Head-banging to Pugliese

opethpainter

I can think of a few examples most unlike the more low-key DJ spots I mentioned. Most memorably, Beth Anne Osborn. I heard her the first year of the Blackpool Tower weekend (2014) which was the only year I went. Video. I already mentioned the highlights for me of that weekend, which were neither the music nor the dancing. I heard Beth Anne DJ at the Marine Hall in Fleetwood on the Sunday. 

'A':  What can you do if the DJ is playing painfully loud music?

'B':  Normally I leave, and avoid that DJ in future.

'A':  Can you say something?

'B':  Yup. You can tell the organiser why you are leaving.

'A':  I asked the organiser to do something about the sound which was so loud I was wincing & my ear hurt. I sat and sat and sat. I enjoyed watching the dancers for quite a while. The music was good. I talked to the DJ for 5 minutes. She runs the Portland tango festival. 

'B': Famous for the likes of this . (I have never been.)

'A':  I learnt some interesting things about tango in Ann Arbor, Michigan & her view of the differences in guys internationally. But the volume was still going up & down. When she put on Fresedo so loud it distorted the sound I'd had enough. Where we had been chatting, behind the speakers it was fine & she only walked the room once (after I complained to the host! ).

I left and took a walk along the beach in the sun and went back in later.

As I was leaving my friend came out to see if I was alright. I said I wanted fresh air & sunshine. She asked if I was having a nice time & I explained. "You're not in the mood, are you?" she said. "You're not making any effort to dance! Take off your cardigan & look as though you want to dance! "

'B': Ah. Start with a lie. :)

'A': I protested, "I'm cold!".  It was a big room.  On the one hand what she said was all perfectly true. But I was doing the textbook thing - waiting to be asked & keeping an eye out. But no I wasn't in the mood & getting less so every ten minutes. I'd already avoided a few "late cruisers": guys who cruise the hall after the tanda has started. I wasn't sure how they danced but I didn't think it was worth the risk. And I wasn't returning eye contact with guys with whom I didn't know how they danced. So after I'd been there an hour & a half I realised it wasn't salvageable & left.

To 'C':

“I saw an American DJ Beth-Anne Osborn doing the same once [pumping the air]. Someone told me she organises an alternative scene in the US. She played good tracks when I heard her 18mo ago at Fleetwood near Blackpool but the headbanging to Pugliese, the focus of the DJ spot on the stage, the arm punching the air... :( :( I didn't dance a single tanda there - the conditions, the gloomy room and the deafening volume made for one of the most unpleasant atmospheres I can remember at a milonga. I went for a walk on the beach instead eventually. But I see last year they brought her back again. Friendly lady though.”

I don't want to be mean. Beth Anne was interesting and accommodating to talk to a stranger mid-tanda.  Maybe the head-banging is just the American way and the track, which was near the end I think, was amazing. It felt like slow-motion or the notes at that point drawn out. If memory distorted slightly I might visualize a strobe light too. That's what it felt like to me, observing:  that piece of the track in slow-motion and Beth Ann on stage, her torso and head moving up and down to the music, completely absorbed by it. It felt slightly surreal, like neon flickering in a bar where all is not quite what it seems.

But she was participative and having fun and shouldn't the DJ have a good time too?  Why should anyone care what she does on stage - the dancers were dancing, the sitters were watching (and we weren't many) and Beth Anne was enjoying herself.  I think we are just used to our DJs being more reserved here. It was fun, it was entertaining for me, watching. It was a cultural thing.  It was only unusual. Let's say it was just that I didn't have a good time there.  Maybe I felt at the time a bit coerced which I'm hardly pro at the best of times, least of all on a day when I've been deafened, frozen, not danced and eventually abandoned ship.  I just felt there was a bit too much "whipping up".

Then again, sometimes things just really do go too far.  I'm thinking of DJ Goran Nikšić at the December Etonathon 2015 which I don't think I ever did get round to reviewing, though I reviewed Cambridge at New Year a few days later.  It was partly I suppose because I didn't see how I could pull off being honest, polite and still hope to get back in.  You can get a flavour of the guy and his music here.  I couldn't quite believe it when I saw the DJ line up for this year.  The new version (phew!). But it was what he actually did at  the Etonathon that I'm thinking of.    Another time maybe.