[My Weekender] Thomas Paninaro

Musical journeys with Thomas Paninaro - Nov 21, 08

Thomas Paninaro is a Shanghai-based DJ from Germany. He's been living in Shanghai for eight years and runs the DJ agency Shanghai D.event Entertainment.

November is one of the busiest months for a DJ and this coming weekend will be packed as hell. It's Thursday and I'm writing this column sitting in a hotel room in Beijing. Being invited to perform in other cities, to meet new people and experience great moments in ever-changing surroundings is a privilege and a major reason why I love this job so much.

In a couple of hours, a car will pick me up in and drive me to the "Commune by the Great Wall," which is a unique compound of designer villas a stone's throw away from the Great Wall. I've been booked to DJ at a private event and it sounds like it's going to be fun. The client is asking for "popular" music, a good mix of upbeat disco and house from the 90's and 00's. I appreciate it when I've been giving a musical direction beforehand so it gives me a clearer expectation and a chance to prepare myself properly. I'm well-known for playing a VERY wide range of styles and will be traveling with more than 500 CDs in my bag. I've never become comfortable with DJing using a laptop, I honestly believe it hinders a good performance staring into a screen -- one could easily be mistaken for checking emails. I would travel a lot lighter, though, having all my tunes on a notebook... Oh well...

Friday I will be on my way back to Shanghai. As much as I like being in Beijing I do appreciate living in Shanghai, it has become my second hometown in all these years.

This Friday's Disco Disco! is something very close to my heart as well. Once a month I play my favorite tunes from the 70's and 80's upstairs at Volar. A weekly 80's night back in 1999 at Judy's Too on Maoming Lu was my first regular DJ gig in this town and Disco Disco! is something like a personal sequel to those days. If I was only allowed to bring one CD to a deserted island it would probably be a Depeche Mode compilation. Pop music used to be so creative, vibrant and even groundbreaking back in the 1980's, I've become tired of contemporary pop in recent years and only follow the developments in the dance music scene nowadays.

My good friend Aldwin in Jinan has witnessed that development in all those years as well. Since 2002 he's invited me every 12 months or so to DJ at "his" playground, Club Cinderella in Jinan, Shandong Province. Aldwin is well known among China's expat DJs -- he books some guy or girl from Beijing, Shanghai or wherever he can find them, on a weekly basis.

This Saturday it will be my turn again. Cinderella is an island in a bleak sea of soulless cookie-cutter clubs, a real oasis in a desert of mediocrity. Since around 2004 or 2005, dance floors have shrunk, individual set-ups been replaced by square shape Babyface-look-a-like layouts and... the worst of all... the same five year old R&B/Hip Hop/Top 40 mix CD in the player directly before my hard trance set.

The creativity or therefore the lack of is mirrored in the name of those clubs. So far I've DJ'ed at places with names like Baby Baby, Baby House, Baby Body, Babiface, Babi, Face, Face Face, Red Face, Club High, Club Higher...

One time, after taking a break from my set and going outside, I once walked back into the wrong club in Chengdu, and only realized it once I was standing in the DJ booth.

Cinderella, however is different and the crowd really into whatever the DJ comes up with: House, Electro, Breaks, Trance -- it's all being appreciated, not just as musical background for the dice games.

The party usually dies down around 3am and we're on our way to a Korean BBQ after hours restaurant. 10 hours later I'm on my flight back to Shanghai, endure the infamous taxi-cue at Hongqiao airport and usually spend the rest of the day hibernating and watching DVDs. This Sunday it's probably gonna be RocknRolla. Seriously!

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