SwingDJs

Anyone can play a lousy record. It takes true guts to perform awful songs in front of Lindy hop dancers. We had one such musician and he did it for years. He really didn't know what Lindy dancers wanted to hear and never really learned either. After finishing songs he would actually say, "Thank...

One way around this is to play songs that sound like the favorites but aren't. Most people will just assume it's that song they demand to hear every night. Some from my list: Big Joe Turner: Instead of "Shake Rattle and Roll" play "Flip Flop and Fly". Bobby Darin: Instead of &quo...

Use 1U for a keyboard/monitor drawer and the other for a 1U industrial computer chassis . Use the 2U from the CD controller for a USB remote control for BPM Studio. You mean drag around a rack mount PC with keyboard and a monitor? That's what laptops are for. I don't know what I'd use a remote cont...

Now that I've taken the obsolete dual CD deck out and thrown it in the garbage with my obsolete VCR, what should I use the empty bottom rack for?

Storing CD's?

Are you very, very sure it totally gets rid of Ground loops? The mixer's USB inputs go through isolation transformers. It's not possible to have a ground loop because there is literally no electrical connection between the USB inputs and anything else. There are no common grounds. How is it powered...

The Numark mixer I've been using for a little over a year has two USB connections so people can plug up to two laptops in and instantly have second 24 bit sound cards for free. I always get crystal clear sound and it's eliminated a lot of problems I've had with ground loops and loose connections. Pe...

and I couldn't find any Widespread Depression Orchestra the last time I looked. Good luck! One of their albums i ripped from vinyl. Some guy in Seattle had an actual CD of "Downtown Uproar". He offered to burn me a copy of it but I told him, nah, I'll just buy a legal copy of it somewhere...

I have about one third of those records so this'll help me. I've had trouble finding Big 18 records (lots of DJ's play stuff from these two records) and I couldn't find any Widespread Depression Orchestra the last time I looked.

A few Soviet jazz bands are mentioned in the book Stalin at the Movies , especially Leonid Utyosov who appeared in several Soviet films. Playing jazz in the Soviet Union during the 30's sounds like it was a tricky business since almost anything you did could get you killed. Stalin seems to have like...

Eyeball wrote:There were still lots of big bands playing Swing music in the pre-neo era. Most of the ones I know of were old school bands that were still around, but los of the stuff is very well recorded in either hi-fi mono or stereo.

Please name some titles. I'll buy them immediately.

I hope that someday I'll stumble across a decent record made by some obscure pre-neo swing band who played swing music before it got popular again. I have found some recordings by pre-neo swing big bands (for example, David Murray Big Band and the Blue Wisp Band) but oddly most of their records have...

I have one of the prettiest Zenith Transoceanic shortwave radios ever made called "The Clipper". It's a common goof to see this model in WW2 movies since they look so great, but it wasn't made before 1946: http://antiqueradio.org/art/zen1603.jpg It doesn't work very well. Fortunately this ...

You also just have to be an aware of the problems the lights with transformer plugs can create if it’s on the same circuit as the audio gear. This isn't much of a problem any more because all generic DC adapters are designed to work with audio equipment (like portable CD players) these days. It's r...

How about light? Many of these places are pretty dark and DJ's can go blind if they don't bring a flashlight or something. I bought one of these gooseneck mixer lights but I had no clue that some BNC microphone inputs don't put out 12V. For some reason Kristin didn't want me cracking her mixer open ...

Believe it or not, some people can get numb to the racket of "Metal Machine Music" after a few minutes and others just find it annoying. What's missing is screaming tuneless vocals, and no one was more tuneless than Test Dept. I think any cut off of "Beating a Retreat" would make...