Posts filed under ‘DJ Wesley Personal’
The chart lives!
For months now, I’ve been hoping to finish designing and programming a web application that would let me make the maintenance of my Top 25 Dance Chart easier. Making them manually is a pain in the butt, frankly, and it’s way more subjective than I’d like it to be. Since the dance music industry has enough politics going on inside of it to make the presidential election season look tame in comparison, I really wanted to try and remove as much subjectivity from the process as I could. And yes, I acknowledge, at the end of the day, a lot of what I choose to spin is based on my personal preferences, as it is with any DJ; but I wanted it to be as accurate and removed from “who do I like this week?” as I could.
While I’m weeks late in delivering it, I finally did, this week. You can see the results at http://www.djwesley.com/chart/.
The chart is based solely on play frequency data from the past six week period, which I selected because it’s a decent sized sampling, and it would help damp some of the “I got this new song this week and I love it so I play it all the time” effect. Play frequency is obviously based on my choices, but that’s also a reflection of audience response, and also factored-in are specific audience requests.
Throughout the week, I’ll upload playlist history data straight from my DJ’ing software of choice. Then each Friday, the web site will automagically generate an updated chart. So make the above URL one of your weekly stops.
At some point, I’ll see about putting it all into an RSS feed for those of you who are as web-geeky as I obviously am.
Anyway, thanks for your patience, and I hope you enjoy the fruits of my labor.
Show notice: Tracks (Denver), Thursday, November 15
I’m pleased to let everyone know that I’ll be spinning again at Tracks, one of Denver’s hottest dance clubs, on Thursday night. My good friend DJ Brian Howe (known for, among other things, his shows on XM Satellite Radio) just got residency at Tracks, and will be spinning there every other Thursday. I’ll do my usual house warm-up set this Thursday, 11/15, starting at 9:00 PM, and Brian will take over later with his awesome, high-energy mash-up style.
If you happen to be in the Denver, Colorado area, I hope you can come out.
Listen to Internet dance radio?
If you are someone who listens to Internet dance radio, I’d like your help in answering a few short questions in this survey.
Truth be told, I’m tossing around some ideas with a colleague of mine, and your responses to the survey would be helpful in thinking some things through.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Brief hiatus
Hey everyone, I’m going to be on hiatus for a short period while on vacation. I have several new blog posts in various states of completion, and I’m hoping to (finally) bring some of them to completion while I’m away from the day-to-day for a bit. Look for new blog entries mid-month in September.
Thanks for checking the blog, and thanks for listening.
Keep that volume turned-up!
Wes
Web site updated
Just posted tonight some updates to my regular web site at http://www.wesleyspengler.com. They include:
- Posting the latest Top 25 Dance Chart (up from Top 15!).
- Retiring my gig calendar from MySpace, and posting a more extensive on the site itself.
- Making a slight design tweak.
- Fiddling with some other content.
I hope you have a chance to check it out if you haven’t already.
Crank-up the volume… Wes.
P.S. A “regular” blog posting is coming this weekend; work demands have kept me from having the time to finish-up the one I’m working on.
A pleasant surprise: Sally Jaxx
I was very pleased today to receive a nice e-mail from singer Sally Jaxx. Sally, who hails from the UK, is the vocalist behind the dance cover of the Dolly Parton song 9 to 5 that I’ve blogged about before here and here.
Sally’s clearly a class act, because she took my criticisms of the song in stride, addressing some of the issues I’d brought-up in my blog posts in the process.
And as I told her in my e-mail reply, cover songs are tricky. If you stay faithful to the original, as she did in her version with Fabulous DJs, you create interest and immediate identification among people who know the original version. If you stray too far from the mark, you risk people having reactions like, “You ruined my favorite song!!” So I fully appreciate the challenge that Sally Jaxx and others are faced with.
You also have record labels and producers telling you what they want, and artists don’t always have the sort of influence on direction that you think they would.
I also told Sally that despite my initial feelings about the song, it’s been very well received by my audiences, and I continue to make it a part of my sets. This proves once again that these things are subjective, and that what matters is what the people on the dance floor respond to. (I also want to note for the record that I’ve since warmed-up to the track!)
Sally also set me right on a few items. For starters, her last name is “Jaxx” not “Jacks” as the song was credited on my promotional copy.
Secondly, in one of my blog posts, I was confused about the song credits for 9 to 5. As it turns out, Sally originally recorded the song with New Emotion, targeting the gay dance audience primarily. When it was picked-up by a small UK label, they had a reasonable amount of success with it, and took it as far as they could. Ministry of Sound and Sporting Riff Raff Records out of the UK decided they’d like to take the track a bit farther, going back into the studio with Sally to cut another version, which was done under the name “Fabulous DJs” as I’d mentioned before.
So, that explains the artist ID confusion; there are two separate versions, both of which feature Sally’s vocals.
Sally also let me know that Fabulous DJs (I stand by my comment that they could have come-up with a more compelling name!) are the production team of Daz Sampson and Paul Keenan. (Daz is also 1/2 of the Riff Raff Records label.) The pair is also known together as Uniting Nations, and have had a fair amount of success in the dance music scene, individually, together, and as part of other creative teams. As someone who likes to know the people behind the sometimes goofy artist names, it was good to uncover the guys who put this track together.
A public “thank you” to Sally Jaxx for taking the time to get me up to speed. I look forward to hearing more from her in the future.
Crank-up the volume… Wes.
Thank gawd for iPod (oh, and mobile broadband, too)
As I write this blog entry, I find myself at the Las Vegas airport, waiting for the airplane to arrive that’s scheduled to take me home. That airplane is roughly 90 minutes behind schedule, apparently due to weather. While they haven’t said so, I can see from online radar maps that there are storm cells dotting the southwestern US, both around Las Vegas, and my destination (Denver) where the plane originated from that’ll take me home. I’m trying to be patient; truth is, I have little choice but.
As I write this entry, I’m thankful for two things:
- Mobile broadband from Sprint Nextel.
- The Apple iPod.
My Internet access comes by way of a BlackBerry, tethered to my laptop via USB. Having speedy Internet access via Sprint’s EV-DO Rev. A network almost anyplace I have a Sprint signal is a bit of a luxury, but for both work and personal uses, it’s also had some real value during some tough spots when a WiFi connection or Ethernet jack is nowhere to be found (or in cases where they are available, but ridiculously expensive [like the $15.00 a day at my Las Vegas hotel; give me a break!]). For the technically curious, EV-DO Rev. A runs as fast as 3 Mbps downstream, and about 300 kbps upstream under ideal conditions. Usually, actual performance is about 1/2 that. So a cable modem it’s not, but it’s not too shabby.
As for the iPod, do I really have to explain this, and why I like having one? I didn’t really think so. Being a DJ or not, having “my” music nearby is just a necessity. All that’s changed since the debut of the iPod is that it’s a lot easier to do. While I personally predate CDs, I don’t remember having enough music or liking it enough to take it with me in the pre-CD era. Post-CD, yes, I can still remember schlepping a stack of CDs and a CD Walkman around on trips. Not exactly convenient. The iPod changed that, of course. Now I can take virtually every track of dance music in my collection with me everywhere I go (and I do). Along with all the dance music are some limited choices from rock, pop, and some other unmentionables I’m too embarrassed to talk about. (Can anyone say easy listening? Yeah, I thought you could. Please don’t do it again.)
Time for me to run along. Good news: The airplane just arrived. I can hardly wait to lay back in my airplane seat, stuff my Etymotics in my ears, and tune out the world while tuning in to some serious dance tunes. It’s been an exhausting day already; I need some R&R.
Crank-up the volume… Wes.
[CORRECTION: Sprint's EV-DO Rev. A technology is rated a 3.1 Mbps peak downstream, 450-800 kbps typical, and 1.8 Mbps peak upstream, 300-400 kbps typical. In my real-world experience, I nearly always achieve speeds at or higher than what they advertise as "typical." For me, I'm usually 1 Mbps or better downstream, with upstream speeds pretty much as stated (300-400 kbps or so). While this is no cable modem or DSL, it's quite serviceable, and sufficient for online media streams, and even playing Second Life at an "acceptable" performance level. —Wes, August 3, 2007]
No, that’s not me in the picture
[Updated 7/13/07] The photo has been replaced. That is me.
[Original Posting] OK, somebody already asked me, so I have to say… No, that is not me in the photo on the site.
When I was tinkering with the design tools here on WordPress, I wanted to replace the standard photo in this template with something appropriate, but had no digital photos of myself at-hand. So I mocked that one up.
But yes, I will be changing it out soon enough with a similarly styled picture of your truly.
The obligatory welcome posting. (Ugh!)
OK, so every blog has to begin with a welcome posting of some sort, the posting where the blogger (me) gets a feel for the editing tools, etc., etc. This is that posting.
I’m somewhat hopeful about my prospects to maintain a dance music related blog. Honestly, I’ve tried blogging before, but haven’t been very successful with it. But then, it’s never been on a subject about which I’ve been as passionate as I am with dance music.
Dance music is sorta my life in some ways… I have to have it on all day, and often all night. It’s my elixir for a crummy day… My puppy upper and doggy downer all mixed (bad pun) into one. It’s better than coffee, better than Ambien, better than Xanax. Just turn the volume up for an upper, and turn it way down for a relaxing downer. Somewhere in between maintains balance pretty well for me.
The drug analogy is apt in other ways, too, in that it’s addicting, and I always want more new music. There’s never enough.
I think this will do nicely for that obligatory welcome posting. Thanks for reading. We’ll see how I do with keeping this up.
