muscleandhate wrote:You can teach a monkey to mix or scratch, with the latter it's purely persistance and lack of social life. I think what makes a good DJ is track selection, something which cannot be taught easily.
i'm totally with you on that one. that is usually the "it" that the big names have, although sometimes, some inexplicably get big despite thier appalling taste in music and poor-to-mediocre mixing skills (Paul Oakenfold, report to the DJ booth!)
for better or worse, the Big Dudes also help break big tracks, they tend to get promos months ahead of the average DJs from producers ... or if it's an obscure record, it gets noteriety, gets re-pressed/liscensed and has new life. not completely fair, but DJ Tw0Sh00ziNnAdRyeR isn't going to break a record playing at some party with 75 people in the middle of Nowhere, Florida. he has to work harder, be in the right place, at the right time, playing the right music.
the best DJ's are pretty intuitive (either naturally or by experience) and aware of what is working at any given time for a crowd and will adjust what they play according to the feedback they get from the dance floor.
one highlight for me a few years ago was seeing Laurent Garnier at WMC in Miami ..... every tune was unbelievable, each one more rocking than the preceding one, and at one point, just when you thought he couldn't take things *any* further... he dropped into the old NYC no-wave classic "Moody" by ESG...(the 45 rpm single played at 33rpm, as sampled on a bejillion old hip-hop records)....creepy high pitched riff, devastating dubby slowed-down beat... i nearly soiled myself. not a standard deviation for 99% of techno DJ's, dunno if it was inspiration at that moment or something he stumbled on previously, but it was transcendant.
and he did that over and over again (but that was "the moment" for me), with what was either lots of playing the records he had on hand, and some forethought, or that's just the way the records popped up that night...
either way, at that point i realized he was in a place not many DJ's get to, and that i had never witnessed fully a phenomenon like that, and i had been going out seeing "names" play since 1990 or so. and the rest of the crowd knew too, and that was the best part. nobody had to talk about it, you could look around and you just knew that it was better than >99 % of whatever other crap (there were a lot) that was going on in Miami that week/weekend. i happened to catch a glance of a couple of (really good) DJ friends of mine, and they just kind of laughed and shook thier heads....
i've seen Derrick Carter a few times, he's ace too (saw him in Miami i think that same weekend!) and he's always great. i dunno about being the undisputed king though, Mark Farina could give him serious trouble (but he's been in San Fran for so long now he doesn't count as a "Chicago" DJ anymore). another Chicagoan that is no joke when she's on point is DJ Heather... really excellent.
never been the biggest Richie Hawtin techno fanboy (saw him in Cybersonik live years ago and ho-ly shit, did those two ever KILL IT with not much more than a 909 and a sampler...), but that Mixmag CD he did (10 years ago?) was great, another fine example of good tunes, put together well, to create something that's more than the sum of the parts.
discerning record selection and placement of the records in the set is everything - it's what separates the men from the boys. i couldn't tell you how many times i've seen technically excellent mixing - DJ hunched over, shutting off the outside world as he goes through his ritual of mixing tricks, dragging the platter, grabbing the spindle, tweaking the pitch control as if he had O.C.D, verrrrry serious look on his face.....
...to ride two mediocre records together for three minutes. which, not surprisingly, more often than not is really fucking boring. i'd rather hear a bunch of good records and forgive an occaisional fuck-up than listen to part of some kid's whatever record collection mixed without mistakes.
oh - if you're a DJ... at least *act* like you are fully enjoying yourself. people really pick up on that. practice when you drink, that helps, then when you are out DJ'ing you'll be able to mix if you need to have a drink to help you acclimatize. people like Sasha because he is usually enjoying himself, usually has a drink or two on hand, and it shows. he looks like he's having fun. the "DJ-with-furrowed-brow-concentrating-on-his-mix" vibe is so 1997. before 5 AM, there should be a three beer minimum to enter any DJ booth.
rambling drunken post over.... i return you to your regularly scheduled program..
