Eclectro Lounge 10: White Rastas and Broken Glass

Eclectro Lounge 10 went OK, and even my unpredictable MiniDisc player was working this time. By the way, I'm damn glad I don't own a car or driver's licence (this may sound strange to you 'Merkins, but here in the socialist hellhole of Finland we still have working public transport services with which you can get nearly everywhere): before we got to the club, we had to get petrol (and that's "gas" for you U.S. citizens) for Mika's Lada at a service station in Ratina, and had to pay 10 euros for 8.38 litres of fuel -- I never realized that stuff is so expensive these days! Makes me glad to be a pedestrian, who doesn't even have to use buses too often.

I had told Mika I never do the same mistakes twice, only new mistakes. So, it happened that this time I had remembered to take anything with me -- almost -- both my headphones and its club adapter; I only had forgotten about the RCA cord for my MD player... thus again, a walk back home to fetch that missing item. One should always see the comical side in these seemingly Sysuphus-like efforts.

It seemed quiet in the early evening, but this time the place gradually filled up as the night grew older. I just don't get people's musical tastes: the dancefloor remained empty when I spinned all those golden electro classics, and filled up only when I played some reggae, which many people had asked during that night (one hapless punter even requested me to play Children of Bodom, another of those Finnish export whatever-fucking-metal bands). Now, I don't have anything against reggae. I've got some of that stuff in my record collection (your basic Marley, Trojan, Max Romeo) and I love dub, but since there is some sort of reggae boom going on now in this country and every other pale white kid (that is, if they don't follow another fashionable youth culture trend, goth), especially if they are art school students, seem to have turned their Scandinavian light locks into rasta braids, I feel that reggae has become -- just like hiphop -- the sort of "mainstream alternative" music you can hear just everywhere.

Well, you know I'm not a purist in my musical tastes, and it's nice to play something different every time, but basically, as a DJ I want to play something which is not that much adopted by the multitudes, and you know it's electro that is my own passion, and I want to do everything I can to spread its message to the people. I'm glad I always carry with me some hiphop or in this case, reggae, "just in case", but I call it "whoring" every time when I have to take these diversions into the musical agenda that is currently popular but not exactly "my own thing".

As an entertainer of people, you don't want to send anyone home unhappy, but still feel uneasy if you let your agenda gradually slip and start to make too many compromises. Because in the first place it's not something you started playing records for, and that's why I quit playing as a guest DJ at Yo-Talo's Alternative Nights: I felt it was not my vocation to spin Britpop and current hits year after after for the drunken wannabe indie students, so that I could perhaps sneak in some my own favourite music if I get lucky. (I remember particularly one occasion with this fucking drunken "I pee perfume because I'm so high and mighty" bitch who came to whine to me as I spinned Aux 88 there, that: "I've been asking for that Suede record for two hours now, and you haven't still played it, you should play more quality music instead of this". To which I commented to the indiepop hussy: "I start to play more quality music, when our punters will have more quality in them." As you might remember, I call this DJ disease with the name discophrenia).

Well, after the reggae tune I even played The Clash's 'This Is Radio Clash', since I had that with me on some collection and I felt it would fit nicely in, and it was OK just for once. And this one guy was ecstatic when I had played Jaakko Salo's music from Professori Uuno D.G. Turhapuro, a funky variation of the theme music of Uuno Turhapuro movies...

Some people seemed to be restless this night. Someone had broken the men's room mirror (and gained himself seven years' misfortune), and there was this lad sitting in a table almost next to the DJ booth, who seemed to have a drunken primitive reaction and smashed his glass pint to the floor. Gladly nothing worse happened this time.

Here's the tracklist.

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