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Just got back from Divaville. One of these days I will remember to announce the show on my blog before it happens. Here's the playlist if you're interested.

I had a great time, and the show went well if I do say so:

• No flubs, even though someone had reprogrammed the CD players to not auto-stop. (even better, Ross showed me how to reprogram them when he came in for his show, so next time I can fix it myself.)
• One near-disaster when I misjudged the time, took a bathroom break and made it back to the MCR with 30 seconds to go before a talkset and nothing cued up -- and Georg was listening and said he had no idea anything was wrong. Whew! I thought I must have sounded like I was gasping for breath after running up the stairs in a panic.
• Four requests, one from LA! And all of the requests were for artists I love and was thrilled to play. In fact one of the requests was for Sammy Davis Jr., who I had already played, and one was for Bobby Darin, which I had just cued up! That's only ever happened to me once before, and it's the coolest thing.

I played a couple of Louis Jordan tracks which I had never heard until that movie we watched a few weeks ago. I was able to find a 3-CD set on Amazon with a lot of those tracks for only $15 including shipping. Not bad at all! I played "Beware" then followed with "Look Out," the female answer to "Beware." Which was a lot of fun & I hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did.

I also did a set of W.C. Handy tracks, and was surprised not to find any Handy songs sung by Nat King Cole. This is a surprise because Cole starred in the Handy biopic. I thought for sure he'd have W.C. Handy songs popping up in all his collections, as with Eartha Kitt who also starred in the movie.

Also did a set of Duke Ellington since it was his birthday yesterday. My only goof was noticing the album Ella and Duke twenty minutes after the Ellington set! Whoops. I would have liked Ella's version of "Take the A Train" better than the one I played, I think. Oh well, I'll remember next time!

For the past couple of weeks Georg and I have been taken up with a massive archiving project. The goal: to make it easier to transport our music to the radio station. The task? Copying hundreds of CDs, printing up labels for them, and filing them in a binder. A big, big binder.

I don't actually have the binder yet; it's on order. It's hard to find a really big CD binder in regular retail stores. Amazon and Best Buy carry the same brand. It's OK but the largest one holds only 300 or so, and the handle isn't very comfortable. I googled "dj cd case" and found one that holds 520 CDs and has a shoulder strap. That's the one I ordered. Christa uses a very similar case for her Divaville CDs and it's really nice.

That same website also had a hard case with wheels and a telescoping handle. Drool. Unfortunately the sleeves sound kind of funky -- you have to put two CDs in each sleeve so you can only see the label for the top one or something? It wasn't super clear from the description. I'm not sure if that would work as we need the ability to browse the CDs and see what's on them at a glance. Plus it's almost 3 times more expensive than the other. Ah well, I guess I'll have to live without the wheeled case.

Turns out copying CDs takes a long time if you have to do a lot of them. To facilitate the task I've brought the fast deskop computer with the big hard drive out into the living room. This way I can lounge on the couch and watch TV while working. The computer fills the coffee table though.

I have a friend with a CD duplication business & I'm hoping I can make use of his equipment one evening this week. In the meantime, copy on!