DJing The Office Party: what I learned.
i) Even rockists like “Love Machine” (when they’ve drunk their way through a five-figure bar tab) (I should have trusted Pete on this)
ii) Whatever the shortcomings of the Chemical Brothers as a ‘dance act’, which essentially they’re not any more, “Galvanize” lives up to its title in re. a generalist dancefloor.
iii) The 80s are basically dead. A year or so ago the standard-issue 80s floorfillers were still a high point of the set; last night they got a solid reaction but there was no sense of surprise or excitement. Some tunes can still work well if included amongst other stuff. And Wham! seems impervious to age even if I’m heartily sick of that song.
iv) Which means the nostalgia pendulum is swinging elsewhere, judging by reaction to the early 90s tunes played – in particular the ‘rave’ set, the bigger chart rave tunes (SL2, Utah Saints, etc.) having been thoroughly recuperated as just ‘pop’. Not everybody was dancing to them but the people that were, by no means all ex-ravers, were going mental for them.
v) I remember people at the time in the early 1990s saying that nobody would remember the tunes in 10 years. This seemed to me plainly wrong (for one thing it’s the hooks people remember) and I’m glad it has turned out to be.
vi) How and why did “Don’t Stop Me Now” become THE Queen song? As an aside: when they were good, Queen really were bloody good, no?
vii) “Crazy In Love” is very slow and it now seems odd that people ever danced much to it. 2 years ago it was difficult to imagine dancing to anything else.
viii) If there’s one thing I tend to do wrong DJing to a party crowd, it’s a reluctance to slow the tempo a little when you’ve got the floor on your side. Last night there was a lot of jumping around – hurrah! – but there was a bump’n’grind element which we could have encouraged a little more (translation: dammit, why didn’t I play “Goodies”?). Club FT is largely sexless so we can go full-on for hands in the air shrieking Scooterjoy. Office parties have a tension that needs exploiting. (Props to Steve and Pete for their erection section finale though!)
ix) There is no point in having a chill-out room at an office do.
x) Even if he has effusively thanked you after the party for your DJing efforts, do not trust your boss to remember what your actual name is. Yours sincerely, Tom Vernon.