I went to 8static in philly. I brought my laptop and the homemade maracas I built a few hours earlier out of paper plates and dried beans, the outsides decorated with googley eyes and gift bows glued on to them. I went on stage loaded renoise and hit spacebar and started shaking along to the rhythms. It was pretty gay. Gay as in happy and great.
It was awesome and you should play again.
This is a video of my first chipmusic performance ever and my first 8static open mic. Other than the issue of bringing and RCA modded DMG and my hat sticking straight up for about half the song I think it went well. I can never really tell the visuals are really blinding so you can really see anyone past the first couple people.
My first full set however was for DJ McGranaman's birthday in his basement in West Philly. Party looked bumpin' upstairs, in the basement however it was sparse. Before my set Storm Blooper played a sick set and there were a lot of people then I got on and the room cleared out. Bummer. I basically played for about 90% of the other chipmusic guys in Philadelphia, my girlfriend and some toolbags who ran up and yelled in my face "Oh my god, it's a Gameboy! PRESS A BUTTON! PRESS A BUTTON!" Crowd clear and douchebaggery aside it was fun and a good first set experience.
To answer your second question I think there's a spectrum when it comes to playing other people's songs. Cover being on the one end and reimagining being on the opposite with remix being that gray area in between. Cover is just basically playing someone else's song as close to the source material as you can get. Reimagining is taking that source material but completely breaking it down into almost something completely different. Remix is a combination of both.
I think the DJ prefix is nothing more than people confusing electronic music production with DJing. The general populous just doesn't know the difference and lump them together because they think it's the same thing.
EDIT: Not to insult anyone with my post I'll clarify that some people may make this mistake in the beginning and just roll with it or some people probably started out DJing.
Started playing guitar when I was 13 years old. Started several bands which I did music for more instruments than just guitar.
Tracking got me in to more theory though, I just knew guitar chords and stuff by heart so wasn't really focused on notes. When I started tracking I suddenly had to buildup chords by putting notes together. One follows the other and that's it.
Learning piano/keyboard is a good way to start, you'll dive right in to notes and combining stuff.
Edited for how I learned music. Other than the age I started the guitar and the hip/hop ragga part this is basically my story.
I need an ArduinoBoy to plug my DMG running LSDJ into Renoise. Willing to buy one that you want to sell or purchase a custom built ArduinoBoy. Reply here or send me a message.