(
By Jim Wicked )
As a budding DJ myself, I'll be the first to admit that DJ's are a bit
silly. They've become so competitive that they've burned these egomaniacal standards and ideals into their heads. They somehow think that their precious time is worth large amounts of your money. A quick perusal of
Craigslist ads on behalf of DJ's or even just meeting them in a club quickly reveals how shallow these bastards are, and how they are the scum of the earth. I know, I shouldn't be basing an entire caste of people on interactions with while many, still only represent a handful of the DJ's in existence, but the ones that I've had dealings with really irk me.
One of my favorite stories to relate is about a DJ at a club I used to frequent regularly with my old band. I'm not going to be a complete asshole and mention names, but I will say that he was a prominent member of the DJ community and a regular at this particular club. Between the bands' sets, he would play tunes for the audience to dance to while gear got torn down and put up. Well, oddly enough, he wasn't in the booth. He would be wandering around the audience proclaiming how awesome he was that he picked out the tunes that we're listening to. So, I went to go schmooze with him as one in a band regularly does, and I asked him a question that I was surprised had stumped him. 'Which band is this we're listening to?' Should be an easy enough question considering that he hand picked the music himself, right? Instead, he responded that he didn't know and that he'd have to check the CD when it was done playing. Fair enough. So, we went on stage, did a fairly good show, and as we were loading up our gear, the DJ showed up again. He proudly announced that the name of the band I asked about earlier was... (I honestly can't remember who it was or what they sounded like by this point as I'd gotten a good number of drinks in me and had forgotten about any interest I had in what was playing at the time) and hands me a CD to have a look at the name. Well, interestingly enough, this was a collection of different songs on one CD. I thought maybe it was some kind of promo disk at first, until I saw the giant writing on the front of the case that read 'Continuously mixed!!!' (
1,
2) So this kid didn't really even do any DJing or take part in the clever beat matching I'd heard earlier. Instead, he bought a premixed CD, popped it in the deck, and pressed play. And he was getting paid more money than I was that night to do this! Sadly, this isn't the only time I've ran into this situation. Turns out lots of 'DJs' are just playing the works of other DJs or playing premixed material and getting paid for it. Just watch Paul Oakenfold's older videos some time: he will often stand in front of the audience doing the Jesus pose while the tracks magically transition between each other on their own. ...and this was before computers could do it for him. Kind of cheapens the experience, doesn't it?
None of this of course is to mention the DJ egomania that destroyed electronic music in the nineties. When people stopped caring about what music was being played for them and were instead more interested in who the guy with the headphones was, you knew things were going downhill. The
raves started to become focused on partying for the DJ's sake rather than for the party-goers sake. Few people even know that the song with Sarah McLauchlan singing that Paul Oakenfold popularized was actually composed by Delirium. Isn't it amazing that the DJ has made the true talent of his music unimportant and secondary to his own ego?
And speaking of ego, you haven't understood the meaning of narcissism until you've perused Craigslist and had a look at the DJs for hire! I was having a look at the competition to see what others were charging. I was wondering if my ideal rates were too high because since I've got the gear, I thought it might be a good idea to pursue DJing for fun with minimal charges rather than try to make a living at it like so many others in Las Vegas do. Out of hundreds of ads, I only found one that was willing to give his rates online, and he wasn't very cheap. As for the other ads, the DJ's would banter on about how they refuse to give set dollar amounts as needs may vary. The general consensus is that 'using a $50/hour DJ (which I think is a bit on the expensive side myself) is a bad move because you can't get a professional DJ for rates that low and as these people are obviously morally bankrupt in the first place, if he gets offered $60 an hour for your slot, he will take it without hesitation!' To suggest that because a DJ is not trying to make a killer profit, he instantly has no standards of decency makes for a fun read, but all in all, this statement only damages your own credibility as a supposed professional and makes you look like an egomaniacal asshole in the process. Reading these narcissistic comments towards others in their industry has admittedly made me a little bitter, so let me become really petty and shed some light on what exactly is involved in professional DJing:
First of all, there's the gear. For a touring DJ like the kind you hear about on MTV, those guys are going to want some pretty high end gear like analog filters, rack mount effects, premium mixers, stable decks, maybe a sampler or two, headphones, but in most situations you won't need your own sound system as the club and/or promoter will supply that for you in ninety-nine percent of all situations. Without being stingy or going on eBay and getting better gear than what's at your local music store for cheaper, this is about a three-thousand dollar investment. For the wedding DJ who needs his own sound system and his own lighting for corporate events, you're actually looking at around four-thousand dollars as your sound system will be expensive as hell if you want it to last, but you don't need the samplers, filters, rack effects and other little touches like that (when was the last time you were at a wedding reception and the DJ started cutting into the mix with a phaser before low-pass filtering into the next track?) so you can cut corners with those. Let me tell you as a synthesist: four-thousand dollars isn't shit. Plus, if maintained and selected properly, this is a one-time investment which obviously needs to be paid for before you can start getting gigs (though, I would pay money to see somebody air-DJ the way one air-guitars.) I will shit a brick the day that a bank gives an individual a loan so they can become an aspiring DJ, so it isn't like they've got some debt related to their craft that needs to be paid for. So, my point in bringing up how much DJ gear costs is that there is no regular expenses that have to be paid for after every gig. You don't have to change strings, replace your beer-soaked microphone, replace your amps' tubes, or even replace speakers (guitar amp speakers go out a lot more frequently than PA speakers do and even then, since it's almost always a tweeter that goes out, replacing the driver usually only costs about $30 and they practically last forever.) Gear maintenance for a DJ is not a justifiable expense in the way that it is for touring musicians.
Next, if you're a decent club DJ, you have to learn beat matching. It's not exactly a requirement per se, but continuously mixing tracks can really keep a party moving. Don't ask me why, but stopping to change records or even having a short pause between tracks on a CD just doesn't cut it. It's not a necessity for the wedding DJ as he's not expected to drop the hottest house and goa tracks into each other, so this argument doesn't apply to them (thus, making me wonder why they generally cost more.) I've learned firsthand that beat matching takes skill and practice when using turntables or CD decks. But here's the thing, you can master it in a couple days, a week or two if you're a slow learner like me. By contrast, with a guitar, it takes about a month and a half just to learn to play your first song, and it's not going to be a very good one. It can take years before you finally nail that Metallica solo you've always wanted to play. Modern bass technique (I'm not talking about proper slap bass or funk solos) is a little easier, but it still takes a good couple months to really master it in its entirety. As much as everybody rips on death metal/black metal/industrial vocalists, it still took about a whole year to train my pipes to handle an endurance growling/screaming fest. As for regular pop-style singing, I've heard of vocalists fighting for decades to really get their voice to become the icon of musical prowess. So a couple weeks to learn how to get your songs to flow into each other is nothing in contrast to other instruments. To make matters even more disappointing in the physical skill department is that those who choose to use laptops for DJing have the hard part done for them. Most DJ applications automatically map out the tempo of any song you drop in the deck and mark where the down beat is. So that's half the work out of the way already. But then to make things even easier you can just hit the 'sync' button, press play, and voila! The music is instantly in sync! So when a 'professional' DJ tries to tell you that you're paying more money for some amazing skill, just tell him to go fuck himself because the homeless guy sitting on the street corner wailing out Eric Clapton tunes on his pawn shop acoustic guitar for change has FAR more talent than some hack DJ does.
Now, since we've already lightly touched on the subject of DJ mediums, let's go ahead and open up the whole can of worms to show why expensive DJ's aren't worth the money. I'm mainly talking about turntables and the vinyl records used on them. Turntables are impractical. The needles wear out fast, the cartridges are becoming more expensive to replace, and they skip like you would not believe! Ways I've seen demonstrated of trying to keep records from skipping that still didn't work include mounting the turntables on rubber bands, using tennis balls as shock absorbers, and expensive foam mats for the case to sit on. This is not to mention that records are much more sensitive than any other form of media. CD's need a lot of continuous heat in order to warp, but a quick fifteen minute car ride in an air conditioned car on a sunny day can decimate your entire record collection! Plus, carrying around all of those records is extremely clumsy. Even CD's can be put into carrying cases that can hold eight times as many CD's as records could be held in the same amount of space. And good god are they expensive! Sure, you can find some classic house records at a thrift store for a buck a piece, but getting the latest and greatest tracks can cost about $35 a track or even a lot more in some cases.
Not only that, but manufacturing them is no small cost either. A small time trance artist who has potentially created one of the most amazing synthetic songs of the modern era that could instantly become the highlight of your set just can't realistically afford to put it out on vinyl. Putting that track out on CD can cost as little as $75 for a hundred of them even when using a large manufacturing company. Even then, worst case scenario, he puts that song out on the internet as a high-quality mp3 and sells it for ninety-nine cents, then a DJ could burn that track to CD for his CD decks. So, why exactly are DJ's still using vinyl?
The answer is deceivingly simple: nostalgia. That's all it is. When DJ's first started out, there was no other medium that had the pitch control that vinyl did. So it was the only way you could beatmatch. As the DJ phenomenon spread, it became a common belief that professionals had to use vinyl. The CD decks are still shunned by many so-called 'professionals' and the only reason for this is because it's a reflection of an era that has long ago passed. Now, as previously demonstrated, laptops have really proven their worth as a replacement technology in DJ booths. Not only do you have access to a near infinite number of tracks, many of which you can't get on CD or Vinyl, but there's no clumsy plastic media to lug around, you can stick your entire rig inside of a backpack, including a hardware DJ interface if you so choose, but in the long haul, it's a whole lot cheaper than a full DJ rig! Just a laptop, an audio interface, the DJ program of your choice (worst case scenario, Traktor is two-hundred dollars) some extra VST effects if you so choose (most of them run at around $20 a pop or you can use free ones that are far more interesting in most cases) and a bucket of mp3's to fill up that night's set. Plus, there's no parts that are going to need to be replaced down the line. Unless you're just a feeble drunk at the club, all of this gear will last a lifetime! And all of this at the same or in many cases better quality than on vinyl! (How many times have you popped in your favorite continuously mixed CD and heard a crackle or pop on one of the tracks just to find out that it's at the exact same spot every time because the pop came from the DJ's record?) So when you're paying more for the self-proclaimed professional, you're essentially paying for that DJ's stupidity, not his professionalism.
Now here's a typical argument you hear from musicians as well as DJs in regards to why it costs so much to hire them: Understandably the time spent getting ready for your job is important, and as such is expensive to you as you could be doing something more entertaining like beating off to midget amputee porn. This applies to the daily grind as well as musiciandom. Doesn't it feel like part of your life has been wasted ironing work uniforms, packing up lunches, and driving across town to get to your job? It's not much different for a musician: As a guitarist, before you go play a show, you typically spend a lot of time rehearsing, restringing your instruments (life sucks if you play songs in different tunings as you need to restring a case full of guitars in some instances), getting your tone right, getting your effects programmed, polishing your guitar, loading up the gear in and out of vans and clubs, helping the drummer get his kit into the van or club because like most drummers, he doesn't understand simple concepts like spatial displacement... all that stuff that turns your potentially enjoyable source of income into manual labor. Like a nine-to-five job, you're only getting paid for the time that you're on their clock, not the time getting ready. Now, let's look at Dj's: As a DJ, you really need to be well versed in all of the tracks that you may or may not play that night. Sometimes you have to catalog BPM's, but oftentimes there are little programs or gadgets that do this for you. So what this translates to is that before, after, and probably during the gig, the DJ's job is to... now brace yourself for this because you're not going to believe what you've been paying your DJ $200 an hour to do: listen to music. That's all he has to do. Just sit there and listen to some fucking music. Real hard work there, douche bag!
Okay, so surely there's one skill that makes your expensive-ass DJ worth the money, right? Well, that leads to your typical DJ's backup argument when you've exhausted all reason on him: talent. It's not in beat-matching. The talent is in being able to read your audience. You have to be able to guess what kind of track they're going to want to hear next. It's a difficult skill that can't be learned, either you have it or you don't. ...don't believe the hype. It's not as hard as they act like it is. The trick is to not get involved in the music you're enjoying, but to keep an eye on the audience. If it looks like you've been letting them ride that crescendo for too long and they need a break, drop a track or two that's a little more laid back. Before they get bored, bring back some energy. That's all there is to it. It's not some mythical skill that nobody else can do. It's just a matter of paying attention. With regards to wedding DJ's, it's the same thing only you're not allowed to inject too much energy (Grandma and Grandpa are really getting down, so let's throw them some psychedelic trance and see if they're still feeling groovy now!) and as such, unfamiliar dance numbers can't be tossed at them nor extreme metal. Just keep it radio friendly in other words with the extremes of the spectrum being 'The Twist' and 'Who Let The Dogs Out.' ...oh and when it comes time for the actual ceremony, turn off 'Let Me Smell Your Dick', grab a mic, and announce the little shits so they can feel special knowing that you remembered their names before they divorce in two years. ...and don't get cake on the gear. It's a bitch to clean. So yeah, that's the 'talent' end of DJing in a nutshell.
But you get the point here, right? DJs expect payment for a craft that with a nominal capital investment a couple weeks of hard work, and an ear for music, anybody can do. Don't let anybody, especially a DJ, fool you into thinking that it's some amazing feat that goes against the laws of nature and can only be done by a select few because the truth is that a monkey can do it. Mind you, he'd have to be a pretty intelligent chimp, but it's a monkey nonetheless.
The snobbery doesn't just end with the money or the image, either. Oh no, the personalities of these people are so dull... If a conversation ever starts with "Hi, I'm a DJ!" you know you can disregard that person as at best only having the intellectual capacity of a simian. (If you had to
look up the meaning of simian, get the fuck off your computer and go buy some turntables now.) This is not to say that all DJ's have shit for brains. Some of them are just in it because of the insane amount of profit created by ridiculous standards. But if somebody starts off communication by introducing themselves as a DJ, then this is the kind of person that I'm referring to here. If you must, try to converse with them and learn the hard way: you will find that aside from grunts, moans, and pointing to one's own mouth, the conversation will revolve around your new-found DJ friend's occupation, how great they are, and how everybody loves him. If you try to stray the conversation away from his narcissism, he will redirect it there, as if the only way that the DJ can get any sort of attention when he's not carrying a stack of records is to talk about the time spent playing you those same records.
I think I've ranted on this subject long enough, but I hope that you've learned something from this: the DJ is not a person to be respected and any of them that try to pull out some shpiel about how their talent is worth more to you than a reasonable dollar amount per hour is a douche bag who's only source of self-esteem is his self-worship.
(See also,
Dead Acts, - CW.)
