What a three-hour set actually costs
Extended sets look generous from the floor. From the booth they are a completely different job, and most of the work happens weeks before the night.
People ask for three hours as if it were the same thing as ninety minutes with extra time attached. It is not. It is a different job with a different failure mode.
The record box changes shape
A ninety minute set is an argument. Three hours is a story, and stories need quiet stretches that would be suicide in a short slot. That means carrying forty records you will only need if the room goes a certain way, and accepting that most of them stay in the bag.
The middle hour is the whole job
Hour one is arrival. Hour three takes care of itself. Hour two is where an extended set either becomes something or turns into a long ninety minutes. The only preparation that reliably helps is having three completely different paths out of the same track.
Nobody remembers the peak. They remember whether the middle held.
Physically
Three hours standing, mostly on one foot, in a room that is twelve degrees hotter than outside. Water at the start of every hour, food four hours before, and no alcohol until the last twenty minutes. It sounds joyless. It is the difference between finishing well and finishing.
