I had a similar (sort of) gig recently – it was a Leaver’s function at school – not the ball, that comes later – and they wanted some music on in the background for 1-2hrs..
So I (as I knew before hand – and I keep nearly 4000 tracks on my iPod anyway and there is something from pretty much every genre) put on a playlist of deep house/some funkier/some chilled out tracks – and it went down perfect. No one asked to change anything and a couple of people asked for track names along the way – which I take as a complement 🙂
That was just from my ancient iPod touch on the standard music app – but it was (crucially) background music – which it sounds like your impromptu gig turned out not to be. That meant that people weren’t actually listening to the music directly, they were just happy to have something there as it aides conversation and softens arkward moments.. 🙂
What you can’t do though, is have an audience who expect you to have everything – if you were told about it in advance, fine. But otherwise? They haven’t got a chance and you need to tell them that.
I would probably (in this case) have played stuff from other people’s phones – but only if I had my headphones with me and a spare jack cable so that there would be less transfer time (IE set one up whilst the other is playing). It’s a difficult one though.
What was especially difficult in your scenario is that you had an audience who did not share much musical interest – the 2 groups wanted completely different things. This would be difficult to cater for even if you had all your library with you (and this is a type of gig that only a certain type of DJ would relish..) but as it was impromptu then I reckon you can be let off…
I handle requests in a simple manner – “I’ll get it for you for next week” – BUT that only works well when (like me) you have a gig every week with the same people attending – but they don’t attend purely for my music, that’s not the main draw.. it is a factor though – if I’m not there the night’s don’t go as well… 🙂
You’ll need to find a system.. Good luck 🙂
bob6397
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