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This article is going to be about my personal experience more than talking about physically playing. Learning how to DJ is a whole other thing and will need it's own article. Every show is completely different so there's no way my experience will be the same as yours. With that being said the best way to talk about playing a show is about the feeling, how I did it and what you can do to get there too.
So i'm not going to lie, this wasn't my first show. I did small stuff before with friends or for parties. In my area (Boston) promoters will host underground events for guys to play out for the people that really love it. I played on a monday night for probably 30-40 people, which was awesome but I didn't film any of it. Plus it was in my location, I didn't travel or anything. So keep that in mind while I talk about how I felt when playing (I guess) my first legit show.
The way I got booked for this show was through connections, a friend of mine at the time new the promoter for the TK Lounge. He ran events every Wednesday night for electronic music, not just heavy dubstep. I was invited as a support for the headliner (Jvmpskare). They paid for my flight, stay, drove us where we needed to go and we got a rider. This was pretty cool cause it really felt like I was an artist, having my travel expenses paid for so I can play music I love for other people that love it, like what? If you were to tell me 2 years ago that I would be flow to Florida to play a show I wouldn't believe it.
Anything is possible, if you put in the work and build the networking you can seriously do anything. The next best thing about this trip was that I got to do it with my friends, which made it such a good time. Talking with likeminded people about your goals and having them have pretty similar ones for themselves is super motivating. If you're an artisit and you're reading this, If you've been to a festival I bet you get super motivated to do better and improve your brand after you experience it. It's the same feeling playing shows with your friends and new people that you meet along the way.