A recent professional DJ gig, the Hoboken International Film Festival, required a bit more preparation than I am accustomed. For this particular event, I needed to create a playlist for the acceptance of awards at the Awards Gala. These songs were needing to be for when the winners would walk up to receive their awards and then return to their seats after an acceptance speech. Sounds easy? Maybe not so much. For each award, I needed to have a different song that ‘matched’ the feel for the award and had a dynamic beginning and intro to create energy for the award recepients and the crowd. In all there were 21 awards/songs needed. Coming up with a playlist for this took about 4-5 hours of searching through my nearly 250GB library for songs that met the criteria needed. Fortunately, it came out OK:)
Today I will be preparing a playlist for a HS graduation party on Saturday night. This special young lady has very diverse taste for a teenager. Most teenagers when they say they have diverse taste, they usually mean they like several different forms of the same genre of pop music; dance/Top 40/club. This particular young lady wants Grunge, Pop, Top 40, Country, Rock, Classic Rock, Sinatra, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Billy Idol and of course, Michael to go with Slides (Electric and Cha Cha), and current popular dance songs like Akon and PitBull. When I was her age my musical tastes were also diverse. Back then, this was not acceptable because music defined social groups more and there was little opportunity for stepping over social borders as there is today. I am excited about getting the opportunity to share in her big event. She has even let me know what songs she wants to dance with her Dad, boyfriend, best friend and a dedication to her Uncle who recently passed.
All this fun and I haven’t even gotten to the gig yet! Can’t wait to see what surprises the party itself will present. Time to get back to putting some stuff together for Saturday night.
