First RnR vinyl DJ set in a year and a half

Last week while avoiding social media, as I have done the last month entering my 41st year, I had occasion to glance at IG only to post something simple, a new record I bought or received and I see supportive comments from close friends but I saw that local rock musician from Peru, Alan, had reached out to dj a gig he was doing with his band Musor at the Garage on Beck, Saturday, last night. I had already thought about djing more for different gigs and coincidentally President Biden had just lifted the mask mandate for the vaccinated which included Bars, it was time to share that talent again! When I gather a crate for a gig I try to keep it simple, so much so that I lazily avoid even changing crates from gigs before the pandemic even started! I knew i had to make this special because I treasure the latin community and "rock en espanol" in general and Alan said to try to pick some spanish vocal rock if I could. I have very little but i made it work with other folk rock, psychedelic rock, garage rock, rhythm and blues and rock n roll. I brought my Rodriguez records, a Ritchie Valens - La Bamba 45, two Santana LPs and a Jose Feliciano Light My Fire 45. Kind of a hodge podge stretch of spanish vocal rock n roll but it worked. There's something about playing records for people in public. Talking to folks about the different records I brought, I love to try to play their favorite song, guess what they like based on how they look. It's what a good dj does, scopes out the scene plays to the crowd peppered with suggestions to open their taste up. Taste is relative, so it helps to be open one self. I played Led Zeppelin - I'm Gonna Leave You Baby for the couple just to my left, played some MC5 - Kick out the Jams after Blood Moon nearly blew out the speakers. I played Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit once Musor finished to match their spacy spanish vocal rock. I don't know what gigs I'll have as things open up but seeing Musor encore with a spacy Kumbia for Linda and her friend to show us how to dance was the best. Even better was speaking spanish about classic rock like Jimi Hendrix Experience and Rolling Stones with Fernando and Javier and Alan and the crowd of friends they brought from Uruguay, Peru, Guatemala and Nayarit, Mexico. It was a fulfilling night.