LiveLong wrote:"i am a musician/composer. i respect what a d.j.s role is in music. d.j.-ing is an artform of its own, i respect that.
however, the one playing the records should never get more credit or equal credit than the one that made the records. "
By reading this, I can feel you have missed the excitement of listening to a real creative DJ.
In a ruff description, there are two kinds of DJ's. Ones who play records as they are, and mix FROM ONE TO THE NEXT. These DJ's are "using" the feel, buildup, and whatever the artist created as is. Like taking a smart phrase from someones speech and say it at the right time. What these DJ's do, is spreading the tracks through the night to create a set, and the level of involvement they have in the music sums up to what they select, how they arrange it, and flow from one to the other.
This is very typical to the late superstar DJ's as the famous duo, and most commercial European trance DJ's.
The other kind, is the ones who invented that job description in the first place. these are the soul to house and techno dj's, started in New York's Paradise Garage LarryLevan, the original Sound Factory Junior Vasquez (later Twilo), and Chicago, Detroit for techno, Jeff Mills. a famous euro example is Laurent Garnier.
For these DJ's, your musical pice is no more than a sample or a loop in a production. they mix, cut, sample, layer, accapellas on other beats, live re-edit etc. Some were using samplers in the early 90's, or Revox tape machines to layer beats and drums. Listening to this, is listening to a live performance. The greatness in that is that the songs you know, are turned into something you never expected and out of their original context. You will also hear songs and tracks as they are, and at that moment, they will also sound different.
The crowd is not listening to the music, he is listening to the DJ playing it.
Some (not all) DJ's are getting much more credit than they deserve, this is usually the later generation that eats the fruits of the underground kick ass pioneers. Ones who work for cash hungry promoters that turned main ClubLand to Mcdonald's.
like i also said in my post, there are some d.j.'s that i feel pioneered music in there own way, Frankie Knuckles, Francois K, Danny Tenaglia, and a few others. they were not so much playing records as they were doing musical collages. but still, they would not have had the material to work with, had not a musician practiced until his or her hands were bruised and bleeding. if the d.j. element is more important than the musician element, then why bother to play the sounds that a musician made at all?
dont misunderstand me, i am not the anti-d.j. musician, i totally embrace what a creative d.j. does. i remember seeing norman cook a.k.a. fatboy slim playing at twilo in early 98 just prior to the whole rockefeller skank blow-up thing. i thought the guy was fucking brilliant, i had never heard someone mix the rolling stones or the kinks like that. he created what a club experience should be imo. and there are plenty of d.j.'s here that can create great experiences with what they play and how they play it.
the post that i read here about bands and artists not having hits without a d.j., was primarily what my previous post was in response to, d.j. snobbery. as a musician i respect d.j.'s and there are many musicians that do discredit it, but because i am respecting towards d.j.'s, i expect respect towards musicians from d.j.'s, and obviosly someone saying that a band or an artist needs a d.j. is totally disrespectful, imo. but at the same time i know that there are respectable d.j.'s here on this forum, as i've heard some great live mixes here. so i think this is a good place to have a conversation as such.
i truly do have a hard time trying to find my place in all this, because i am a musician technically, but i'm a d.j. at heart, if that makes any sense
you would have to hear all the music i've done (although i havent done much yet) to understand me musically.
and about the original topic, using live is not cheating, it's another way to express a musical vision, and the cool thing about it is it allows someone to explore in ways that vinyl can't. i think any "d.j." that discredits live is just afraid of change and is too lazy and close minded to learn anything new, which kind of defeats what a d.j. is suppossed to do. so i guess an anti-live d.j. is not a real d.j. then? perhaps we can call live users l.j.'s instead?
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