and undemanding to dance to, and the last few tracks hit that spot perfectly.