An intimate gig at the Social Bar and Cafe

I had a very interesting time at the Social Bar and Cafe, located at the RMIT Village Old Melbourne (RMIT student accomodation).

It was a private function for around 60 foreign exchange students (although more than 100 turned up in the end!), and I had to take my own equipment and speakers. I hired two Behringer B300 speakers for $70, from DGENR8, which was the cheapest place I could find to get the type of speakers I wanted, and I took the rest of the equipment from home (2 x technics, Numark CDN-36 dual CD player and Numark DM3050 mixer). The speakers were unbelievably heavy, but were powerful enough for the 100 or so people. Since the speakers were so heavy, I didn't bother lifting them up to slide them onto the speaker stands -- I had enough trouble taking them out of the car! Leaving the speakers on the ground turned out OK though, as many of the people were at a much lower area of the bar, than the speakers.


While setting up, I needed to borrow a table from the bar to place all the equipment on, and I decided to go with one big round table, rather than two small round tables. It turned out to be a very bad move, as I ended up with barely enough space for the equipment! Instead of bugging the bar staff again, I decided to place everything strategically on the single round table, so that I could at least use the turntables and the mixer. So unfortunately I didn't end up using the CD players (but then again, I have much more fun when I play 100% Vinyl anyway!).

When the bar started getting crowded, people were surrounding the round table, and it felt more like I was a part of the crowd than the DJ. It was nice though, just the way I liked it. I was able to feel the energy of the crowd and judge what music they wanted. Although generally you get more requests when you're very close to the crowd, than when you're separated from them, I didn't get many requests, luckily. The requests I did get were mainly for 'Latin' music, which I didn't have with me. The other requests were for commercial house, which I played for about 30 mins, until people started going back to a more relaxed state, which allowed me to get back to some US house.

A (under 4 min) video of the gig is shown below. My butt is in the way for most of it though!