What makes it all worth it?

As I celebrate almost 18 years of DJ’ing most weekends, I thought it a fine time to reflect on why this “game” (yeah, I said “game”) is still important to me. Basically, I’m still in recovery mode from a big night 2 nights ago and the adrenaline (and nothing else) is still pumping through the veins. For real, I was basically on the waters, 2 drinks and one Red Bull all night and my wife wasn’t happy to hear about the Red Bull either as the last thing my A.D.D. riddled body needs is sugar, hence me writing this when I should be finalising my school reports.

So why the adrenaline?

The adrenaline is there because I played one of my weekly spots on Sunday night (a public holiday eve) for 6 hours (a rather long set, but I’m used to rather long sets) and this particular set went down well for numerous reasons that require some reflection. It’s the reflection that I’m hoping sheds some “inner light” on this DJ game we all play for those that are uninitiated or think that all we do is “press sync buttons” or hit up our emails whilst getting paid to drink and look cool. Trust me, I don’t look cool.

So the first reason for my adrenaline rush was that a core group of long time friends were there at the venue when I got there (unexpectedly). They actually just happened to be there and had no idea I was even playing and they told me upon my arrival that they planned on leaving soon. Being that they were in good “spirits” and the fact there were few people there when I arrived, I decided to play a special set just for them hoping they’d stick around for an hour or two. Knowing their tastes, I played stuff I knew they’d like and, sure enough, within 20 minutes a few of them got up to start dancing in a semi-empty bar before 8pm even hit. Mind you, it’s still early in the night and I wasn’t playing peak time house music, just some upbeat nu disco type flavours that I dig. Flash-forward to 8:30pm and all of them are up dancing, which enticed some punters off the street to come in and start dancing and before you know it, what was once a slow and “barely open” bar had turned into a really energetic venue with everyone going off. And it wasn’t even 9pm yet.

The thing is, I knew playing upbeat music this early wasn’t good for building the night so I wasn’t even playing “big” party tunes. I was keeping it on the funk, boogie and nu disco tip (and not even the popular funk, nu disco and boogie tip), but because I knew these punters, I had them right where I wanted them without resorting to massive, peak-time tunes. Maybe a few of the tunes were big, but it wasn’t “over the top” big. It was perfect, but I knew it wouldn’t last. Sure enough, 9pm rolled around and they had to leave to go to some other (and bigger) party at some well-established nightclub, i.e. not our very cool bar.

So I bid them all farewell, high fiving a few on their way out and I immediately brought the vibe back down to what it should be earlier in the night. Background boogie and hiphop was where the current energy was at as there was still a good crowd sitting around drinking (which made me glad I didn’t take it too big or too loud earlier on) and there was a fairly massive crowd outside drinking and having a good time. So I was actually where I thought I’d be when the night started.

This was when the first “lull” of the night occurred.

From about 9pm – 9:30pm, nobody was walking in off the street and a few other people finished up their drinks and left to go to someplace “bigger” or home, I don’t know. Regardless, this meant the venue began to look a little like a ghost town. Normally, this wouldn’t make me even wince, as I know a crowd is always just around the corner, but because a big group had just been up dancing and having fun, I couldn’t help but think it was me taking it too big too early. This is when my first spike of adrenaline probably seeped out of my pores, too. 

Self-doubt: the DJ killer.

So after 30 minutes of mental soul searching due to the fact that the venue seemed to be emptying out faster than high school after the Period 6 bell time, I came to the conclusion that it could only be my horrible musical selection that was causing this drop in venue attendance. Obviously, I screwed the whole night by going big for mates earlier and now I was playing crap music that wasn’t keeping people “there” drinking. “There” being the venue that was kind enough to let me provide their musical selections to paying customers and I was failing at doing so.

I shit you not, this is the type of stuff I think about when nights aren’t going so well and this night wasn’t even “not going so well”. So due to me being fairly energetic, I have to walk around when “lulls” like this occur. Regardless of a lull or not, I’m very much of the opinion that all DJ’s need to understand their surroundings, so I normally walk around the venue checking for any of the following (after throwing on Taana Gardner’s ‘Heartbeat’, of course):

- Volume of music,

- Vibes in each section of the venue (inside and out),

- Foot tapping,

- General feels from the staff, i.e. bar staff, security, management, etc.

On this particular night, I also spoke to the manager to hear his opinion and his reply was a-typical of the bloke (a great operator, actually). He basically thanked me for holding onto the crowd for as long as I had so far as it had been a fairly “dead” night up to that point and my little “David Guetta” funk, boogie and nu disco set was the only thing that had kept folks and at least they had been drinking (and spending). With the self-doubt still creeping in, I kind of agreed but then again, I kind of didn’t. But the bottom line was that he wasn’t unhappy with my set, so I was at least assured we were good.

And then, adrenaline spike two was about to begin…

While we were chatting, a massive group waltzed in and literally doubled the size of punters in the venue in one hit. So I immediately went back to my work station feeling better about the night, which brings me to the second reason why I’m still amped from the set.

Part of the group that came in was a very vocal group of younger females who immediately asked me to take off “whatever this shit is” and play something “more modern”. I could have been offended that they didn’t dig Taana Gardner, but the honest truth is that I understand. I may love Taana Gardner, but I’ve been listening to funk, boogie and disco music for most of my life. An 18-year-old kid hitting Chapel Street with her friends isn’t coming out to be schooled by a 43-year-old American guy on great 70’s disco by mostly unheard of artists. Well, at least not at this particular venue. I’m a realist and because I’m a pro, I do what is right by the venue and decided to play something more “modern”, but OB styles.

So by “modern”, I’ve come to determine that what punters mean is nothing their parents listened to or still listen to, unless, of course, they have cool parents that schooled them on good music. This is becoming more normal these days, actually. The Spotify/Smart Phone/You Tube generation has grown up with so much easily accessible music that nothing is off limits anymore. At least, that’s my take on it.

So I dropped some 90’s hiphop and RNB (probably what their parents listened to judging by their age) and sure enough, they started dancing to it. Obviously, this meant the vibe in the venue went back up again, punters rolled in off the street and the bar was packed for the next hour or so with everyone having a good time. Once again, my night was perfect and another spike of adrenaline ensued. I was in my element and controlling the music without resorting to overt cheese and all of the stuff my good mate, Mr Lob, hates. Well, maybe I was playing a bit of cheese, but with the amount of it I normally churn out, this was practically underground territory. Jokes. So…

Not being a particular “destination venue”, by 11pm, the crowd was thinning out again and I was again drawn to that introspective place of doubt about my abilities as a DJ, knowing full well that it’s not just me but a range of factors that lead people to leave a bar that is not a “destination” venue. Factors such as: late night venues that will have long lines if you don’t get there by midnight, people wanting to dance to a much better sound system than the bar speakers we roll with, friends who want to see a particular DJ or band somewhere else and a host of other such factors. It’s all good with me though, I understand. I do play a few “destination” venues so know what it’s like getting the late night spikes when punters exit the bars they’ve been drinking in for hours only to dance their arses off til a much later closing time with us behind the decks. It’s part of the business.

But this time, because it was 11pm by now, I knew I couldn’t play background boogie and hiphop vibes, so I brought the BPM’s right up from the hiphop and RNB I had just been playing and started playing party funk tunes to a fairly empty room. Luckily, it didn’t stay empty for long.

Immediately, probably during the opening beat of ‘Get Down On It’, everyone who had been sitting down around the venue (and even a few from outside) all got up and started dancing around tables, on couches and, most importantly, all around the bar area so the venue looked packed. People kept piling in off the street, too, so I was actually better off by 11:30pm than I was when it seemed busier at 10:30pm. That, my friends, is what we call a winning formula.

This brings me to my third, and final, spike in adrenaline for the night and I’m not even going to feel guilty about what I did, regardless of what my chin stroking DJ mates may think of me. Because it was during this time that I began to mix in some fairly stock-standard (and cheesy) 80’s tunes and within 20 minutes, the entire venue is going off.

Now I’m not one to rip on the 80’s as I’m a product of the 80’s. Say what you will about MTV and the cheese that came from that era, but I love 80’s music. The best pop music to me is Wham, Prince, Madonna, MJ, Hall & Oates, Jimmy Barnes, Dragon, Pointer Sisters; you name it. It’s what I grew up on and I love mixing it into everything. I was a pop music freak long before I became a hiphop head. It’s probably why all of my gigs are so much fun (definitely for me) and if smiling faces and everyone jumping around acting like they’re still kids can be counted as proof, I reckon I know what I’m talking about.

Young punters go off to this stuff, too, but you have to pick and choose wisely when you’re going to drop it and this was the right time to drop it, hence young and old having a grand old time during this set. But, of course, all good things do come to an end and closing time arrived at 1am and a fairly full venue was forced to vacate the premises. I collected my pay, got a bro hug from the manager and headed home victorious in my role as a regular DJ hack.

Welcome to the life of a working DJ hobbyist, folks.

I don’t know if I could have made this any more real for you, so hopefully you got a bit of insight into what it’s like to do what we do regularly. It’s not always pretty, but this is what nights are like for the non-superstar DJ types in cities around the world and I actually count myself fortunate to be able to still do this 18 years on after buying turntables and a mixer all those years ago in the Bay Area.

But how do I even find myself in venues doing what I do. As it is, I’m not a working DJ in the sense that it’s a job. It’s strictly a hobby of mine that I do for fun. But the fact of the matter is that I’m 18 years strong in this DJ game and I’ve seen a lot of people come and go and I’ll probably be seeing quite a few more come and go before I decide to hang up the headphones for good. Actually, I doubt this will ever occur and my wife agrees (reluctantly, I bet).

The “grind”…

So it wouldn’t be a story on this here blog without a bit of background on the weekly life of someone in my position, so I’ll continue there. Actually, let’s start with a term anyone who works knows of. Let’s call it the “grind”.

The “grind” for normal people, most people, is as follows: work, raise kids, pay bills, work again, deal with automotive, personal and/or work related stress, keep working, keep paying bills, deal with family, deal with friends, deal with dickheads and eventually get to a point in life that you no longer have to deal with the “grind”. Unfortunately, this usually means you are dead, so most of us will deal with the “grind” til the day we die.

For DJ’s this is the same, but you just need to add in all of the DJ type activities to everything I just mentioned because, for the most part, anyone that gets into DJ’ing does so as a “hobby”. The “grind” is very much different for DJ hobbyists out there and looks a bit like this…

The “grind” is real if you’re any type of DJ that must hustle to get the gigs on the regular, i.e. you don't have a manager to do all of the daily hustle for you. Being one of these types for all of my life as a DJ, I think I have a bit of knowledge on this subject, but I’m listening if someone disagrees with me, as everyone is different.

The “grind” is what DJ’s must do if they want to play regularly and aren’t interested in becoming weekly/daily/monthly superstar, touring types. Big props to those who are on that level as I give much respect to the work they put into their careers, but I have my own career that is as far away from DJ'ing as you can get and I love that career. I also love my family more than my other career, so this DJ game comes in at number 3 in the "most important things in my life" league table. But I digress from the grind...

The “grind” means you checking in monthly, if not weekly, with current venues regarding your set times and dates. The “grind” means you’re constantly on the lookout for new venues to ply the trade as this industry of ours is quite fluid and rarely will gigs stay the same forever meaning you can be bumped out (leading to lots of meetings at weird times). The “grind” means being on the lookout for new music to purchase, download, dig for, make and share, because, let’s be honest, no matter how much we all love music (it’s why we all do what we do), it gets boring playing the same music over and over again. This means it also gets boring for the bar staff and venue staff you work with weekly and can lead to you getting the chop when someone new roles around. This brings us to another meaning of the “grind”, I.e. maintaining professional working relationships with venue staff. This one is actually quite easy, assuming you get along with the people you work with, but when you add in variables such as alcohol and long/horrible hours to the mix (pardon the pun), sometimes relationships can be strained. The “grind” also means promotion. Historically a “bad word” amongst DJ’s, or artists, promotion is now just accepted as part of a regular gig. Everyone has Facebook, so everyone (or most venues) expect DJ’s to promote their gigs through Facebook and/or other online means…it’s just a fact of our life now. As well, the “grind” invariably means producing music or mixes and, most importantly, sharing these regularly updated musical opuses with those who may decide on their drinking location based off of your shared musical journeys. The “grind” means graphic design as that promotion you will be doing requires some form of striking imagery to entice the punters to attend your event. The “grind” means networking (not promotion) at all times of the day and night. If you’re not out there making a name for yourself, someone else is and they’ll be the ones getting the gigs if you’re not. The “grind” also means chasing up payment for sets from unscrupulous promoters and/or venue owners who sometimes try to take advantage of kindred spirited DJ types…I’ve seen it happen so often, it’s not funny.

In reality, I could probably break this down for 10 more pages, but I think you get the picture. The reason I mention it like this, bearing my soul as I do on this outdated blog of mine (Shan, I’m looking at you), is that the gig I was talking about earlier is actually one of my favourites. Even with the two lulls in the night, I had a ripping time sharing music (of all styles) with folks throughout the night. People had fun, danced, sang and left the venue at the end of the night with smiles on their faces. I know it wasn’t only the music that caused that, but it I also know it was a major contributing factor. 

Self-doubt may have seeped into my veins for a couple of brief moments, but you get that sometimes. My belief in this hobby of mine may bend from time to time, but it will never break (jeez, I sound like a self-help guru now).

As I have discussed with my partner in funk, Mr Lob, on more than one occasion, it is a privilege to do what we do and I am forever grateful for being able to do it. Therefore, the “grind” I go through on a daily/weekly/monthly basis is worth it for me, for now. Hopefully, and this is all I can really hope for, the worthiness of all the gigs will stay the same because I love playing this “game” of ours.

Peeze,

OB