Awesome mixmag article!
Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 1:01 pmI’VE A CONFESSION. I’ve been making DJs sound interesting in print for 15 years but, you know what? They’re really not. OK, some of them are, but most are simply very ordinary people, usually men, who like playing music to crowds. Who wants to read about that? So I sit at my laptop and weave a tale from whatever miniscule details add up to more than just a bloke playing tunes. I’ve written 2,500 word features about people whose entire verbal response is something along the lines of, “I s’spose so, yeah”. During interviews I sit with my dictaphone, mentally pleading, willing them not to say, “It’s all about the music.”
IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT THE FUCKING MUSIC! Have you ever tried going out sober? It’s a nightmare. It’s clearly not all about music, it’s about sex, drugs, dancing, dirt, mates, strobes, drinking, glamour and deranged all-night madness. In short, it’s about illicit adventure. We’ve reached a weird stage where DJs often spend interviews trying to convince us that this side of things is slightly irrelevant; a bit immature, somehow. Maybe it is for them, getting paid to go out week after week, but not for the rest of us. I once spent time with a DJ who reckoned the venue he was playing in was on a natural buzz from his music. I, on the other hand, could see before him an ocean of pupil-popped nutters.
Radio 1 is partly to blame. Illegal raves gave early 90s clubbing a radical edge, and DJs such as Sven Vath and Andy Weatherall understood they were part of a counter-culture rather than a nocturnal leisure industry, and acted the part: irreverent, druggy, happy to tell it like it was. When Radio 1 got involved, the rules changed. DJing started to look like a genuine career choice rather than a hobby that a jammy few were paid for. The BBC couldn’t employ mavericks or loons, they needed efficient professionals who could keep their mouths shut. Suddenly, interviewing DJs was akin to dealing with corporate directors or politicians. They’d never talk in specifics, never criticise their peers, and their personalities became a wall of bland pleasantry.
It’s not just the drug thing, either, the nervy pretence that dance culture could exist without MDMA. Sure, all the greatest clubs have been off their tits, but drugs in themselves are boring. They are, however, part of the picture, often as big a part as the music. The problem is that, unless your idea of exciting reading is a geek-squad frot over the latest Logic software, hedonistic tales are a DJ’s best chance for a decent ancedote. I need a narrative, a gripping yarn to tell. I don’t mind if it’s an unhinged interest in pangolins that’s caused them to make a dubstep concept album about anteaters, or that they’re touring Latvia playing live sets from a bicycle-powered soundsystem. It was brilliant and unexpected, for instance, when Paul van Dyk recently opened up to me about his passion for German politics. Just please, please, I pray, make them say something original, something different, something that doesn’t amount to the fact they started off by getting gigs via MySpace and definitely weren’t influenced by someone they’re patently studied hard. I’ve sweated blood trying to make DJs talk about anything at all that differentiates them from the next DJ along, but they simply don’t get it, they don’t see being interesting as part of the job — unlike, say, Noel Gallagher — and perhaps it isn’t. Their job, really, is to sit in the dark pressing buttons to make us dance.
Thus, when I find myself envying NME journos who interview indie bands that arrive with a ready-made philosophy, a shed-load of attitude and novel ideas about how they’re going to appear in the media, I simply listen to their music. Usually it could have been made at any time from 1969 onwards, a Xerox of a carbon copy of a pastiche; tired, tired, tired faux-punk guitar crap. Then I listen to our music, the music that Mixmag covers, a variety of styles all pulled together by the influence of beats and by electronic experimentation. It sounds, at its best, like the future. Once again, I’m invigorated, ready to sit in a coffee bar with a nice man who’s left his bedroom studio for an hour to earnestly explain that, “the new stuff isn’t really electro, more techno with an electro influence”. Suddenly, strangely, it’s all worthwhile again. You see, in the end, it’s all about the music. Oh, God, no…
So TRUE!
IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT THE FUCKING MUSIC! Have you ever tried going out sober? It’s a nightmare. It’s clearly not all about music, it’s about sex, drugs, dancing, dirt, mates, strobes, drinking, glamour and deranged all-night madness. In short, it’s about illicit adventure. We’ve reached a weird stage where DJs often spend interviews trying to convince us that this side of things is slightly irrelevant; a bit immature, somehow. Maybe it is for them, getting paid to go out week after week, but not for the rest of us. I once spent time with a DJ who reckoned the venue he was playing in was on a natural buzz from his music. I, on the other hand, could see before him an ocean of pupil-popped nutters.
Radio 1 is partly to blame. Illegal raves gave early 90s clubbing a radical edge, and DJs such as Sven Vath and Andy Weatherall understood they were part of a counter-culture rather than a nocturnal leisure industry, and acted the part: irreverent, druggy, happy to tell it like it was. When Radio 1 got involved, the rules changed. DJing started to look like a genuine career choice rather than a hobby that a jammy few were paid for. The BBC couldn’t employ mavericks or loons, they needed efficient professionals who could keep their mouths shut. Suddenly, interviewing DJs was akin to dealing with corporate directors or politicians. They’d never talk in specifics, never criticise their peers, and their personalities became a wall of bland pleasantry.
It’s not just the drug thing, either, the nervy pretence that dance culture could exist without MDMA. Sure, all the greatest clubs have been off their tits, but drugs in themselves are boring. They are, however, part of the picture, often as big a part as the music. The problem is that, unless your idea of exciting reading is a geek-squad frot over the latest Logic software, hedonistic tales are a DJ’s best chance for a decent ancedote. I need a narrative, a gripping yarn to tell. I don’t mind if it’s an unhinged interest in pangolins that’s caused them to make a dubstep concept album about anteaters, or that they’re touring Latvia playing live sets from a bicycle-powered soundsystem. It was brilliant and unexpected, for instance, when Paul van Dyk recently opened up to me about his passion for German politics. Just please, please, I pray, make them say something original, something different, something that doesn’t amount to the fact they started off by getting gigs via MySpace and definitely weren’t influenced by someone they’re patently studied hard. I’ve sweated blood trying to make DJs talk about anything at all that differentiates them from the next DJ along, but they simply don’t get it, they don’t see being interesting as part of the job — unlike, say, Noel Gallagher — and perhaps it isn’t. Their job, really, is to sit in the dark pressing buttons to make us dance.
Thus, when I find myself envying NME journos who interview indie bands that arrive with a ready-made philosophy, a shed-load of attitude and novel ideas about how they’re going to appear in the media, I simply listen to their music. Usually it could have been made at any time from 1969 onwards, a Xerox of a carbon copy of a pastiche; tired, tired, tired faux-punk guitar crap. Then I listen to our music, the music that Mixmag covers, a variety of styles all pulled together by the influence of beats and by electronic experimentation. It sounds, at its best, like the future. Once again, I’m invigorated, ready to sit in a coffee bar with a nice man who’s left his bedroom studio for an hour to earnestly explain that, “the new stuff isn’t really electro, more techno with an electro influence”. Suddenly, strangely, it’s all worthwhile again. You see, in the end, it’s all about the music. Oh, God, no…
So TRUE!
