Hey DJ, Fuck You!
Posted on November 16, 2009 by Martín Caballero
Rediscovered this gem from VICE when it was included in “News, Nudity & Nonsense: The Best of Vice Magazine Vol. II 2003-2008″ (an excellent read and holiday gift…do people still give gifts during a Recession Xmas? I don’t know. I already have the book so don’t give it to me). Well worth the read, and then there are the comments…
You know that thing called DJing? Playing records in bars or at stupid art openings for money? Guess what DJing is? The biggest fucking bullshit con of all time! People who get over as DJs are making the easiest money ever, because they’ve convinced every PR person and club owner in the world that they’re doing something only a few natural-born geniuses can do. It’s laughable. A 70-year old blind Ethiopian leper with 10 broken fingers can “spin” just as well as any B-list celebrity at any in-store party for some gay snowboarding jeans company. I promise.
Thoughts from our resident DJs?
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8 Responses to “Hey DJ, Fuck You!”
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I stopped DJing years ago.. but I will say this.
There is obviously an art to DJing.
Yes.. any fgt with a computer can be a DJ these days.. but it takes skill to select songs that will move a crowd.
Trust me.. I was a pretty wack DJ.
Vice is pretty reliable; entertaining articles penned by surly hipsters that completely miss the point of the topic they’re writing about.
Shit’s funny, but far from accurate.
Anyone who says things like needles and headphones don’t matter doesn’t really know what they’re talking about.
If you’re not mixing, blending, cutting, or scratching then you’re not really DJing; you’re just some asshole playing songs you downloaded from Kazaa and burned to a CD.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, but let’s call a spade a spade.
Obviously there is more to the craft of being a DJ than just playing songs, but to play devil’s advocate for a moment…
For every one conisseur (sp?) of the art, there are about 20 drunk ass bros and hos at the club/bar who will swear the DJ was killing it because he played Journey or OPP. These are the people who pack it in, so their opinion, no matter how misguided, matters in the sense that they influence the guy who pays you at the end of the night. Playing songs that rock the crowd is a skill like Treez said, but the question is how tough of a skill to master? Considering the audience, it’s like dunking against a bunch of six year olds.
I have ultimate respect for the art of DJing but I think the gist of this article was that most people out drinking on a Saturday somewhere do NOT, thus lowering the bar for what constitutes a good DJ in the eyes of the mainstream and giving credence to that asshole with his iTunes playlist
I can agree with those statements.
The article is more of an indictment of a typical audience at a club or bar and what they want to hear than it is of the actual DJ’s.
She even refers to them as the “lowest common denominator”.
She might as well have just said “the dumb fucks that actually listen to the crap I only play to pander to their shitty tastes.”
ha! i love it. djing is a bullshit con. enter pretentious dj rant below:
I liked this response from the article:
Anonymous, on Oct 9, 2009 wrote:
This article totally applies to pretty much every shitty DJ in 95% of all “hipster” bars in American cities.
Places where it’s still acceptable to play “O.P.P.” and Journey and punk in the same wack set.
This is why the club scene in NY, and a lot of the US, is so garbage.
Cos people just want to hear the same 100 records, a lot of which are from the 80’s and 90’s. The only difference is the mainstream back-tattoo bitches are open about loving it, while the snide hipsters pretend their being ironic.
But they love it and desire this garbage all the same.
And snide smart-ass fools like you provide them with this shit they need – but like every trendy twat, you have to let it be known that you actually hate doing it and are above it all, of course.
Fuck off.
Hipster or mainstream back-tattoo bitch…there’s no way to win in this cruel game
I would say this article DOES define 85% of the DJ’s that I hear, because they really AREN’T doing shit. I think it’s a combination of lazy people who want to DJ for the wrong reasons and club owners whose main concern (above employing talent) is to please the uncultured drunk idiots that keep business good. I agree that if you’re not mixing, blending, cutting, scratching and beat matching then you’re not really DJing, and you’re fooling yourself if you call yourself a DJ, doesn’t matter what genre. I think Serato brought back turntablism but also every rich kid with itunes now thinks they can be a DJ just because they own the equipment…props to all the real DJ’s out there keeping the real shit alive.