Episode 228 – Uptempo Closing Set (Fall 2011)

AG

Can we get back on topic though. Who cares what the EDM snobs think… I got mad love for the remixers!

Would love to see what more people are playing right now fall 2011 PEAK HOUR in open format or bottle service/mainstream type clubs.
Pingback: Topic of the Week: Our Site, Our Impact, & Our Content - RemixReport.com
http://twitter.com/DjJaySpring DJ Jay Spring

Thanks for the suggestions guys….

@google-844d412088969274b00e077431e90e2b:disqus …gonna have to check for the Mirror’s remix…
@c3105dcec84d21e3388432fdd30eff20:disqus …the Kaskade may be a bit too hard even tho it does have some chill elements to it.

and now @a805ef397c1e8191ab66f1839b520143:disqus …

1) I know it’s all love…always wanna know what peeps think
2) I really really disagree with you for many many reasons
But — you’ve given us a good topic of the week for Sunday, so we’ll
find out what our visitors really think. Glad you brought this up.

I was gonna explain what I thought here, but I don’t wanna influence the voting!
Do you mind if we repost your comment in our Topic of the Week, or would u rather we just mention that you inspired it? Sidenote: we definitely respect your opinion and the vote isn’t to see which of us is right, more like to see how many people feel like you do, and what peeps would like to see us really talk about. Sidenote 2: I hope you don’t lose the little respect for me that you have left, but I have no idea who Kings of Tomorrow are lol.

Jack

Spring, I appreciate the fact that you’ve taken my less than flattering comments in stride, and again, I have nothing but respect for JD and yourself… I cannot make that more clear. I’d be happy to discuss any thoughts you had, as well as what anyone else has to say in an open forum. I spoke my mind after in the comments section of an older “Rock-It! Rant” and got a similar reaction from Solarz. I’m all for giving back to the community, and will try to be as constructive as possible while expressing my point of view.

To give you a better understanding where I’m coming from, we’re about the same age, and got into playing live at roughly the same time. I started playing house for mixed audiences that later grew into an army of top 40 freaks wanting to hear radio-grade hip hop for hours on end. Enter the death of music as I preferred it, I watched other dj’s following the post-2000 hip hop wave that was really just a massive decline and cheapening of the genre from where it lived and what it stood for in the 90′s. Everything became anti-class. Think cheap Fubu sweatsuits and the guzzling of over-priced name brand champange and 22′s on used Toyota Camarys. Years later, when house started to enjoy some main stream popularity, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit of resentment after having to spoon-feed hip hop to the unwashed masses during a near decade-long career in NYC, only to watch the same crowds and DJ’s that were calling house music “techno” for all those years suddenly fall in love with the genre. At this point, I figure why ruin house the way hip hop was ruined. We don’t need Drake at 128 bpm.

I’m also the disgruntled dj behind the popular youtube video “Typical DJ Booth Conversation” that JD and yourself generously posted here on Remix Report…

With that said… let’s make this constructive. I’ll be happy to voice my opinion and get a good discussion going. Till then… rock it out this weekend..

(and regarding Kings Of Tomorrow, their classic “Finally” was my tongue-in-cheek example of a proper uptempo closing set track)

Christopher Davis

This should definitely be a good discussion for next Sunday but I’ll chime in just a little bit right now.

The “hip-hop to house” music hybrid. To be honest I really think the idea was created by DJs who wanted to play house music but kept getting annoying requests by club goers in top-40/open format clubs to play hip-hop. It sort of keeps “everyone happy” to an extent.
Alot of “hip-hop” people seem to always hate on “house music” for some reason. Alot of people do enjoy “house music but with words” and then we have the die hard “house music” fans but they only want to hear Avicii or Tiesto and it could be straight instrumental for an hour long yet will leave once you play the latest Drake song.

I won’t lie – a lot of the remixes out on Crooklyn Clan and other remix sites will throw together some garbage tracks over “dirty dutch” and even some “progressive house” since that seems to be getting popular with the mainstream crowds too.

But thats not to say that real, big-name artists haven’t caught onto the trend of “hip-hop & urban” songs using a beat produced by a big-name house producer – with these productions beening rather successful.

Jack

It’s called Hip House, and it ain’t new. Example from 2003 original track was from 1989:

http://www.4shared.com/audio/qlQ5u7ZX/FLAUNT_IT_DJS_Vs_YOUNG_MC_-_KN.html

A “die hard house head” will likely refer to Tiesto as cheese… or trance, and Avici as a “johnny come lately” kid. The last guy that made a big impact at that age was James Zabiela.

Crooklyn Clan bedroom producers are not house music producers. I would recommend beatport to anyone who hasn’t already determined that DJ Beatbreaker steals everything he makes from there.

I think the goal of the “Open Format” dj… which is pretty much what you HAVE to be these days is to appease crowds with varied musical tastes. As a true lover of electonic music, I would get annoyed when tracks like Kanye’s “Stronger” came out, or just about anything by Pitbull who just yells random unimaginative crap in spanish over classic house tracks, but then I realized that these clowns actually let me play songs I normally wouldn’t get to, so I accepted it for what it was.

That being said, just dumping Drake lyrics (yes, I keep picking on Drake, because I feel he is one of the most overrated, zero talent ass-clowns in the business) over a generic dirty dutch beat pack for Ableton is real weak in my opinion. It CAN be done right, (i.e. Jake Reno’s “Memories To Blow”) —- but it’s rare in the world of money hungry (cough… beatbreaker…. cough…) crooklyn producers slapping out 6 remixes a week without properly mastering a single one, or throwing more than an hour worth of effort into anything. I still struggle to understand why that sells, or who is playing it.

As for hating on this genre, or that genre, you absolutely cannot as an open format djs. You absolutely will get people in your crowds that ONLY want to hear hip hop all night or ONLY want to hear Hot 97′s playlist verbatim.. These are people who have absolutely no musical discretion. They like what they like because someone else is telling them what is cool. I would wager to guess that if you observed how someone like this dressed, their ensemble would include many current trends destined to be short lived… i.e. massive scarf on a dude wearing a t-shirt… Ray Ban Wayfarers in hot pink or something equally retarded. There is no fixing people like this. Extend your middle finger and move on.

It really comes down to ideologies. Why did you become a dj? If you signed up to be nothing more than a juke box, and you go home with a sense of pride and satisfaction after playing every request thrown your way on dirty bar napkins, then I apologize if you’re still reading this. Forget everything I said, and have yourself a dixie cup of Hawaiian punch. This was all just a bad dream. Alternatively, if you genuinely care about music, your career as a dj, etc, I implore you to research what electronic dance music really is, what it was, and where it came from. If your city hosts international artists, go see them, see what this is all about. I’m not advocating blasting your audiences away with obscure crap they have never heard before, but educating them here and their after you educate yourselves is not such a terrible thing. The goal is to have some customer run up to the booth asking for the name of the last song you played.. I could go on forever, but this portion of my ranting will hopefully get some gears turning for now..

http://twitter.com/THE_DjEASTWOOD I WIN AT EVERYTHING.

Jack I understand your opinion but it is clearly a house music head’s biased, closed, opinion. There is nothing I can stand less than someone that simply doesn’t enjoy a genre of music, to state that they don’t have talent. You don’t enjoy the music, you don’t see the talent, simple. Drake is an unbelievable song writer, weather you like the music or not. I don’t read Romance novels but I would never pick out a random author and say he sucks.

Jack

Well, A) my opinion is not random, it is based on personal experience, B) I’m open to all kinds of music, had you fully read my posts, you would realize that, and C) Let’s arrange a time and date to converse in 5 years time. I bet Drake will be completely forgotten by then. “Unbelievable” talents are often remembered, so there goes that theory.
http://twitter.com/THE_DjEASTWOOD I WIN AT EVERYTHING.

You probably said the same thing 2 years ago, predicting a 2 year future for Drake.

Jack

Let me preface this comment by saying that I like JD and Spring. I think they’re talented dj’s that genuinely care about their craft. Remix Report alone is a testament to their passion for music and the DJ community.

That being said, I need to gripe about something that has been bothering me for quite some time now. While they have both shown an impressive understanding of pop culture and it’s long lived fascination with hip hop, they seem lost in their understanding of dance music and why crowds have embraced it for decades before the remix reporters were self-admittedly distracted by popular hip hop and reggae trends.

Everyone is crapping their pants over house music right now, as if it’s something new and fresh, while most true music aficionados realized that the majority of hip hop coming out had become pathetically cliche nearly a decade ago.

I suppose my frustration resides in the understanding that JD and Spring are perpetuating lame trends (read: dubstep, dirty dutch, dubquackfarts, and uptempo remixes of assorted GARBAGE) further into the dj community. Increasing the BPM on some horrid Drake song doesn’t make it good, or make you appear to be musically enlightened to your audience. That drunk 20 year old with the fake ID wants to hear the original sh*t version without the wildly distorted key-f*cked synths provided by another bedroom DJ with big producer dreams.If you’re the sort of dj that caves into every billboard chart request you get and have absolutely no musical discretion or pride in your craft, (kill yourself, and) just play the original

If you’ve truly developed a passion for electronic dance music in this time of adult-diaper filling hype that has surrounded the genre in the last 8 – 12 months, then really do your homework, and try to understand this new-found fascination of yours.. To close your night out with an uptempo track, think Kings of Tomorrow, not Wiz Khalifa — remember, you’re trying to calm them and send them off with a smile… not scratching their heads and wondering why the retarded top 40 song sounded so “sped up”
DJ iRIZ

Kaskade & Skrillex - Lick It (Original Mix).. this track is a really good bangers/party dance with dubstep in it. It is very hard, so be for warned. It’s good to to have a track that transitions from soft to hard prior to playing Lick It, like Sultan, BT, Morgan Page, Ned Shepard – In The Air feat. Angela McCluskey (Mord Funstang Remix) is a good one to use.
Christopher Davis

Some house tracks that I have been feeling for closing are the following:
(Not so Top-40 friendly)

DEVotion – Good Love (Alesso Remix) .. 3LAU did a bootleg featuring AfroJack ft Eva Simons – Take Over Control (Acapella) .. I made a personal edit using the extended mix of the Alesso remix.

The Killers – Mr Brightside (Marco V Treatment Mix) .. Classic re-work, mellow but it hits pretty hard. I think its perfect for closing. MakJ’s Techno Fan Mr Brightside would work pretty good too if the Marco V mix is too soft for you.

Lil Wayne ft Bruno Mars – Mirrors (Sick Individuals Remix) .. Dope remix to help break this song. I also like their remix to Flo-Rida – Good Feeling.

From the playlist mentioned above, some remixes that I’ve been playing include:
(All are Top-40 friendly)

Anthem Kingz – Someone Like You over (Ianick & Alex Minerva – Odyssey) but my own personal edit for a QH & a DJ friendly outro.

Risk-One – Awooga from his (Stimulus Package 2 Bootleg Pack) .. DJ friendly intro/outro since that song can be tough to mix & some Kanye hype that fits perfect.

Statik & Shock – Cinema (Crooklyn Clan) includes Full & QH edits along with some “Fuckin Party” hype – even though it still sounds like “Fuck-N-Party” to me.
http://twitter.com/DjJaySpring DJ Jay Spring

We forgot the Cobra Starship!