I tend to fill my sets with jams for the people that are always around: my homies, the regulars I like, the staff. I could care less about the actual patrons of the bar. This might be why I feel like I'm not a name that draws in crowds. The whole reason I started DJing was to listen to music I wanted to hear while drinking. Playing jams for these specific people, though, brings about the issue of association. A song gets redefined from something I casually listen to into so-and-so's favourite song that I play out just for them.
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Sometimes I'll find a song when I'm trying to branch out of my comfort zone and before I develop a relationship with the song, I'll find out about other people's experiences with it. In my early days at Red Star, I decided to look into a bunch of classic rock and came across CCR's Long as I Can See the Light. This is a great end of the night jam especially when played to a nearly empty room with all the candles lit on all the wooden tables. Besides all of that, this is the jam I play for the homeboy, Rene, the bartender. He's told me some beautiful stories that he’s associated with this song. It's a song that reflects friendship and loss for him. This song is now ingrained in my head as the bald, bearded man behind the bar's song forever.
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Girls...girls are typically the fucking worst thing to attach a song to and I do it far too often. I always look to the cutest girl in a room and try to figure out how to keep her dancing or bobbing her head. I once played Yacht's Psychic City and this girl I was styling looked over and danced her arms at me to the chorus all, "come on over over"-like. She was skinny and lanky, so her gestures were so specific to her steez. I played the song again like an hour later, because I had nothing more in that vain. She left, but this song will always remind me of a certain wave of arms and a come-hither stare.
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I was hanging with this girl recently and it nearly destroyed all of my DJing ability (which isn't much, but whatever...). I usually don't expect anyone to come by my gigs when I invite them to come out; so, when this girl actually showed up, I was pretty caught off guard when she walked in. The night turned the fuck out. We got drunk and sloppy and the room got out of hand. I had the most fun playing that night. For a brief moment, music sounded sweeter and I was better at what I did.
Weeks later, things went sour and I was left wanting to rid myself of my entire music library. Everything reminded me of her. The song she walked in to; the song she kissed me for playing; the song she drunkenly sang in the cab back to her place, all of them integral parts of my sets and songs I'll need to play for a while still.
Post Malone - White Iverson
Post Malone's White Iverson was the first song I got into once the dust settled. It's an ignorant, new school jam filled with cliche, current slang that I can completely turn my brain off to. I was first told to check it out by the homie Mike, the porter at The Bower. I didn't listen to it immediately, but his description of a Riff Raff-steez jocker singing a PartyNextDoor rip-off kind of intrigued me for some reason. It wasn't until I was debating leaving this girl's place one morning when the homegirl Corin convinced me to actually give it a listen. I needed anything to clear my head. I left and loaded up this song.
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"Post Malone", I like to think stands for "after her. Me Alone". White Iverson is a moody track that drops a nearly immeasurable amount of current slang (the chorus repeats how homie is "susin'" over this girl); there's a ton of bragging about how he's on the brink of blowing up; and though he's being lame over some girl, he still talks about having a bunch of hoes. Beyond the inanity of glamour-rap tropes, however, are very conceptualized basketball-themed rhymes fitting to the theme of the song, which I'm still convinced is a love song…
Hold up. I just realized that this song, if I'm correct, is about Love and Basketball, the favourite movie of the girl I was just talking about. Fuck. Maybe I need to stop playing this joint out...Well, I've already gotten into this post so I'll just finish talking about this song. Maybe I won't think of it as a love song after all.
Let’s start again. The song is about Post's hoop dreams. He "ain't rich yet," but he's on his way there. He's "with some white girls and they lovin' the coca" and cleverly drops, "like they O.T. [Genasis, rapper of the summer banger Coco]...Double OT". Not mind blowing wordplay but I definitely laughed. I could go on and on about every basketball reference in this (oddly no Mailman references for someone with post and malone in their name) like his allusion to The Answer's infamous Practice diatribe and I'd be saving you the time of giving this an in depth listen, but really, I'm already getting too deep into this relatively hollow track. I highly doubt Post Malone will have a career as lucrative as #3's and will be more akin to a rookie that blows his knee out in summer training camp.
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I holler at Corin pretty much every time I play this. It's a good reminder that there are good people surrounding me. It can be a pleasant thing to associate people, places, or moments to songs. It might simply be your best friend or a glance from a cute girl. It can also be terrible (like how Natalie Imgbruglia's Torn was the first song that came on MuchMusic when my first girlfriend dumped me). I don't know what the best way to attach songs to people or moments is, but it happens and it's going to constantly happen when you pay too much attention to music.
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