Saturday, August 6, 2011

Club Reports: The Groove, Club CityWalk, Latin Quarter, Bob Marley's

I have no recollection of the last time I went out to CityWalk on a Friday night but it's my duty to give you these club reports to keep you fully informed. And so I did.

The weekend resident DJ at The Groove is DJ King (Motion, BET Soundstage, Rock'n'Roll Beach Club, PI Live.

Really large crowd on hand last night for mostly Top 40 and mashed Promo Only-style mixes of old Top 40 and Hip Hop songs.  I've been hearing those same mixes in here since I first started coming here post-PI.

One nice thing about the continued merging of Hip Hop and House/Dance music is a lot of the Top 40 songs now are actually Dance songs too which makes coming here much better than it was three years ago!

Mom's Night Away event in The Groove!

We're calling that large outdoor expanse between Pat O'Brien's and Rising Star "Club CityWalk". And the music in that area was under the controls of DJ Smooth (Red Coconut Club, Florida Beat Radio, RadioDanz.com, Party95.com).

DJ Smooth was up on the Pat O'Brien's veranda spinning mostly Top 40.

Every time I walked by there were clusters of people dancing below so I'd have to call this use of the space successful.

Over at Latin Quarter DJ Leony (Sirius/XM BPM, RadioDanz.com, Club 23) was playing a lot of House/Dance with the expected Latin music formats.!

The club was no where near as crowded as what we see on Thursday nights for their free Ladies Night but it got crowded nonetheless after midnight.

DJ Leony is playing Progressive House this coming Tuesday night at the House of Blues in Atlantic City for DJ Expo.

Tonight (Saturday night) is the Jamaican Independence Day Party at Bob Marley's. Early admission is free but as a practical matter admission into the gated area will be $15. 

Dropped by last night to check out the house band and the crowds. Based on past experience, a lot of the regulars here won't pay the $15 to get in tonight so they'll be in The Groove instead. TG will be wall-to-wall! I will skip that.

16 comments:

DJ King said...

Hello,

First of all I would like to thank you for all that you do. You do an amazing job keeping up with all the club stuff that happens in Orlando and surrounding areas.

I would just like to make a quick statement about myself as a DJ/VJ and indusial. I see you use the words “Promo Only”. Please don’t use that phrase when referring to my work. I am sponsored by Smash Vidz (www.smashvidz.com), and I am also a Video Remixer on CrooklynClan.net, (www.crooklynclan.net/djkingorlando), please check out my work, I am one of the highest selling video remixer on the biggest site for remixes on the web for Vjs around the world. For any VJ that read this post I highly suggest for you to check these sites out if you don’t know about them already. I spend roughly 30 hours a week editing these videos and take a lot of pride in what I do.

On the other hand I do understand that I tend to play a lot of the same mixes on certain nights as a routine that I am working on for my traveling shows. I play a Casino in Biloxi, MS and have been to California, Wisconsin, Florida Pan Handle for Spring Break and my high light of my career is that I have played in China. Very grateful to my Pleasure Island roots as well. But I would like to mention that I started out at BET Soundstage and that tends to be forgotten and was my most favorite place to work at PI. I wanted to be full time in there but things in a big corporation have their own ways of working themselves out.

But in my defense I get the crowd hyped to the point that they are screaming the lyrics and throwing their hands in the air like it ‘s going out of style. I try and do what I can to keep the energy level up. Last night I tried to break into a dance set and my floor started to show holes. After a couple songs I went back to Hip Hop and the floor filled up again. At the same time I try and keep a good balance of music. All these things define me as a DJ/VJ/Artist, and will be building my following from my performance.

On a side note I would have to say that Orlando tourists are their own beast and not the same as Vegas tourists. Vegas has a reputation of having the most trendiest club scene and Orlando seems grab people that happen to be going back to the hotel after a long day at the park. Vegas has dress codes…..we don’t and so on. For all that it is I love being a DJ in the club.

I am going to the DJ Expo next week to meet up with many DJs for across the nation to get new ideas and bring them back to my set.

Thank you again for your reports, love the pictures you take and if anyone would like to keep up with me you can add me on Facebook at wwww.facebook.com/djkingotown.

Thanks Again,
DJ King

Anonymous said...

Dj King...we love what you do and how you do it!! As far as the Orlando Club scene goes, you are top notch! Love you man!!

KingBob said...

DJ King, I have adjusted my words to read "Promo Only-style" since you're correct, the ones you play may not have come from Promo Only. I was not criticizing your music selections, just pointing out that I've heard many of the same mixes for the entire 3 years I've been going there. Since you've not been working weekend nights in TG those entire 3 years, that means your predecessors were playing the same mixes.

I agree with you that the crowds that go to TG generally do not want to hear Dance. DJ Smooth stated the same thing just last week in one of the Comment sections.

I will add BET Soundstage to your resume list. Appreciate you sharing your history as a lot of former PI people go to The Groove now and see you playing on weekend nights. Thanks for being amenably to getting your pic taken during my visits and let's all hope for some good PI news!

Anonymous said...

Come on some good PI news!!!!

Anonymous said...

Dj King - I am a avid reader and long time PI fan. I remember you Djing at BET. You were the only reason we would even go in there. Well, the same has to be said about The Groove. The other Dj's in there just are, well, not you. You make that club what it is, and when you are not there, we notice. Thanks for the great music!

Dj Smooth said...

Boy it was a wild night with the weather. I was surprised by the number of young kids out walking around City Walk that late at night.

King is right on the money with the comparison to Vegas. It's not a bad thing, it just is what it is. You have to give credit to the City Walk managers for working with what they have in terms of guests and their lack of dress code and so on. ;)

Anonymous said...

Bob, in your last post, didn't you mean RCC? I know that when BM gets to capacity, RCC seems to be the overflow. Just wanted to clear that up (TG really should be RCC, right?) Thanks for all your updates...

KingBob said...

I did mean The Groove. It will get extra packed due to the Bob Marley's event. But yeah, now that you mention it, RCC will get extra packed too.

DJ King said...

Thank you all for the kind words....Party On!!!

Dj Smooth said...

Anyone have an update on the Sat night at CW? How was the Marley event?

It was crazy rain around 8:30 where I was at...

KingBob said...

One of the Blog roving reporters via text says TG was packed, LQ empty early and got a little better later on. No report from Marley's though.

Anonymous said...

RCC was packed. Same Top 40 and Hip Hop as TG. Did not go into BM, but the line was out the door.

Dj Smooth said...

I saw the Bob Marley stage when I was out there Friday Night; looked impressive.

The sound guy Friday night was telling me they had just finished setting up that stage in front of BM when all the storms came in Friday evening.

Those guys had a long weekend with all this bad weather.

KingBob said...

Yeah, water and electricity don't mix very well!

Anonymous said...

"Since you've not been working weekend nights in TG those entire 3 years, that means your predecessors were playing the same mixes."

Before King was there the Dj's name was DJ Flip and every night he was playing the same songs over and over again.

KingBob said...

Yes, I think the first weekend DJ out there at The Groove after PI closed was DJ Flip. He was always moving his hands around a lot like he was spinning/mixing music.