I was asked this afternoon if I’d mind filling in for a DJ who’d cancelled at the Bull’s Head in Moseley tonight. I didn’t have anything in particular planned, so I agreed. Free drinks and a little bit of pocket money.
I hadn’t really prepared a set, so I took my ‘grab and run’ pile of discs, and the box of 7″ singles sitting by the turntable.
I played a mix of stuff, but fairly early on, I started dropping some classic disco tracks into the mix. At first I was kind of doing it for a laugh. It wasn’t what I would normally focus on, preferring far more ’sophisticated’ classic funk tracks. But boy, people have a good time when you play a hit they haven’t heard for decades.
I played Sharon Redd, Sister Sledge, Stargard, Chic, Commodores, Brothers Johnson, Kool and the Gang, Emotions and Michael Jackson. It was entirely indulgent. For three and a half hours, I had a very good time.
I did a bit of a text-around my contact list to see if I could get a couple of friends to turn up. Astonishingly, quite a few did. Bobbie came down for a quick drink before returning home to Jake, and another 10 or so people-I-like came and joined the punters.
A couple of people-I-like who had never met before ended up chatting and finding they had many things in common about which to have a conversation, so that was nice, but mostly I liked being allowed to play records loud.
Even the disco ones.
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