DJam 2014 Set Lists

Well – DJam 2014 has been and gone. This year was our best yet – of course it would seem that I’ll always claim that, but a whole combination of factors, starting with the new venue and incredible new dance floors, vastly increased dancing time great DJs…. the list is endless, but the general consensus is that this was our best to date. And we’re already planning the next one.

All this is really by the by however – as I promised faithfully to publish a couple of my set lists from the event. The first is from the Friday night – this is the gently-easing-everyone-in night, so I tend to focus on keeping things relaxed, fun, and engaging.

A couple of notes – the Straycat Edit of Wang Wang Blues (got to love that name – whatever it actually means) – I find the first minute and a half interminably dull, so I cut half of it out. Sacrilegious, I know, but the everything after that point is so amazing, and I really don’t want to bore the dancers senseless before we actually get there.

That version of Sister Kate… is a nasty thing to do to a floor filled with dancers. Extremely funny though. In this particular case, it felt like the ideal way to finish up before clearing the floor for the teachers’ demo. I chose Rex’s St Louis Blues partially because it’s a really fun song, and partially because it has around 30 seconds of slooooow intro before kicking into gear – which was perfect to allow our our blues teachers to shine. Uncle Sam Blues is a bit long, to say the least (I must do an edit of this) – but it’s a fun track, and we were doing a snowball.

Overall, the shape of this set is pretty much a classic wave – I’ve seen suggestions lately that this isn’t such a great way to organise a set, but I still find it a very useful technique to help create flow – so I can’t see myself moving away from it any time soon.

For the second set-list, I thought I’d post the competition tracks. I found the comps a lot more relaxing to DJ this year – but this was probably because last year, I confess, I winged the prelims. Completely. This is a shameful admission, and a daft thing to do – I hope never ever to do that again. Trying to come up with the perfect competition tracks on the spur of the moment (or trying to find a good set of blues prelim tracks while playing for a balboa prelim…) is stressful. Anyway – this year, I’d learned my lesson, and had it all planned. This takes hours, but oh boy, is it worth it.

Sometimes, I wonder if some of my choices for these are a little obvious, but for competitions, my philosophy is to provide music which inspires people to dance. It’s not a test of how well they adapt to weird and wonderful new songs that they may never have heard before. It needs to be fun for everyone – audience, competitors, and, ideally the judges.

Photo by Jonny Howe