DJing is easy.
This is a belief I have held since I first moved to LA, in 2009, when all my new friends were into house and techno and dubstep and a wide range of subgenres I reduced in my ignorant, not-fully-formed brain as “EDM.”
Now, I am a DJ.
I can confirm, again, that DJing is easy. It is also the most fun thing I have ever done.
I booked myself as a DJ last Friday at “The Special Edition Show,” the second rendition of a comedy/music night I helped organize at Permanent Records Roadhouse with my friend, comedian Justin Otis. The first rendition doubled as a book promo event and in addition to comics like Papp Johnson we had rappers/beatmakers like Rhys Langston, Frankie Jax No Mad, ZAYALLCAPS and—unbelievably but amazingly—M.E.D. perform short sets. Earoh, a real producer and DJ with actual talent, also DJed before the show and in between acts.
For the second rendition of the show I failed to book any musicians or DJs and figured it would be a chance for me to fulfill a lifelong dream of DJing for a group of strangers. I wanted to prove that it was easy. The only other time I’d DJed was at a party in my hometown of Champaign after my freshman year of college, when I had a bunch of A-Trak and Skrillex remixes loaded up but the crowd of people I knew from high school only wanted to hear rap. I played them the Lil Jon they wanted and then two years later when dubstep finally stretched its wobbling claws across the country I saw on social media that all of those people were now wearing rainbow bracelets and glowsticks and going to raves. I still feel superior for being ahead of the curve, even though I never even really liked the music that I brought to play that night.
But the comedy show would be different. I wouldn’t be playing in a friend’s basement. I would be up there on a stage, or off to the side a bit, making sure that a Friday evening event for which 40 strangers had RSVPed had music running smoothly.
I practiced the night before, downloading Djay AI from the App Store and using a YouTubetomp3 site to fill up my otherwise empty Apple Music library with songs. Justin recommended “experimental hip-hop” as the genre. Easy. My friend and podcast co-host Lee—also a real producer and DJ with actual talent—gave me a few long electronic songs that matched the vibe I was going for. Galcher Lustwerk, who I learned about from doing the podcast with Lee, proved to be a perfect artist to download for a DJ set. His song “Put On” has just the right amount of vocals and synths and also extended loops of four on the floor kicks. With the sync button on the Djay app, this made it easy to slap some low end rhythm under whatever else was playing. Easy.
I don’t know if this is the right strategy, but my DJ approach was to play a bit of a song, then throw up another song on the other side, hit sync, loop four to sixteen bars of that song. Slide the fader over. Loop a section of the song that was playing first. Tinker with the EQ on both sides. Then un-loop the second song and slide the fader over. Voila. A perfect mix. I didn’t use headphones for pre-cuing because I was just riding the aux cord (although I had my loop machine hardware on my DJ table with a bright blue cord hanging out blatantly not plugged into anything, a subtle bit that I found hilarious but I’m not sure anyone else noticed).
I started playing around 7pm and quickly realized I didn’t have enough music prepared. Thankfully I got the WiFi password and pulled up YouTube after taking requests from the comics who were there early for their walk up music (“Strangers” by Black Thought, A$AP Rocky, and Run the Jewels and “Act A Fool” by Ludacris, respectively). The sun was shining, we were outdoors on the patio drinking Modelos, weed smoke was in the air, and a few people were trinkling in. Pressure grew.
I began to think that DJing is not easy. I’ve only done standup twice at open mics years ago, but DJing is strangely similar to doing comedy. You feel good when people are nodding their heads to the beat, or when someone walks up and says “I like this” like they did when I put on Galcher. When people aren’t dancing you start worrying that you are the cause of all their problems. You are ruining their night. You want to play what you want to hear but what if they don’t like what you want to hear? What do they want to hear?
When there were only about four people sitting down waiting I turned the volume down and asked the tiny crowd “got any requests?” One person yelled out, “You wouldn’t have it!” I tried to assure him I had YouTube on my side but he stood firm in his belief of music superiority and didn’t give me any names. Another person shrugged and said, “This is good.” I was playing a DJ Nature song Lee gave me that had some looped Biggie sample about shaking tits and ass.
As I was driving home after the show listening to a DJ on SiriusXM’s Shade45, I noticed how common it is for DJs to just end a song and then launch into a totally different one. The mix isn’t that important. Most people aren’t paying attention. DJs set the tone for an event but the average person at a bar or venue isn’t tuned in to the intricacies of whatever the DJ is doing. There is room for error.
Before the show ended, though, and in fact before it began, Justin and I were starting to panic that no crowd was showing up. One of the comics brought a small crew of people which included a semi-famous rapper/comedian. I glanced up and their group was vibing to the Key Glock remix of Denzel Curry’s “Walkin’.” They seemed to enjoy when I played Earl Sweatshirt’s “2010.” I also had some billy woods / Kenny Segal and some R.A.P. Ferreira in the mix. Then Justin walked up and jokingly accused me of scaring the hoes, and said we need to play some Radiohead or Pixies to lure the white people lingering at the bar into the comedy show seats. I put on “Here Comes Your Man” and one of the scheduled comics + their group of semi-famous friends promptly left. Apparently the crowd wasn’t big enough for them to perform (even though they were on the poster, and clearly their name and own self-promo efforts weren’t enough to get people there), but I blame my choice of putting on The Pixies and completely killing the vibe. It makes me feel like a real DJ. You gotta bomb to get better.
Once we started the show, though, more people did show up. It’s the Field of Dreams rule. If you build it, they will come. If you start the show, people will walk over and sit down. No one wants to be the first in the empty room. I flubbed a couple transitions due to some weird sound hook-up error, and two of the comedians walked up in silence, but overall at a comedy show no one is probably paying much attention to that. Although headliner James Adomian did comment on the music after he got on stage—I played him up with some heavy surf metal courtesy of a really good band from Santa Cruz my friend Drew told me about called Drain—joking that the music helps this wide, sparsely-populated patio feel like a full room. By the end of James’ set a lot of people had emptied out from the indie rock show inside the venue and were laughing loudly. When he was done I put on a DJ Rashad song and blasted it. A guy in the front row started dancing. I am a real DJ. I am a real DJ. I am a real DJ. DJing is fun and easy.
There was only one hard part and it came during the preparation phase. One of the challenges in searching for music to play in between comedy sets on YouTube is that barely any songs these days start with a bang. If I were a real real DJ or had time to edit tracks I could trim music files so that they start at a good moment, but I was short on time and just wanted to be able to hit play on songs that brought big energy for a few seconds as comics made their way to the stage. At the bottom of this post I will link to a list of songs that I found that satisfied these requirements. They are hard to find. Most YouTube videos of songs that would otherwise work have long cinematic intros with the artists talking, or big synth buildups before the beat drops. Coincidentally on the day of the show Earoh tweeted an open-ended question: “intro on beats or just get to the drums?” I responded. It obviously depends, and drum-less beats are popular right now, but there are far too many beats out there with meandering intros. As an official DJ, I need to stress to any producer or rapper readers that this trend needs to end. Get to the point.
I also want to stress before ending this pointless newsletter that “real” DJing is not easy at all. Getting two vinyl records to match up, manipulating playback with your hands, and maintaining a collection of tracks that a crowd wants to hear is stressful and challenging. People like Four Tet / Skrillex / Fred Again.. are doing much more than hitting buttons. But that’s also kind of all they’re doing, they’re just good at doing it.
I probably will never DJ again, but it would be a funny hobby to pick up in my early 30s, and we want to host regular Special Edition Shows, so maybe I will.
I promise I will make this newsletter more interesting in the future, and less of a diary, but for now I wanted to share my thoughts on how DJing is easy and fun and reiterate to you, loyal readers, that I am now an official DJ.
Here’s the list of songs that bump from the jump:
Medhane - Concrete
Ratking - Canal
billy woods & Kenny Segal - Year Zero
Fat Tony - Swervin
Bia - Whole Lotta Money
Zeeloopers - So excited
Turnstile - Don’t Play
Clipping - Story 2
Rrose - Purge
Los Kemet - cry then breathe