Four plus hours of deejaying

November 2, 2007

I arrived early – before 9. When I saw the crowd for the class, I decided that I could be in for a tough night. Joe apparently could not make the class so it was a smaller crowd than I expected and geared towards beginners. I had planned to start with a lot of slow songs, but it looked like even this was going to be a big bump in speed when I saw that Vish started the last practice song with a Cha Cha slowed down by more than 4% (eventually it was moved to normal speed). Substituting for Joe and Olga were Jay and Vish.

Playlist

La Muy Muy – Roberto Roena
Que Quiere La Nina – Kako Y Totico
Pachito Eche – Tito Puente & Celia Cruz
Mi Desengano – Roberto Roena Y Su Apollo Sound (1)
La Ley Del Guaguanco – Tito Rodriguez
Espiritu Burlon – Santiago Ceron
Quitate La Mascara – Ray Barretto (2)
Oye Como Va – Tito Puente (Concord recording) (3)*
Sientate Ahi – Oscar D’Leon
El Pito – Isidro Infante
Lirica Boriquena – El Gran Combo*
Montuno Street – Azabache* (3)
Mujeres De Mayari – Cubanoson (4)
A La Yumbae – Tommy Olivencia* (5)
Pobre Mendigo – Toque D’ Keda*
Don Lengua – Santiago Ceron*
El Pio Pio – Sonora Poncena*
Decia Que Me Queria – Cachaco*
El Titere – Louie Ramirez & Ray De La Paz*
Yambu – Tito Rodriguez* (6)
La Paella – Jose Alberto “El Canario”
Avisale A Mi Contrario – Roberto Roena Y Su Apollo Sound
Nadie Como Ella – Marc Anthony (7)
Lejos De Ti – Angel Canales* (8)
No Quiero Na Regala’o – Gilberto Santa Rosa
Mambo – Cachao
Descarga La Moderna – Ray Barretto (-6%) (9)
No Aguanto Mas – Celia Cruz & Johnny Pacheco
La Quiero – Domenic Marte
Ahora De Mi Pena – Henry Fiol
Ublabadu – Fania All Stars (voc. Hector Lavoe)* (10)
Margarito – Bobby Valentin* (11)
Ingratitudes – Bobby Valentin* (12) – birthday song
Bamboleo – Fania All Stars (voc. Celia Cruz)
Salsa Caliente Del Japon – Orquesta De La Luz* (13)
Night In Tunisia – Sonora Poncena* (14)
Llego El Sabor – Oscar D’Leon & Jose Alberto “El Canario”*
Salchicha Con Huevos – Jimmy Sabater con Son Boricua* (15)
Buenas Noches Che Che – Tito Rodriguez
El Verdadero Son – Javier Vazquez (16)
Yo No Tengo Amigo – Mark Dimond & Frankie Dante* (17)
Merengue track no. 5 from Vishal’s CD (18)
Musica Ligera – Toque D’ Keda
No Critiques – Manny Oquendo (19)
Disco Azucar – Los Van Van (20)
Mambo Mongo – Mongo Santamaria (Chesky recording)* (-6%)
Chanchullo – Fania All Stars
Se Me Fue – El Gran Combo
Fuego A La Jicotea – Marvin Santiago
Clasiquiendo Con Ruben – Afro Cuban All Stars* (21)
Swinging The Mambo – Tito Puente*
Caballero Y Dama – Celia Cruz & Willie Chirino
Que Bueno Baila Usted – Oscar D’Leon
Agua Del Clavelito – Johnny Pacheco*
Luna Negra – Rey Ruiz
Gotas De Lluvia – El Gran Combo (22)

(1) The first 4 songs have bpm of low 170s or lower. Well-known songs of comparable speed would include Thinking Of You (Lenny Kravitz remix) and Chan Chan (from Buena Vista Social Club CD).
(2) This was the first song to break the 180 bpm mark – barely. Micaela (Sonora Carruselse) is about the same speed. It was still mainly the crowd from the class so I felt that I had to proceed even more cautiously than I originally thought – and I had never been more cautious.
(3) In the crowd was a group of ~6 young men I had never seen before. One of them asked me if I was going to play any R & B. Uh Oh. I said no. Was it going to be all Salsa? No, there will be some Merengue, Bachata, Cha Cha and maybe Reggaeton much later after midnight. Did you say Raeggae? Urr… No. He asked me few minutes later if I could play Cha Cha. I said sure. He asked if I had any Santana. No. The only Santana Cha Cha I’m aware of is Oye Como Va, so here it went. It was a lot earlier than I imagined, but given the state of things I decided that it would be safest to play this. While this song was being played, another person stopped by to ask me to play more peppy songs. A merengue maybe? Ay Caramba.
(3) This was the first song to break the 190 bpm threshold – or the first one to medium-fast level. I thought I was seeing a lot of people struggle with timing, which made me wonder if it would be okay to play anything fast tonight. I was not exactly right about my assessment – which goes to show how tricky Fridays are. Raj, Zern, Euvian and Haihan arrived around here. Andrea and Polly arrived a few songs later.
(4) Only one couple was dancing to this song by the time I cued next song. Oh well. I decided to dance to this song except I was delayed for almost a minute retying my shoes.
(5) A new Merengue. Vish had left me with CD full of popular Merengue, but I was determined to avoid using it as much as possible. I think this song worked pretty well.
(6) Wow. I did not realize it at the time but that was 10 “new” songs in a row for me with caveat that some songs (most notably Montuno Street) are well known here. [correction added later. I apparently played Mujeres De Mayari (twice!) before so it's not 10 songs in a row.]
(7) There were two separate requests for Valio De La Pena (Marc Anthony) before and after I played this song. Both times I had to tell them it was on my list of things to buy but that I hadn’t bought it yet. I have no problem with such requests – million times better than “Could you play La Bamba?” True story tonight.
(8) I am pretty sure I heard Mohammed singing along to this song while dancing. Woo hoo! Liam and Steph walked in around here.
(9) This was the first song I artificially slowed down tonight – more than I had in previous occasions with this song.
(10) A technical glitch near the start of the song.
(11) I was going to do the birthday song here, but decided to play this one first to make sure the floor was a bit busier to start with.
(12) Birthday song for Andrea. Haihan caught the key lyrics. Others did not or presumably had seen it coming right from the start. Liam called it the most boring song, but a fairly bland song works best with many changes of partners – or so I think. Also Liam is known to exaggerate. Would you want tons of breaks and nutty passages if you want to get decent participation? It is one of several reasons why this song gets used all the time for birthdays and only for birthdays in some London venues.
(13) Luis was one of the later shows. He liked the return of this song, which had not been played here since Enrique's departure.
(14) I convinced Zern to stay a little longer for this and other songs. Liam called this one another boring one.
(15) At Haihan’s request – it was good for Liam too.
(16) As this song was starting another guy stopped by to ask me to play more Cuban songs – adding that this one was good. Right afterwards, Steph stopped by to relay that Liam wants to me to play songs he like – whatever that means. You see! This was a very tricky night!
(17) I had wondered for a long time when this song will be unleashed here. It was that kind of night. Cuban people seemed okay with it - at least until the really manic bit came on - my thought was that they were taking cover. Liam's take - it's a great song, but I don't know what to do with the beginning part. My take (having danced to it twice in Madrid) - go out there with a partner and see what happens. Before Madrid, I did not have an especially high opinion of this song. After Madrid, different story altogether.
(18) I resisted for the longest time, but it seemed appropriate and necessary. Thanks to Vish for making the option available.
(19) Every time I play this song, Mohammed asks me if I’m mixing songs towards the end. It does get pretty busy and chaotic towards the end. Also there was a request for Merengue or Bachata in the middle of this song, which prompted to exclaim in exasperation, "But the last song was a Bachata. And the one before that was a Merengue!" Admittedly she had a valid excuse more or less.
(20) Instead of trying to please both crowds by choosing compromise songs all the time, I’m alternating between extremes of both types for the moment.
(21) Finally a compliment from someone outside the usual suspects. Great music. Too bad there are not enough girls. But that’s not your fault.
(22) At 2 AM, my second dance of the evening.

Total 56 songs. 3 Cha Cha (2 new). 3 Bachata. 3 Merengue (1 new + 1 Vish). 47 Salsa (18 new). I had to play more popular songs than I would like to have because of a relatively thin and fussy crowd (I say this because I don’t want to overuse any songs – I’m speaking as if I DJ regularly here).

Afterwards Haihan for some reason decided to apologize for two songs last night. I completely misunderstood him at the time - I thought he was talking about some songs I didn't know much about. No worries! Those songs don't "belong" to me, and I greatly enjoyed dancing to it. Haihan also had some Bachata on after closing - stopped by Vish upon his return.

Gave a lift back for Steph and Liam. Topic on the way back. Miles Davis. Ray Charles. Bad breath and passing gas while dancing. No wonder some people are obsessed with chewing gums.