Disc Jockey Love

I always knew DJ's behind the decks were always just playing someone else's music. Until the one day when I met the DJ who didn't...

Flashback 1989

When I offered to help deliver and setup my college's newly purchased P.A. system (Bose 900 & 300) to a nearby third floor apartment for an 'off-campus' event, I didn't complain. The A/V work order was legit - Julian, the guy in charge of the keys, told me so. No one had booked this medium sized P.A. system that Saturday night, and honestly, it sat in storage 99% of the time. It was a top of the line sound system (recently purchased), with heavy bass speakers and separate tweeters that could be mounted high above for decent audio punch in any room. With built-in amps, it made it easy to setup and take down with less cables, too! Because of my help, I got invited to the 'off-campus' event! Well, it's a house party. Apartment resident Aaron asked if I'd mind helping carry up the keg, too? No $5 charge for you, kind sir! Suddenly, I had cool off-campus plans for the evening.

My indoctrination began...

I've always been technical (hence my working for the A/V crew...) and when the skinny Ohio-born DJ Julian (yeah, same guy) returned with his crates of vinyl and gingerly carried Technics 1200 turntables, it certainly piqued my interest. I'd seen DJ's before at plenty of high school dances, but never from behind the decks. My entire experience with DJ's was the (generic) soundtrack of the 1980's era - Radio-friendly Pop Rock with dabs of Disco and the occasional Pink Floyd/Aerosmith request. One slow dance for every 4 or 5 'fast' songs; 'Stairway to Heaven' always played at least once - and often closed the night. I'd personally DJ'ed a high school house party with a couple of tape decks and a crate of tapes. Cassette Tapes! Most of my attention was the FF and REW required to get the right track queued up, and less about maintaining the tone or tempo - it was then I understood the benefit of vinyl for quick seeking!

Hey Mr. DJ, Put a Record On.

What happened that evening was an emotional rollercoaster of NYC house party culture. The deft DJ scratch and mix culture was strong with this white kid Julian, who'd spent the last year in his freshmen dorm practicing his craft. Deftly cutting in Fu Schnickens with De La Soul and heavy doses of Public Enemy and James Brown. Each song seamlessly blended from one to the next, the transitions hidden behind scratches and pull-backs to repeat especially good ear-worms. The crowd (admittedly mostly white art students) chanted back the refrains from these Hip Hop classics retold with a delightful danceable beat. Bathroom breaks be damned as the non-stop hits made it near impossible to leave the dance floor. Said floor shook and trembled under the weight of a roomful of gleeful dancers, where major music drops turned into skipping vinyl as the crowd worked the support beams to their limit in this third floor walkup in the side streets of Brooklyn. Julian waved back the dancers closest to his DJ setup in the distant corner - moving the heavy stomping to the other wall. Sweat dripped from the walls, windows and forties were cracked to cool off (the keg kicked right after I got my solitary beer.) My DJ education was gleaned from this hip-hop and scratch culture, where a truly skilled DJ could make 'playing someone else's music' so unique that only they could almost claim new composition rights (definitely remix rights!). The way Julian deftly cut from record to record, warping every sound sample with a bit of 'wow' by gently leaving his hand on the cool vinyl and slowing it's rotation from the expected 33 rpm. He beat matched by gently pushing and pulling the spinning records near the spindle, while sliding the Technics 1200 pitch control to match his slight pitch fixes. By the end of the evening, all my flabbers were ghasted - I'd learned so many DJ tricks and tips, and I was hooked on DJ Culture from that moment on.

Last night a DJ Saved My Life

As I recall, the party winded down around 2:30am, as neighbors could no longer be quelled. As we stumbled into the cool fall evening, the street lights suddenly seemed like the sun after coming from that dark sweaty temporary nightclub. The lack of strobe lights, disco balls, or lasers wasn't acknowledged, nor needed. The beer-soaked floors were sopped up by our Doc Martins that reminded you with the smell of fun for days on. Julian and I would end up having a college-long friendship and I'd gleefully watch him work, silently taking notes. If only young me at the time hadn't already decided to collect my music on cassette tapes and compact discs vs. Vinyl Records, I might have reached Julian's level of skill on the turntables. My brief turntable access to a similar DJ setup was during my one hour a week Radio show at our (illegal pirate FM) college Radio Station - WPIR, where I'd spend an hour flipping back and forth between Chubb Rock and Third Base radio-owned LP's practicing my transitions. With nearly zero live radio listeners, no one noticed my repeated train wrecks.

Within six months of graduating college, I was throwing Warehouse Raves (in 1992!) here in Philadelphia with friends - scrounging similar P.A. gear and skills I got in college to book no-name DJ's spinning the latest Techno singles available to an eager young audience looking for something new. I eventually collected enough vinyl and DJ gear to practice at home for hours on end, and did eventually earn a Friday night DJ residency at a trendy nightclub ('Fluid') for a few years where I learned to work a crowd with tempo and nostalgia playing house and break classics while perfecting my beat-matching and crate stuffing.

Last Dance...of the Night

As someone who was heavily invested in the cultivation and spread of DJ culture that took over in the late 1990's, I apologize for what it has become. Every asshole can claim to be a DJ these days - ditzy celebrities or mascot-headed anonymous remixers. They drag around laptops full of stolen MP3 files, barely touch the Serrato timecode vinyl, don't know how to beat-match outside of using the software button, and probably accept payola to shill their sponsored playlist on tour. They've never dug through crates of dusty records to find the white label gem, never stuffed a spindle to tighten loose punches from shifting the needle out of the groove when you scratch, never clutched the mixers cross-fader like their life depended on it. These (real) skills have been lost to the analog DJ era of music on vinyl, and I fear for the future of DJ Culture, with its lowered-bar skillset required for entry, and it's eventual demise when no one brings anything new to the (turn)table.

Addenum

While this blog piece has been in draft form for over a year, I managed to stumble across Google Stalk DJ Julian's own recollection of the era, and his accounting is far more detailed and extends far beyond my friendship with him, but makes a fascinating trip through time and his many cycles of DJ fandom. Plus, he's got a ton of free DJ sets that'll certainly bring you back!