Thursday Night at the Tavern

Maybe it's my age, but for some reason I don't like going to bars. Now that is not to say that I don't like getting a drink, but bars are too loud to talk and the music generally is not good enough to dance. Yet I can be seduced to go out. Last Thursday my friend called, said she was in town, and asked if I was free to go out that night to the Taven in Pacific Beach.

I am not going to go into the details of my night out, although there are some good stories such as my friend forgetting his ID and driving all the way back to the North County to get it. What I do want to discuss is the music that the Tavern was playing. Early on in the night they were playing upfront hip-hop with some classics thrown in. I am not sure if the DJ was using DVJs or some other kind of software (he was not visible in the DJ booth), but the mixes were seamless and the corresponding video for each song was playing on select TVs throughout the club. However the music was being presented, it was working and the dance floor was full the entire time I was there.

With management making such a positive decision to have good music in their club it was disheartening that at 12:30, when the clubbed switched over to house music most the tracks they played were 5 years old. They even played "Shut the f^@& up and Dance!" That song was great, I bought two copies of it, but it definitely sounds dated. I know that I can not expect the newest Trentemøller track but come on... There have been loads of great up tempo vocal house tracks that have come out in the past couple of years that should work just as good for a college crowd.

I don't really care about a bar playing outdated music; there is a general trend to play old dance music and this reinforces listeners' negative opinion of it. DJs, even at the run of the mill bars, need to continue to push the limit. Introduce new songs. It is too easy to cave in and say "The punters only dance to what they know." But then we might as well be jukeboxes.

- Charles Cushman