as my friends in massachusetts know, the friday night gig at union bar & grill was shut down recently after nearly two years. this was a gig that was close to my heart - it started strong two summers ago, and to my surprise kept on going through the winters...largely due to the fact that there ain't a damn thing else going on in those parts on friday nights.

at union, i was able to grapple with all the implications of having a residency. for those unfamiliar with a dj's gripes, this meant coming to terms with the enthusiastic and persistent requests that spinning hip-hop entails, and building up a set of crates that held a hell of a lot more pop music than i ever thought i'd enjoy playing.

it was touch and go for a while, but in the end the demands of the dance floor shaped what i do. yeah, when laffy taffy came out i almost threw it in - i was getting that sick of the direction commercial hip-hop was heading.

then, one fateful night, i went out with the boys to bogies, and after a number of henny-and-cokes i noticed that my own, somewhat inebriated body was moving to music i spun when asked to but professed to hate. it struck me that the setting made the music - that, in fact, every song has utility somewhere. for a dj, it's all a matter of playing the right platter at the right time.

i took that back to union, and decided to treat all my records in terms of their utility - not to spend so much energy judging what was 'good', but to try to play music that would consistently move the night forward. for me, that meant hitting the crowd with enough of what they knew to keep them engaged, and push them to move to the unfamiliar whenever i could drop the needle on it without sacrificing the groove that all of us - dancefloor, dj, and the omnipresent lurkers-over-the-mirror - were building together.

it was a good training ground. now, i've got a saturday gig with no dance floor, which has its own uses in my development - without the physical response of a crowd, it's an intense challenge to match the music to the mood, which is in constant flux. this thursday, i'll be starting up at bogies myself, putting the thesis that even exceptionally cheesy hip-pop can be presented creatively to the test.

if all this seems a little hifalutin for a guy who pays his bills playing songs about booty, i guess you don't take booty as seriously as i do.

til next time-
bfg