Party Themeing 101 - Music Cont'd

Picking up from where we left off last time: Music for a party follows the same basic guidelines as given for dinners and light social gatherings, but is usually a bit more difficult to assemble. First of all, you will probably need more of it than you would for a sit-down dinner, as parties normally run far later into the evening. Also, you will probably need to be a bit more discriminating as to what music you include, and where during the course of the evening you play it – unlike in the dinner/cocktail social example, the music is no longer merely an agreeable background element, but a defining element of your event, especially if you are planning dancing as an activity.

An additional consideration you will need to take into account is variety. Even when tightly grafted to your party theme, songs certainly do not have to all be from the same genre, nor is this even desirable. Who do you know who listens to only one kind of music, ever? Not a long list, most likely. And, in a big crowd of people, musical tastes are bound to be diverse. Songs from a mixture of genres not only add interest to your party soundtrack, they can also, if well-chosen for the intended audience, cater to guests’ different musical tastes, giving almost everyone something they really like to listen to at some point during the evening.

So, if you know what kind of music you want for your party, and don’t have much of it on hand, there are a number of options for acquiring it in addition to scoping out the local library’s collection. At this point you are collecting enough music it becomes less likely that all of your needs will be met by a single source.

One of the easiest ways of laying your hands on a large amount of party music is to obtain used CDs online. Unless the album in question has some sort of collector value, used CDs – especially if they’ve been out a few years – are pretty cheap, sometimes even cheaper per song than buying the same album from iTunes or some similar service. This is often especially true of soundtracks. Once the movie has been out a few years, its soundtrack album will have often slipped significantly in price, and be truly inexpensive.

As long as we’re on the topic of soundtracks, their other advantage is that they typically represent a mix of artists, who will normally be contributing songs to the album that they consider strong enough to create interest in their band. Unless you and all your guests are serious fans of a particular group, you’re probably not going to want to listen to them all evening long. With the mix of artists you are likely to encounter on a soundtrack album – or a “Best of”-type compilation (i.e. Best of Surf Rock Guitar, Greatest Hits of the ‘70’s, Best of Acid Jazz 1998-1999 – you get the idea. Heck, you probably have a few of these kicking around already) you will probably not have to acquire a large amount of single-artist albums in order to build a reasonable mix of songs.

Say you want to throw an 80’s-themed dance party. Knowing that the Adam Sandler movie vehicle The Wedding Singer was an 80’s movie featuring a steady stream of 80’s hits as its soundtrack, you check your local library to see if they have it on the shelf … typically the selection of public library is somewhat limited, but if you are able to find and rip even part of the music you need for free, the more money you have later when you go shopping for decorations or booze. If the library doesn’t have the album you’re looking for, try looking it up on Amazon next.  Given that its years old, you may find several copies, all used. You pick the best combination of CD condition, price, and seller reliability, and order away. Voila! You now have a compilation album of 80’s hits, and a good-size chunk of the music for your dance party is will be arriving in a few days. A couple more stings like this (The surreal horror-thriller Donnie Darko would be another go-to soundtrack album if I were assembling an 80's dance party) and you will be ready to dance ‘til you drop!