SwingDJs

These days people are so affraid of posting critical comments of events. Open discussion I find is healthy. There were some people upset at STBLX last year, was it a majority, no. The majortiy had a great time. Only a few people posted there critical comments. Many others posted positive comments. You can see this same pattern for the Harlem jazz dance festival.

To keep everything under wraps and quit really is a dis-service to the organizers of an event. Why? because they then have no knowledge of how to fix things. What happens is attendance dwindles and there is no way of knowing why this is happening until it is to late. There is a bad rep spreading by word of mouth. Word of mouth hype is far more effective postive or negative then anything anyone can post on a message board. If people are trash talking your event and no one ever informs you and it does not appear on any board, I will bet that you will not address the issue that you do not know anything about. And I guarantee attendance will dwindle. Of course knowing what the issues are there and blowing them off is also a bad thing.

My issues with the STBLX was it did not meet my high expectations. I realize now that these expectations were set way too high. They came about from experincing blues in Chicago and by the event having a "blues" title which to me meant that they were going to do something special with the music. I should not have expected a great amount of varried blues that I had not heard, I should not have expected fresh and new music. What was played for the most part was standard music heard at most exchanges mixed in with music that was popular to the local dancers primarily modern R&B and funk. If I did not come in with these high expecations I think I would have enjoyed the event. I spoke of others and left them anoymous because they did not want to say anything puplicly, did they give feedback to the organizers at all? probably not. I'm not against saying who said what but I just don't want to do it publicly.

This exchange also made me realize that when I want to hear fresh new music that I enjoy then there are certain DJ's to listen too. So, now my choices of where I go are heavily influenced by who is DJing. I can tell you that where ever Raynard or Jessis play's I will hear this freshness in music. There are others too, but these 2 stand out for me.

Exchanges are for two purposes: tourism and dancing. Ideally, visitors to a dance scene and host city should experience things they wouldn't otherwise experience at home. Why have nationally renown DJ's unless it's a special, differently-themed event? It's like making the trip to Russia to eat at Macdonalds. Or going to England to shop at the Gap. "I'm going to travel across the country to hear that DJ I heard at that other exchange from the city next to mine!". I don't really see the point. Is it because a nationally recognized DJ is predictably good? Is that what it's coming down to? Fear of not being approved by the "national" scene? What happens when everyone leaves? If your scene sucked before you had the national DJ, it's gonna suck after the national DJ is gone. Diversity and the willingness to experience something new is what drives me to travel to other scenes. I want to see what other scenes have to offer and see what it will add to my dancing and to my music tastes. And dancing is a convenient excuse to see another city. And if you don't have a great time? Well, I never really enjoyed those 2 weeks in France either. Damn the French!

And what, for chrissakes, is with this incessant, ovsessive need to cut and chop and dice the music to be crammed into tiny, pigeonholes?

2004's Los Angeles Lindy Exchange will feature only local DJs and more importantly only local Jazz musicians.

BryanC wrote:Well, I never really enjoyed those 2 weeks in France either. Damn the French!

Funny, I was going to see if I could get a set at PLX...

BryanC wrote:Exchanges are for two purposes: tourism and dancing. Ideally, visitors to a dance scene and host city should experience things they wouldn't otherwise experience at home. Why have nationally renown DJ's unless it's a special, differently-themed event? It's like making the trip to Russia to eat at Macdonalds. Or going to England to shop at the Gap. "I'm going to travel across the country to hear that DJ I heard at that other exchange from the city next to mine!". I don't really see the point. Is it because a nationally recognized DJ is predictably good? Is that what it's coming down to? Fear of not being approved by the "national" scene? What happens when everyone leaves? If your scene sucked before you had the national DJ, it's gonna suck after the national DJ is gone. Diversity and the willingness to experience something new is what drives me to travel to other scenes. I want to see what other scenes have to offer and see what it will add to my dancing and to my music tastes. And dancing is a convenient excuse to see another city. And if you don't have a great time? Well, I never really enjoyed those 2 weeks in France either. Damn the French!

And what, for chrissakes, is with this incessant, ovsessive need to cut and chop and dice the music to be crammed into tiny, pigeonholes?

I'm going to disagree with you. I would eat at Macdonalds if all the rest of the restaurants sucked. i would eat only at macdonals if all other restaurants gave me the runs. I might enjoy other elements of Russia, the people, the sights, etc. I would only shop at the Gap if that was the only place I could get what I want.

Most Exchanges have hours and hours of DJ time to fill. Very few scenes have enough good local DJ's to fill all of those slots. Also, most DJ's are copy cats of each other. They all have the same music, so while the person may be a physically different person the music they play may not be. For example many starting up "Groove" style DJ's buy everything listed on Paul Overton's website. Personally for me this stuff has been played to death. Why would I want to hear it again and again. National DJ's are predictbly different then what all others are playing. National DJ"s in general have hundreds if not thousands of CD's. Your average local DJ is not going to spend that money and is going to have in the neigborhood of 20 to 100 CD's.

Some cities are built on tourism. What is wrong with showing your local swing scene a flavor of what is going on around the counrty. For example South Flordia has 3 DJ's for Lindy Hoppers that I know of. There is no way those 3 are going to fill 45 hours of DJ time. so there are 2 options bring in out of towners to DJ or fill slots with people who never DJ. I would choose the former and I think you would too.

I support what has been previously posted if you are lucky enough to be in a scene to have many good local DJ's use them. If not, bring in outsiders. But by no means use local's who don't have experience or locals who play the same music as someone else in the same scene does.

We were talking about having an all local exchange, all local djs, all local musicians, and all local dancers.

CafeSavoy wrote:We were talking about having an all local exchange, all local djs, all local musicians, and all local dancers.

Putting a bunch of local dance nights on the same weekend and running them longer? Could be interesting...

Yes Roy, but how on earth would you know that all the restaurants in Russia sucked if you never tried them?

Hey, if you're short up on DJ's then go for outside DJ's. But I get the impression that the reason why we're having this debate is that there are organizers who are choosing to go outside first before using up their local resources.

BryanC wrote:Yes Roy, but how on earth would you know that all the restaurants in Russia sucked if you never tried them?

Hey, if you're short up on DJ's then go for outside DJ's. But I get the impression that the reason why we're having this debate is that there are organizers who are choosing to go outside first before using up their local resources.

Why yes I have. Actually I thought they were good. But a few other people with me switched to american restaraunts because they had constant hershey squirts from Russian food.

wow, Roy... you should come to Pittsburgh sometime! we have four local DJs (Jered, Jake, Jason, and... Jakov?) who all play completely differently.

also: money shortage and cd abundance aren't necessarily mutually exclusive...

-yakov

BryanC wrote:Exchanges are for two purposes: tourism and dancing.

Exactly. I don't want to spend precious vacation time and hundreds of dollars to go to some city where the DJ's could suck. When you have nationally known DJs spinning an event, you know that the music will be what you expect. When there's DJ's you've never heard of, you have no idea what's coming your way. And if the DJ's suck, the exchange sucks.

I can't count how many times I've seen exchange events go from awesome to completely sucky because a bad DJ takes the booth. Ideally, the organizers would make sure this didn't happen, but realistically, there's only so much they can do.

I just looked at the LindyGras site. From the looks of things they should "fire" all the DJs cause their live music line up of locals looks awesome. Lucky bastards.

Yakov wrote:wow, Roy... you should come to Pittsburgh sometime! we have four local DJs (Jered, Jake, Jason, and... Jakov?) who all play completely differently.

also: money shortage and cd abundance aren't necessarily mutually exclusive...

-yakov

I've heard Jake DJ twice. I like what I heard. I havn't heard the rest DJ but I will take your word on it.

I was just talking with the organizer of the exchange we're putting on here in a little while and this topic came up.

I personally like to listen to local djs and see what the scene is like in their town. That's not to say that they should give the sets away to bad djs just to keep it local though. It's all about balance. Give time to the good local djs and then fill in the rest with outside djs. That way you get the best of both worlds, even if a local dj bombs on a set or two, it won't be a total waste.

This thread actually inspired to try out something different. I will be doing a set at the 2003 Melbourne Lindy Exchange. I decided it would be interesting just to use Australian music for that set. I was into Australian jazz music long before I started dancing so had a reasonable sized collection of Australian jazz already. I have also been recently been avidly searching for suitable material. Most of it is from Sydney where I have spent the most time. But some also from Melbourne, Adelaide and Canberra. There are good jazz scenes in Sydney and Melbourne and a very good school of music which has a jazz focus in Canberra. I think I have around 40 cds with danceable material at present. So come to MLX and see how it turns out. You can be guaranteed that you have never heard any of the material!
ps I DJ in Canberra in a very new scene - only being going since May this year so the question of tired and ed out songs is not an issue yet. 95% of the dancers have never heard Wade in the Water