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Cosmo’s Turntable Tuesdays offers the chance to DJ

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Photo: Bill Hughes

Las Vegas is nothing if not a mecca for the world’s biggest DJs to spin for their fans. Thanks to Turntable Tuesdays, a new weekly music event at the Cosmopolitan, now fans can take to the decks themselves.

Held throughout April at Bond, the series is born from a partnership between the Cosmopolitan and social music service Turntable.fm, which allows users to take turns DJing tunes from self-curated playlists for others on the site to enjoy. Turntable Tuesdays brings some of Turntable’s most popular online DJs to Bond to play live sets that are simultaneously broadcast at the bar and in an online “room” on Turntable.fm.

Some of the users, like Turntable superstar DJ Wooooo, have been selected by the website for the gig; others will be able to face off in an online DJ competition to be flown out to spin at Bond.

Wooooo (who runs a NYC tech company in real life) kicked off the series April 3, squaring off live against Bond DJ Zack Johnson, one of half DJ duo Lazerdisk Party Sex. Wooooo, who had never spun live before (outside of Turntable), astutely blended tracks from the likes of Gotye and Diplo into the mix. He says he enjoyed the challenge of catering to both the crowd at Bond and those listening in online.

“Zack’s group has played with Diplo; he has a very different sound from what I play on Turntable. [At Bond] he played moombah music, so I had to pull in something similar on the fly, and that style was more unexpected for my fans in the Turntable room,” Wooooo explains.

The event itself was sparsely attended, though it’s admittedly hard for anyone to pull a sizeable crowd on a Tuesday night. Still, the only indication that the evening’s event varied from a traditional Tuesday at Bond were two screens flanking the DJ booth, which displayed the DJs’ playlists and the online happenings in the Turntable room; Bond’s traditional go-go girls were replaced with costumed dancers dressed as Turntable cat avatars.

Though the event’s appeal to those unfamiliar with Turntable.fm seems limited, its interactive edge gives it the potential to gain momentum in the future. “It wasn’t packed, but a lot of people came up to me who were interested in what was going on,” Wooooo says. “I think it’s a question of getting used to the concept and familiarizing people with Turntable, which is still really new.”

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