MAN v’s MACHINE… A BLOG BY SIMON JACK
Once upon a time, in the magical kingdom of Club land, a young boy brought some KAM BDX300 belt drive decks, which in all honesty were £360 worth of crap. But after a few months the bright eyed boy, full of dreams and having practiced loads, could just about beat mix, and more importantly was hooked on DJ’ing. The boy, already in love with the whole dance music scene and especially the art of DJ’ing splashed out on the most expensive items he had ever paid for, the mystical wheels of steel that were the Technics 1210 mark 2’s, his preferred weapon of choice.With his new armoury of expensive decks and hundreds of 12”s decide it was time to take this love of DJ’ing and music further and become a Vinyl Selecta… but unfortunately at around the same time so did a trillion other starry eyed Carl Cox wannabees.
Decks began to out sell guitars and DJ’s became the new rock star’s, getting paid thousands of pounds for 90 minutes of easy work (Judge Jules reportedly got paid a million pounds for a 2 hour set on the millennium new year’s eve…and I bet it was awful…actually it was new year’s so dancing to someone banging a bucket in time would have been good…and probably £1,999,999.50 cheaper). But even with the huge competition, our young hero eventually got to play out and even got asked for a CD by another nice young man, who became quite the promoter himself (Tomwaa I will do you that CD one day I promise). Before long our hero became a legendary world leading DJ’ing master, performing to the kings and queens of Club land for ever and ever … the end.
Unfortunately this like all other fairy tales is bollocks and where as I would love to tell you of this impressionable young man’s meteoric rise to fame as a superstar DJ, jetting off to Ibiza every week, DJ’ing for Galliano’s Paris fashion shows, participating in never ending coke fuelled orgies with smacked up super models (don’t do drugs kids), marrying a washed up ex film star and eventually retiring at 34, with half a liver and a one nostral’d nose as a constant reminder of the good old days… alas I cannot.
You see two things happened which ultimately snatched the boys dreams of a life on dialysis out from his grasp. Firstly I (oh the boy was me by the way)decided I enjoyed being on the good side of the turntables i.e. the dance floor, rather than kissing the arse of jumped megalomaniac promoters (present Superfly company excluded) for a Tuesday night unpaid set at some empty dive. The second reason was the introduction of the Pioneer CDJ. DJ’ing with cd’s is a totally different skill to vinyl. The main issue being there is no room for error with cd’s; one heavy touch on the fake platter and the DJ is suddenly propelled into a world of trouble that sounds like a bunch of rampant horses being dragged by the tail through the speakers. Nothing a little practice wouldn’t sort out? Probably, but at the price of a small car, not being able to afford CDJ’s became the death of my beat juggling dream’s… cue the violins. So I decided I wouldn’t bother anymore and concentrated on my career as an engineer, which turned out to be a bad idea, as ironically I again would have to kiss the arses of megalomaniac’s to get anywhere…I think I have authority issues…thankfully.
Anyway back to the point, the change in technology was a huge thing at the time, practically killing vinyl sales and forcing dance music into a fully digital world. A world that eventually became enhanced further by the invention of effects units, allowing the wealthy DJ to improve the tracks they were playing on the fly and giving DJ’s a new level of creative ability in their performances, while still keeping the original skills involved in beat matching.
Then some clever dick invented laptop DJ’ing. No need to touch anything other than your keyboard or some specialist midi mixing box where everything is synced and keyed in automatically and removing the need to pay for any music at all (haha greedy record industry bosses Mp3’s not looking so profitable now hey?)
So many years after hanging up my headphones I bought what I consider to be the best DJ’ing software on the market, Traktor Pro, a Behringer BCR2000 rotary knob controller (less sexy than it sounds) and in my opinion the daddy of all midi controllers, the Native Instruments Machine. I can now mix like Jesus Christ might have done in biblical times without even touching a spinning disk. I have all the effects a Christ like DJ could need and I can say I’m better than any DJ I have ever heard….
Ok this is also a fairy tale and I’m still average at best and the only Christ like part of me is my mass of facial hair; but mixing with a laptop is like painting DJ sets by numbers. I don’t even need to use the headphones that I hung up all those years ago. It is now pretty easy to sound like a plausible DJ without a lot of practice; but with a lot of practice you too can sound like an eight armed James Zabiela.
Now this is the issue, when I started telling people I had this new-fangled box of tricks connected to my laptop, all proud and gleeful, my DJ’ing friends, literally every one of them and sometimes even their non DJ’ing friends who didn’t even know me, broke down in fits of laughter and told me “that’s not mixing Si, you’re a fake, you are not a DJ unless you use decks…you tit!”. To say the least I was disappointed, a broken man, ashamed even…I took a shower and tried to forget the whole sorry incident.
The main reason for my shame wasn’t the fact that I was a fake tit DJ…ill rephrase that, a fake DJ who is a tit, but that when CDJ’s were starting to destroy my dreams of a life funded by playing music, I had used the same argument.
“You’re not a DJ if you use CD’s…you tit’s” I’d say, knowing in the back of my mind that it didn’t matter what you play on, just as long as the crowds of ravers dance so hard they need hip replacements by the age of 30; I was having my own argument thrown back in my face and it hurt. So I decided to stop caring and keep on dancing; but some people really do care, to the point of looking down their noses and slagging off DJ’s who use computers and here finally is the whole point of this heartfelt blog. Does anyone really care other than DJ’s? Should people care? Does it matter at all as long as paying customers have the nights of their lives?
Isn’t it better for clubs to think logically and put the money that in my opinion is wasted on big name DJ’s back into improving the production, atmosphere and fun of their nights? Especially now that Midi DJ’ing has made it easier and relatively cheap for anyone standing on the business side of the decks, cd’s or whatever they prefer to use, to give the crowd musically a good night? Does it really matter if Superstar DJ whoever is on your line up? Does this guarantee a good night anymore? Does anyone really care after 10 Jager bombs? Is anyone even reading this? I don’t know is the answer. I know I don’t care, even though I appreciate the skills of DJ’ing and how difficult and technical it really is to make people dance for 5 hours non-stop. At the end of the day, is it important who is doing it and with what? Or is it the smiley, happy people dancing their arses off around you that makes a good night?
I’d appreciate your input here…let’s see if it really does matter…leave some comments on the subject and maybe, finally, we can put this issue to bed once and for all, and I can start sleeping again at nights instead of constantly thinking about this at bed time…which is also why this blog is a little bit far out in places as I can’t sleep…I apologise.
