Song 6 – A song that reminds you of somewhere – ‘In the Mood’ – The Glenn Miller Band.
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| Glenn Miller |
Back in the day (a phrase I feel old enough to legitimately use now), I was a DJ with the ‘Green Machine’ student mobile disco. It was actually a lot cooler than I just made it sound. As there were only us and our arch foes ‘Daylight Robbery’ in Durham we had the student market cornered and so we were doing a night or two a week plus whatever other gigs we could scrounge up for ourselves. Ah, Daylight knobbery, as we hilariously dubbed them. They were a couple of chancers from St John’s College who were probably a lot nicer than we ever took the trouble to find out. When you’re 20, life’s too short to be reasonable though isn’t it. And they did have BMXes (when it wasn’t cool) and used a microphone to introduce records so I feel we had some justification in regarding them with such contempt. Wars have been started for less. Anyway, we played events from the Law Society Christmas Ball (notable for some of the young gentleman getting their knobs out to ‘Nellie the Elephant’ by the Toy Dolls – they’re probably Tory MPs by now) to the always epic ‘Aidan’s Bop’ where we always played to crowds in excess of 600 people and did always make me feel pretty cool to be playing.
There were a lot of great nights. My closest brush with fame was warming up for Terry Christian. Google him young readers if you need to as his career’s not gone from strength to strength. I’ll always remember what I said to him as he shuffled his short and tubby frame into the booth behind me. “What are you going to be playing tonight Terry?” I asked. “A bit of this, a bit of that, y’know” he answered enigmatically. A man of few words was Terry, although if you’ve heard his Talk Sport Football phone-in, not few enough. I did headline the end of year bash at the Student Union in my final year although I’m not sure how that came about as I was playing the small Indie room on that occasion. My name on the posters ‘DJ Swerve’ possibly sold a few tickets. Probably not though. It was proper DJing in those days mind, just a couple of Technics 12/10’s, a couple of cases of ‘choons, a pair of cans, you and the ragged edge. *Ahem*
I just remembered, we promoted the end of year night ourselves and called it ‘Climax’ with a slightly saucy poster in an attempt to be controversial and so garner free publicity. Someone had organised the ‘Virgin Ball’ and managed to get the resultant fuss into the national tabloids so it seemed a good idea. Sadly, no-one took offence and it never occurred to me to write my own protest letters to the SU or University authorities. I was young and naive. I should have played dirtier. You live and learn.
We always ended our set with ‘In the Mood’ by Glenn Miller. It’s a tune that you can still dance to, but it chilled everyone out a little before we sent them on their way (there was usually a College caretaker waiting to pull the plug on us). It’s got a few false endings so we could nudge the volume down each time as part of the ‘soft landing’ for the end of the night. I don’t know why we used this tune or when the tradition started but it was our signature tune. The last time I played a set properly, at an NDWG Christmas Disco, I ended the night with it too. A trip down memory lane for me, but still a great great tune.
These days I’m all DJ’ed out. I no longer know what people want to listen to, I think my musical tastes got too broad somewhere along the line and I’m too tired of playing bad boring records I’ve heard a million times before. Give me a bunch of songs I don’t know to dance to, much more interesting.
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| DJ Swerve - March 1994 |
Anyway, Glenn Miller – In the Mood. It’s a song that’ll always remind me of Durham University in the early 1990’s. A shout out to my fellow DJs - Davey Scorer (where is he? Would love to get in touch with him again), Tim, Barney, Miles, Adam, Mark, Tom and of course DJ Star. Good times.
David Millington
6th April 2011
Nottingham
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