DJing at How Does It Feel To Be Loved -

King of hangovers!

It’s about a zillion degrees right now, my head throbs like a wobbling rubber monster from Dr Who and I feel like I’ve slept about two minutes. On a pointy rock.

And the reason for my hangover is the aftermath of my first ever ‘guest DJ’ slot at the excellent How Does It Feel To Be Loved last night.

It’s a 60s/indie type club and trying to please their highly fickle crowd for over 90 minutes was a tough call, but I think I just about pulled it off.

My DJ slot started quietly as the club slowly filled up. A German bloke with a curious wander-around-the-dance-floor dance routine would occasionally loom close to the DJ booth and mumble, “Vill you play some indie pop?” before shuffling away again.

Slowly, the dance floor grew busier – I was doing something right! But when I said the crowd was fickle, I wasn’t joking!

Morrissey’s excellent ‘First of the Gang To Die’ set the dance floor alight, and – confident that I was now capturing the zeitgeist of the crowd, I whipped up the dance frenzy with a storming KLF single.

Uh oh. Big mistake. The second the ‘Mu Mu’ chorus burst forth, the dance floor cleared quicker than a rocket assisted cheetah and I was left to hastily revise my playlist.

Out went my collection of sophisticated ‘ironic’ hits from Frank, Elvis, Shirley and Tom, the ska bonanza was consigned to the back of the record bag and there wasn’t a hope of Goldie Lookin’ Chains single making contact with the stylus.

So, like a brazen slut, I played safe and slapped on the Cure, Smiths, Strokes, Pulp and Franz Ferdinand and all was well on the dance floor. Phew!

For the first time I began to realise just how tough a job DJing can be and learnt one big lesson: bring more records next time!

A nice end to the night was meeting several Monochrome Set fans who had turned up to see me (I played drums on their Dante’s Casino album).