Total last-minute gig: I’m playing a free Burning Man decompression-style party in a winery warehouse in Napa Valley tonight. Except for my brief gig at the Rellik, which doesn’t count, I haven’t played out since moving to Northern California earlier this year. I’ll be playing a ton of funky house & breakbeat, probably moving on to bigtime progressive house as the night moves on and things get wacked. I’ll be tag teaming with another DJ as well — this should be a ton of fun, and I’m stoked.
But it also means a lot of scrambling, because I recently converted from an old version of my Traktor DJ software to a totally new version, and upgraded a ton of equipment. Unfortunately my ancient Sony gigging laptop won’t handle the new Traktor, which means I have to update playlists, massage tracks, and then practice on it using the MIDI controller I used with it as well — all of it glorious for years, and now sadly feeling kind of long in the tooth.
I’m amazed how quickly a whole new set of reflexes and kinesthesia can be acquired. I hope to be just as amazed how quickly they can be reacquired as I practice today.
I’ll record the gig, and hopefully put it (or at least part of it) online as a Groovelectric mix. kEwLz!