[Tango-L] cortinas, conventions + such

[WHITE 95 R]

>Dear Lucia y todos,
>
>Alas, though that was true in B.A. in the milongas I attended,
>it is not true of several of the North American deejays Neil listed,
>and makes for a FRUSTRATING DISAPPOINTMENT with the music played
>by those several,
>and yes, Manuel, I have mentioned my disappointment to a couple of them
>directly, but to no avail.

Dave, I undersatnd your disappointment. But DJs just play waht they want. Is 
this a common occurrence? Do the "well know" travelling DJs play bad music 
as a rule? Obviously, I don't know exactly who you are talking about, so we 
might be talking apples/oranges here. But I've heard several DJs who travel 
to festivals and these were generally quite good. Of course, I have heard 
others who basically left me cold. Still, I'm only defending those who I 
think are competent, and there are a number of them.... Naturally, everybody 
can have a bad day. I admit that I've had some blaaahh days myself...


>To have the second, and only the second, song of a tanda be
>D'Agostino+Vargas, is extremely frustrating.
>To have all four songs be from different orchestras is
>abominable.

This is absolutely true. I agree with you totally. For me, D'Agostino w/ 
Vargas is absolutely sacred and not to be trifled with. I hate it, just hate 
it when DJs mix the classic D'Agostino with the later orquestra with other 
singers during the same tanda. It literally makes me want to scream. I also 
hate it when the tandas are a mish mash of styles and eras, even if it's the 
same orchestra. Please don't get me going about mixing orquestras.... (yes 
it can be done, but only in extremely rare instances)

>
>I try to choose a partner for the music.
>
>When the style/orchestra changes with the second song, and again
>with the third, yes, I would vote with my feet, if I could,
>but it's a festival
>and there are tangueras with whom I would like to dance,
>but the music is not contributing
>but instead is getting in the way!

I feel for you. I don't believe anyone should be subjected to suffering like 
that. Particularly during a festival. I will say that in my experience, I've 
heard more better music and better DJing than bad. Specially in most of the 
festivals I've been to. Granted, I've sufferend through abominable music at 
more than one famous festival. I agree that there are some awful DJs 
perpetrating throughout the land, but I don't think it's my place to cast 
aspersions on the entire genre because of the bad apples.

I have very strong opinions about what's good danceable music and what's 
garbage. I rarely play anything that's not emminently danceable tango music 
from the golden era. I also feel very strongly about swing, salsa , merengue 
and Cha cha cha. There is plenty of excellent music in those genres too and 
I don't understand why some DJs play the most atrocious, cheesy, smarmy 
examples of that other music too. Generally those are the same DJs that play 
the worst tango music. I actually believe that they have a special, pervert 
talent to choose and arrange the worst music at the worst times.

My solution is to avoid their milongas and events at all costs. I don't have 
a personal animus towards these people. Many of them are quite nice, etc. 
It's just that I didn't sign up to suffer through bad music. Sometimes maybe 
you'll visit Atlanta and get a sample of good DJing by yours truly and other 
competent local DJs. Then we can talk about this topic at length (-:

Manuel