Boards
Bands doing DJ sets
What is this shit? Am I really supposed to care that Bloc Party is doing a DJ set at some bar, or the bassist from Foals (for example)? I don't get it - a couple of years ago Peter Hook did a DJ set (in New Zealand) for which he charged as much as a mid-level indie band would, and he (and/or the promotor) was reportedly peaved at the poor attendance. Which staggers me, because he was in New Order and Joy Division, good and fine, but I don't care what CDs he plays (at least not to the extent of shelling out decent cash). Is anyone with me here? I have no problem with musicians/bands doing DJ sets, and they might well be very good, but I really don't understand how this is meant to appeal to fans of the particular band they are/were in (without separately earning a reputation as a good DJ). Thoughts?
i've always thought this was a joke with indie bands
just an easy wedge of cash after a gig in the same city. i get the impression the kind of people who are keen are basically "celeb" spotting, and they'll play the same shit set of indie songs any shit indie night fodder would. i think there are some exceptions, some of mystery jets fancy themselves as real djs considering some of the bills they've been djing on, though they were fucking bunk when i saw them; bad mixing, bad track selection.
theres three of them that dj
so sometimes its good, sometimes its not, sometimes its me djing. but not very often me.
Did you see them on the Thekla?
They were shocking, and kept turning the music off for people to sing along during quite obscure songs, just to show how fucking trendy they are... Awful, and the place was full of idiots.
the horrors
are very good djs
It's a nice little earner for bands who aren't touring/recording
A friend of mine is a booking agent for band DJ sets, it sounds like easy money to me. Personally I don't see the appeal, and I'm certainly not interested in paying something extortionate to watch a band play a 'here's one I made earlier' DJ set.
Klaxons are the prime example of this
barely a week goes by without one of them playing a Dj set in Brighton. I think the first couple, a year of so back were well attended out of curiosity. Then people saw it for the wind up it really is and gave them a miss.
having said that, múm, well 2 of múm, are very good Djs.
my mum is a good dj, she taught me everything I know
about working the crossfader.
Jamie Reynolds is an ace DJ
fact.
If some of them DJed before the band took off
I can understand it better. Or if they're renowned for having particularly amazing taste.
But in the majority of cases, I don't understand it. Maybe its supposed to attract people who really want to meet them or something?
there is nothing worse than a bad DJ on a night out in a club
I'd rather hear a no name random DJ do a good set than some person in a band doing it on the side, unless they are acctualy a DJ as well and good at it. They are usualy at shit indie club nights anyway so I don't really come across them as I'd rather eat my own eyes and ears than go to most indie nights. I'm a bit of a DJ geek though and have respect for the ways of the DJ so find it a bit annoying when shit DJs get to play out over really good ones that don't.
A lot of band DJs pre-record their set
Which means all they have to do is move the cross-fade left and right every so often.
lame
they may as well stick a CD on and go and sit at the bar in that case.
Definitely
My old band once played with Get Cape Wear Cape Fly who did a DJ set at the end of the night, I was surprised at how good he was. I wish he'd stick to DJing!
haha
yeah I bet some people are loads better at DJing than they are in their bands.
Dunno, I guess they render all their tracks and pick the order to play them in
Or the other method is playing a CD then using the filter in EVERY song.
Peter Hook LOL
When he DJs Peter Hook just plays a pre-mixed entire CD created by someone else.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m01g4XnC_qU
He doesn't touch the decks the entire time, he simply fiddles with a knob on the mixer. In this clip he is playing a CD off the cover of Mixmag. On another clip on Youtube you can hear a Mixmag jingle off the CD.
bit of a swizz isn't it?
The Dirty South in Lewisham keep running these nights, the list of 'celeb' dj's they have bought in range from a Ramone to, er, someone from Northside, but regulars are probably people vaguely associated with 90's britpop and libertines without actually having a doherty/barat there. They get up to 5 bands to sell tickets to make sure there's attendence. Pfffffffffft...
Hah hah. Someone asked us if we wanted to play there.
I think Bez or someone was DJing after. He asked if we could bring 50 people. To Lewisham? Well, anywhere would be a massive fuck off but particularly there.
it's actually a very significant element
in bands actually managing to make a living out of their music.
only utter fools would bother to pay for it though
haha
"their music"
yes
people are playing them to play other peoples music because they like their music
i don't get it
i've been facebook invited to a few nights like this (recently it was a night at koko with mystery jets and bloc party dj-ing) and i've always had no interest in it whatsoever
tho if someone asked me to choose a few cds and get paid i'd be in straight away
Id love to do this
so lots of my bands harmless indie fans come and get their heads blown off when they're assaulted by brutal low end dubstep and techno. However, ive never seen a dj set by indie fodder that is actually a genre or mixed so its a rip off. Id imagine jonny greenwood would be good - he can do everything else cant he?
everyone I know
Wants to dance to dubstep, no band dj Ive ever seen has played it.
Award...
For most pretentious post on DiS of the year. Dubstep and techno aren't exactly arcane knowledge. And you don't play a DJ set to "blow someone's head off", you play it to make people dance.
I've been to a few band members playing DJ set type things, and they've been mostly terrible. Kele from Bloc Party played Cross Central one year, and played a tolerable if unexiting indie set with some commercial pop/R&B thrown in (I've never got this, every DJ set like this seems to consist of a fair amount of stuff like AYO Technology, and I don't know why). A couple of The Futureheads DJ'd at a clubnight I used to DJ at, and were shocking, mostly full of "ironic" wedding disco type songs. One of Mystery Jets played upstairs at Chalk one night, and was pretty good, lots of fairly decent electro house. One of Metronomy's band DJ'd at a night I was at and was a bit crap, too, again with the rubbish commercial hip hop, then onto some badly mixed minimal, which really didn't work in an uninterested Old Blue Last.
Hot Chip are apparently very good, and I'd really like to go to a James Murphy DJ set, and I've heard good things about various members of The Horrors, and judging by the mix they gave Vice Magazine, fairly close to the kind of thing I'd play out given complete freedom to do so.
James Murphy is a DJ
has been for freakin ages before he got onto making music.
Yeah, but he's...
more known for being in LCD Soundsystem than being a DJ. Members of The Horrors also ran Junk Club and DJ'd there before forming the band.
Kate Jackson's also pretty good.
I think the problem with a lot of the crap ones, apart from them just treating it as easy money, is they get let off a lot easier than just random resident DJ no.32. Normally you get to know fairly quickly if something's not working or not, so know what to play next, but people are more likely to stay and dance just in case the next song's good if it's the guitarist from a crap indie band than if it's a random person up there. They can get away with playing crap and the audience will still stick around. It sometimes works in favour of good DJs as well, with the aforementioned Kate Jackson DJ set I was at for a Long Blondes aftershow, where she played a load of really good stuff that the residents wouldn't have got away with.
true
Murphy is a good un his fabric mix is a cracker. Fabric dont let anyone mix for um.
I think its fine if they are a good DJ its just the rubish ones that are annoying.
This happens in dance music as well sometimes, like a big producer gets booked because he has the big tracks. Coki for example plays loads of sets around the world and he doesnt even mix. He just gets booked because he has loads of dubplates and exclusives that no-one else has. But that isn't happening with random indie band DJs is it.
Nope...
The random indie band member ones are only ever good because the good ones can often use the fact that people are more likely to stick around and dance to their set than a resident's to play a more interesting set without having people come up to them and asking if they can play The Kooks, because it's their friend's birthday tomorrow. Although they may not have dubplates and exclusives, random indie DJs can be good when they delve into some of the lesser known but dancable things they listen to. They're just a bit crap when they play a generic mainstream indie set but charge £1000 for the privelidge, or excruciating when they play an irony overload set. And charge £1000 for the priviledge.
I've got a couple of promo mixes of members of Ladytron, which are also very good. Decently mixed, and an interesting mix of disco-ey post punk and electro.
Hot Chip were pretty bad DJs at ATP vs Pitchfork last year...
most pretentious?
but I barely touched on Derrida...
What?!
Are you telling me that a member of Dananana makes up part of Dolby Anol?!
Then again...
in the Mystery Jets example, I think it's really bad to complain about a DJ not having a particular track with them, even if you personally think it's an essential. In the same way that I hate the idea of asking DJ's for requests. There's Jukeboxes in a pub, in a club it's up to the DJ, and a DJ is good because of the tracks *they* decide to play, not because they have the tracks that you'd want them to play.
Well, sometimes it's more the fact that a band member is DJing...
...at a regular club night, in which case it isn't too bad. But it's not anything special to see them, really. Not as a one-off event...
surely...
people are aware that lots of people in bands would be interested in djing?
and if people want to see them dj for whatever reason (maybe cos they love the band and want to hear songs that have inspired them?) then where is the harm.
dont like it dont go.
seems a funny gripe to have really.
yeah i guess it depends how good they are
most dj sets by bands i've heard have been pretty awful. the one exception is bonde de role, their mixing and choice of tracks was exceptional. they played some weird electro-samba remix of zero by the smashing pumpkins, it was brilliant.
Its a democracy!
If you don't go promoters will stop booking bands doing DJ sets. we are all suckas for promotion. Say a DJ set costs promoter £300, but the band costs £2,000, but with right promotion the promoter can pack out venue with either... which is he going to go for?
NO BRAINER!!!! promoters are all the same (well most)
Stop going to 'DJ sets' and spend your hard earned money on Live gigs. Plenty of amazing live bands out there every night.
Remember we live in a Democracy! Admittedly it is governed by our wallets, but its YOUR WALLET...
£300 for a well known indie band DJ set is pretty cheap...
yep
often their 'DJ set' costs more than the live show itself.
I have been a DJ myself for years (and am good enough to make a living off of it). It always kills me to see how much bands get paid to absolutely kill a crowd with poor tune selection, poor mixing etc.
I regard the decks as an instrument and DJing is a skill that needs to be learned and practiced. When was the last time you saw Erol Alkan / DJ Hype / Mehdi / Carl Cox / (pick another) jump onto a stage with a detuned stratocaster and play a clunky version of stairway to heaven to a soul-destroyed crowd and then charge £1k for the privilege? It just doesn't happen.
Still, if I was paid £1k to murder a Led Zep track and ensure that the audience exited in a torrent of disappointment, I would at least consider it...
Its a democracy!!!
If you don't go promoters will stop booking bands doing DJ sets. we are all suckas for promotion. Say a DJ set costs promoter £300, but the band costs £2,000, but with right promotion the promoter can pack out venue with either... which is he going to go for?
NO BRAINER!!!! promoters are all the same (well most)
Stop going to 'DJ sets' and spend your hard earned money on Live gigs. Plenty of amazing live bands out there every night.
Remember we live in a Democracy! Admittedly it is governed by our wallets, but its YOUR WALLET...
I'd just like to point out
that you can't get ANYONE to DJ for £300.
For clarity and context 'A Leading Indie Band's frontman's current asking price is £3,000.
Really?!
When Klaxons were at their peak, headling the likes of Brixton Academy, it was 1K per Klaxon.
If you see an indie frontman DJ
You know what to expect; so there's very little point in complaining. If it keeps fans of land-fill indie happy, then what's the problem?
One my friend put together
Pretty ace
http://open.spotify.com/user/rinky/playlist/3RTgFsEXfvGAOGXL2wDuj4
What??
I wasn't on this thread a minute ago. What gives?
Its a joke!