Rock The Casbah #28 - The Halloween Throwdown

Sometimes a song will come on and I am like WTF? I hate this song! This song sucks! At the same time everyone starts cheering and dancing like crazy and I think to myself maybe it's not the song maybe it's me....

calm down! it was not meant as a personal affront to the actual "DJ mel", just the whole event. What I wear has nothing to do with it... I guess you looked me up on myspace or something?

Maybe most Austinites can giggle and dance to the same songs over and over and over, but I got sick after 3 plus years of that. You're insulting young austinites' tastes if you don't think you could venture out a little bit. Granted, I never cared enough about it to actually change it myself, I just think it's kind of a bad thing when you have to pay $8 to hear "Enjoy the Silence", that's all. You can mix it up a little bit more without risking people leaving or getting upset - I never heard Visage played at any Rock the Casbah I went to, and I don't see who wouldn't move their hips to "Tar" or "The Anvil", much less their most obvious hit. From what you've listed, it sounds like your real tastes are lurking beneath the Hungry Like the Wolf ad infinitum, and so here's hoping that changes someday.

I grew up in Austin and part of the reason I left was because I needed to see, hear and do more than what I was seeing, hearing and doing. So take your 12" of "Sensoria" and play it! Make people like it!

Amen, brother. Amen.

i struggle with what i personally love and what is guaranteed to make everyone get down at every event. trust me, my personal collection is pretty deep - laced with tons of records i bought when i was a kid in the 80's. cabaret voltaire, chris & cosey, dali's car, durutti column, march violets, recoil, anne clark, visage, industrial, r&b, lots of boogie and house records. random rap records, etc...

so with that said, i can be one that makes everyone dance all night or be someone that tries to school folks with my deep crates of music.

also, try to mix records that aren't quantized.

it's a balance, folks.

jesus, this is just an 80's party.

at the end of the day, it's all about seeing people smiling, dancing and having a good time...

Hey I was thinking about wearing jogging shorts and vans.....

Also can you play that one song you know that one song it goes......

I didn't mean the music itself was "formulaic." I meant: when I've gone I found it to be a consistent mix, or ratio, of obscure deep cuts and proven crowd faves. Therefore, the overall mix was understood to be a "formula," as applied by the DJ, to which the inevitable solution was rump-shakes. Word. Please don't mistake my commentary as disparagement.

I'm imagining mattgrundy with a monocle and a smoking jacket, sipping fine brandy next to a large, bay window overlooking the vast city, morosely shaking his head at the folly of young people - their misguided and uninformed tastes in music, art, and all things civilised.

It would be so cool if what I imagine is true. At least the monocle part.

matt grundy wrote:

i always always so saddened at how dim people's tastes were...

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dim? you wear jogging shorts & vans. that's dim...

I will never understand the people that always find something to complain about.....especially when it comes to djs.

I have never found the music formulaic and I have been going for a long time. Sure there are mainstream songs but there are plenty of more obscure stuff.

Of course you are probably one of the cool kids that show up at 11:30 and leave at 1.

Sure, it's formulaic, but maybe some people can't handle that there's a proven formula for shaking asses. Mel's Casbah is to booty-vibes as the quadratic is to finding the hypotenuse. Dig? Don't hate... especially when you're pimpin' a baybay panda.

Mel's sets for The Casbah were never meant to be full of obscure 80s gems which only a handful of dedicated oldskoolers would even recognize. They aren't for the 80s-obsessed. He and I talked about that a few years back, and even though he realized that his crowd preferred those "crowd pleasing" 80s anthems, he was already introducing some more esoteric songs into his sets.

Some Vicious Pink, Nick Heyward, Cetu Javu, Stephen Tin-Tin, that kind of thing. Who knows, he might even bust out some T99 or Acid Queen (I'm usually tuh-RASHED by night's end and have no idea what he's playing).

But that's never really been the point of the Casbah. It's supposed to be a big, joyously drunk, sweaty dance party. Cyndi Lauper works just as good as The Normal to that end.

is rock the casbah still going on? when i lived in austin 3 years ago, it was already the same, tired, uninspiring, crowd-pleasing 80's mainstream pop. "obscure" for DJ mel is duran duran. i always always so saddened at how dim people's tastes were...