DJ Marc Lewis: Playing @Mass every day 9am-6pm – By @rubyq

By Ruby Quince

DJ Marc Lewis: Playing @Mass every day 9am-6pm

I will judge you on the music you listen to. It’s no so much that I’ll think you’re cool or lame or interesting or anything discriminating. It’s a symbol that we use to understand people. It means very little in isolation, but it’s part of the cut of your jib, and I value it more than many other things.

Marc plays music before each town hall and before master classes. It’s the sort of thing that I feel characterises SCA and I love it. Charles and I noticed that Marc’s music game was strong this week. Stronger than usual. We enjoyed.

The smash hits on our sofa were: ‘Town Called Malice’ by The Jam, ‘Here Comes Your Man’ by the Pixies and I was completely won with Muffin Man by Frank Zappa. Jeepster by T.Rex is a personal fav. ‘Monster Mash’ Bobby Picket & The Crypt-Kickers was a no-brainer, but a classic all the same. I especially treasure anyone that puts me onto something I didn’t know, and ‘Rosey Lee’ by Bromheads Jacket did just that. Appreciated. Mindkilla by Gang Gang Dance was an effective stimulus. James’s ‘Sit Down’ is a bit lazy, but it did the job.

As a clutch of music for the week it’s very solid in my opinion. Average tempo 125BPM, 5/10 on Soundplate’s danceability score, 7/10 on energy and valence. The ‘average key’ is G#, which is apparently the key of youth and expresses humour, brightness and sincerity of faith. Sounds like our Marc? Yeah, I think so.

Being the nerd, I went digging into Marc’s public Spotify. He’s no slouch. There are some lists that are quite telling. ‘Chilled Indie’ is one he’s generated and I reckon that’s a go-to list. Likewise, ‘Liked from Radio’ is surely tapping into the inner Marc. Jamie T, The Kills, Stereophonics, Coldplay. And there’s a Pink Floyd list, of course.

Quite a few of the lists he has generated are thematic go-to lists used year by year: ‘Fame’, with Bros’s ‘When Will I Be Famous’; ‘Persona’, with ‘Me Myself and I’; ‘Six Hat’ with ‘Where Did You Get That Hat’ by Chas & Dave. There’s a handful of brief-specific lists. I do like an organised library. OK, no groups for themes or briefs, no folder-in-folder action. In karate terms I’d say he’s somewhere around an orange belt, going on green.

I used Skiley to generate a similar list from his choices and it generated things like XTC, The Fratellis, Stiff Little Fingers and Travis. I reckon it’s a fair profile of our leader. If I were to soundtrack Marc, it would have things like Richard Hell’s ‘Blank Generation’, James Brown’s ‘Hey America’ and ‘Push Things Forward’ by The Streets. I know that last number blew Dean’s little mind when Marc introduced it to him.

What people like really that isn’t important to me. It’s that they do care, and I really value that Marc thinks about it. He cares what music he plays and he’s giving the team free dots every day.