I had the pleasure of DJ-ing with Mark Ronson on Satuday night @ Bandstand, and I was curious to hear what he would play, as I know he used to be a Hip Hop DJ and grew up in New York, but then I know the kind of music that he’d had hits with too… So all of the 3 Beat lads were very interested to hear him play…
Anyway, I was DJ-ing and playing mainly 80’s party dance (stuff like Colonel Abrahams - Trapped, Cameo - Word Up, Gwen Guthrie - Aint Nothing Goin On But The Rent etc) and then i dropped New Order - Blue Monday, which got an enormous scream from the crowd, proper hysteria… until I’d realised that a very tall man in a suit with a Massive top hat had walked on stage.. Ah.. It was Mark Ronson.. makes sense with the screams now! Ha Ha..
So Mark politely asks can he borrow my headphones, as his team of men set up Serrato for him (superstars often forget head phones, co-incidently Rob Da Bank had forgotten his too…) and he complimented me on my musical choice “I’ve been listening from the other room, you’ve been playing some great tracks, it reminded me a lot of a club that I used to go to in New York” he said, which made me smile…
So Mark comes on, and it musically made sense to me, he was playing upbeat Motown kind of tracks, Stevie Wonder, Supremes, and then stuff like his version of Valerie (which raises the roof of course) and then he drops in to old school hip hop party rockers like Walk This Way. By this time I’d had too much beer and cant remember too much else that he played!
He later went on upstairs and did the full live thing, and was rather good!
A Good night was had by all though
Steve Parry
