The DJs Life: Sia

Friday, December 7, 2012

EDM : Sia on being bumped in Vegas: "I don't know dance music"

Image for Sia on being bumped in Vegas: "I don't know dance music"

Suffering the same fate Mark Farina, Calvin Harris and Cassian have before her, over the weekend Sia was forced to cut her DJ set short following a disagreement with the club’s management. The now US-based star was booked to play at Vegas venue The Bank, but when her song choices were met with a frosty reception from the club’s owner, the budding DJ called it quits early. But with the details all a little murky, we went to Sia herself for clarification earlier this week. Last night, she filled inthemix in on the details (through Twitter, naturally) and the explanation certainly makes for an entertaining read.
“The general manager called Kanye, Jay-Z, Big Sean and Snoop Dogg ‘elevator music’, asked me to play something up-tempo so I played the ever crowd pleasing Toxic, by Britney Spears,” Sia told inthemix via Twitter. ”’Britney hasn’t had a fucking hit record in 3 years! Current Top 40!,’ [the manager said], so I played Carly Rae Jepsen which wasn’t house enough for him. I am not a fan of doof doof music. It sounds like an alarm system to me. They had approved my playlist earlier so it was a shock to be told to play dance music of which I am not a fan. I don’t have or know anything about that kind of music, so he got more and more juicehead vein throbbingly irate to the extent of chest bumping my 122 pound manager, a quarter of the size of him. I felt scared and uncomfortable so we left.”
While she’s worked with David Guetta and been remixed by everyone from Mylo to Sander van Doorn, the Adelaide native’s never claimed to be a dance music diehard. “I’m so clueless about dance music,” she told ITM back in 2009. “I actually employ someone to choose remixes for me and we pay them money and they have taste. They commission someone to do a remix then they send it back to me. I listen to 15 seconds and I go ‘yeah, of course’.”

Credit : InTheMix

EDM : Sia kicked off the decks in Vegas

Image for Sia kicked off the decks in Vegas

As much as it’s a boom town for dance music right now, 2012 has been marked by a few ‘DJs kicked off in Vegas’ stories. First, Mark Farina was cut short for playing “too much house for this Vegas crowd” (he was quickly rescheduled for a return visit to Marquee which went off without a hitch). Shortly thereafter, Calvin Harris was given the boot declining to spin hip-hop and Carly Rae Jepsen and now, Australian abroad Sia has suffered the same fate.
While Sia’s probably best known ‘round these parts as the vocalist on David Guetta’s hit Titanium, lately she’s been keeping busy penning songs for the likes of Rihanna and, evidently, trying her hand at DJing. But while she was due to do a set at Las Vegas venue The Bank last night, the appearance didn’t quite go as planned. According to a string of tweets from Sia, the manager of The Bank wasn’t impressed with her track selection and her set was cut short. “I had to leave @thebankLV because myself and my elves felt scared by the (alleged) owner, who wasn’t digging my tunes and got angry,” the Adelaide-born musician tweeted. “Sorry to those who came from near and far. It’s certainly the most uncomfortable situation I’ve been in professionally. Ever!“ It’s unclear exactly how the untimely end to Sia’s set unfolded, especially as The Bank has been keeping closed-lipped on the incident.
“That was a strange incident of getting the boot, but I had an official make-up gig where I re-played at the Marquee pool,” Farina told inthemix recently. “Playing in Chicago, for example, is so very different from Vegas. Vegas has always been a hard town to crack into for house. It’s a strange place, with an ever-changing crowd of visitors, then the local scene on the flipside of that, which is separate.”