Dude with your dad? *shakes head* I love ya Greg, but when I see you I'm going to beat some since into that bald head of yours.Greg Avakian wrote:I'm wondering where this will go. I admit I'm NOT well educated in who played where and when. That's only recently started to be important to me as my interest in jazz has just begun to develop.
The number of artists has nothing to do with how bored a dancer will or won't be. I could play a whole night and never play more than eight artists/bands and I bet I could keep the floor full, the dancers interested, and happy. The trick is which artists you choose, how versatile they are, and how lengthy their discography.For instance, a few weeks ago on one of those Yehoodi "argument threads" someone posted two DJs' selections from a Savoy-based DJ jam. I kept the list as a reference hoping to read about some of the bands and educate myself some (no i never did). Well, I just alphabetized it by artist and I was surprised to see that between them, the two DJs only played *16 artists* (hopefully with a bunch of different bands) during the course of an entire night. Two artists were played 9 times each, but only 1 artist was played once.
I would never want to do that as a DJ. As a patron, I'd be bored.
Remember that at the height of the lindy hop at the Savoy, there were usually only two bands playing in a night, not even a dozen... the dancers danced their asses off. If we went after Basie, Ellington, Armstrong, and Ella (both with Webb and without) as our staples we have a huge range of times and styles everything from "Old Skool" to "Groove", round it out with artists like Kirk, Henderson, Morrison, and Harrison.
