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I don't want to dislike and feel disconnected to contemporary popular music, dammit. It makes me feel old.



Yep, that's me too. I really try to at least have some inkling of what's going on now but it's getting more and more difficult. One of my favorite reality shows is Bar Rescue. It's about a high powered consultant who goes in and completely remakes bars and clubs. One episode I watched the other day is a bar in Laguna Niguel, a very upscale area in Orange County, CA. Mostly college age kids 25 and under. A centerpiece of the redo involved their DJ. The consultant brought in another DJ who worked with Eminem and other big names to train the current DJ. It was fascinating to watch him do the training. It was all about crowd management to maximize drink sales. He talked about beat matching where he smoothly transitions from a 95 bpm song to say a 115 bpm song by doing various software tricks live. He also talked about how to spin the vinyl which I grudgingly admit is a true skill, talk to the crowd and stuff like that. The pro said to drive the dancers hard for maybe 20 minutes then deliberately tone it down for about 5 minutes to give the dancers a break and nudge them to the bar for refills then crank it back up again.

This is a fairly large and beautiful night club with a max capacity of about 200. Perfect for what we used to play with our bands in the past. There was no mention of live music, the DJ was the star here. In fact one of the changes that was made was to move the DJ booth from the side of the dance floor to front and center where all eyes are on him. I'm not even going to describe the music, we all know what it sounds like. What I know of bands and all their problems I can see how it's much easier for management to deal with one person who's a pro DJ who is an integral part of the club and he turns himself into a star. Who needs a band?

When the finale of the show came with their grand reopening the crowd was very well dressed high end yuppie types with lots of barely dressed hot babes, the place looked awesome, the music was thumping the drinks were flowing and all was well. Exactly the kind of place all of us would have gone to back in the day except for one thing, no bands. Oh well, times change.

Obviously what happens in SoCal is not what's going on in the whole world but we tend to be the leaders and everybody else follows eventually and DJ's are already a big deal and probably getting bigger.

Oh, the Grammy's. Right. Pass.

Bob

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