Griffin It!: Sometimes I wish I was a laptop tech house ‘DJ’
I had a strange and somewhat disconcerting dream the other night.
For those that haven’t read my bio. on this here blog, one of my hobbies is to DJ. For more than a decade, it has allowed me to get paid (sort of) and drink for free just for playing the music that I want to hear. Indeed, I’ve cleared dance floors from north London to Gangnam. My peculiar dream, however, was not the recurring one of lifting the wrong record off the platter causing the club to go deathly silent (this actually happened, by the way), or the one where I get sent to jail for physically assaulting the tit who asks for some hip-hop when I’m spinning the Dead Prez tune called, um, ‘Hip-Hop’, but rather this nightmare was all about my preparation for an upcoming gig this weekend.
Let me explain.
It’s no lie that I very smugly consider myself superior to these young cats that take to the DJ booth these days. You know the ones…they usually have a hairstyle like Kim Jong-eun and play mp3 files of downloaded dubstep (the rubbish American brand, too, not the original UK style that pays due respect to its dub reggae roots) on their laptops and have the audacity to call themselves ‘DJs’. (What kind of ‘discs’ they are ‘jockeying’ is still unclear…maybe it’s irony, since they do love a bit of that, too.) I, on the other hand, am a ‘real’ DJ, and play more than one genre of music and on the only format that one should; vinyl.
How cool am I! Cooler than Skrillex, that’s how cool.
Any important E-mails, mate?
So, in my dream, I’m preparing for this Saturday’s set (shameless plug to follow), and am at a loss as to which records to select. I intend taking just one bag, but – since I’m so cool and play many genres on vinyl (did I mention that?) – I am getting increasingly frustrated trying to pick out a selection of tunes that will both represent my oh-so-cool eclectic taste, and…fit in my one record bag.
What is a DJ (vinyl only, eclectic taste) to do?
This sorry state of affairs continues until the floor is an ocean of records and, exasperated, I’m pulling my hair out (something I can ill-afford to do). And that’s when I wake up in a cold sweat.
“F@$k it!”, I say. “I’ll just play a House set on CDs.”
And so I shall.
If you happen to find yourself in Busan, South Korea this weekend:
http://www.facebook.com/events/1390757384506045/
The Guest Room 
Will u be crazy if u teach in the morning n act as DJ at night? Haha.
No crazier than usual.:)