In case you didn’t know (Hi new readers! That includes all 2 of you,) I am personally what you would call a “bedroom DJ”;  I mix and scratch in front of an audience consisting of the wall I’m standing in front of and the framed posters that hang on it.  Lately I’ve brought my gear to the first meeting of this dance group at college I’m part of (more info soon, maybe,) and been asked to DJ for an event by another club at college.  Both times I have to act as a human juke box.  No mixing, fading only, three-stock, final destination.

For those of you who don’t know and dance to the entire Daft Punk Discovery album played straight through, a DJ is supposed to set the tempo, the mood, play music that fits the occasion, and make it so that the entire night feels like a movie soundtrack: you don’t know when a song begins or ends, but its a damn nice song.

But take away the beat-matching, the blending, and you might as well save several hundred dollars and a contract and buy a cheap speaker to hook your iZune-Pre-cellphone-thing to.  Quite frankly it feels as if everyone just does that.  With pocket sized music players comes a room of kids who think they know how to choose a good song and unable to finish any of them.  To me or any one member of the general population who still has taste in music (Haha, snobby DJ humor,) this is atrocious.  A DJ spends his time wracking his brain to the point of overheating and mechanical failure to craft a list of finely selected tunes that both flows well into each other, and keeps the pitch bending minimal.

During a gig, a good DJ would look at the room, make sure everyone’s having fun, check how much time he has on the current song, think about the next one, and begin the process of syncing the tempos of the incoming song, or beat matching, and nicely transition from the “currently playing” to the song in the breech, or blending.  The only limit on a DJ’s set is how many songs he can play without purposely train-wrecking.  The DJ is an aloof figure who spends his time thinking and working his hands so everyone else can drink and dance.

Even then, the DJ would still get drunken badgers to play some top 40 song, or an entire CD, or a death metal song in an electro house set.  Well thanks guys, its not like I gave up a perfectly good night of drinking, debauchery, and video games coming up with the song order, just to throw it out of whack to play your song to help you get a one night stand and possibly an embarrassing medical condition located in your nether regions.  Oh I’m fine, I’d love to listen to your 20 minute happy donked hardcore techno mash-up of “Soldier Boy” and “Smack that,” especially considering that the smell of a freshly cleaned and dried silicon wafer has more funk than that.

So here I am, bitter, sore, and annoyed.  I carried three cases and two bags of cables and miscellaneous equipment up three flights of stairs barefooted, in the snow, while pregnant.  And now that I have setup everything, worked out the kinks, and ready to rock out, I have to contain my bubbly enthusiasm to be regulated to just stand there and look pretty.  The work I do is less noticed than the proud men and women who designed and tested your car’s catalytic converter.  Hell, even my mother asked me what was I really doing that required work, music and a $2000 investment that I couldn’t just do with a damned iPod.  That hurts man.

In short for you dancing drunken drugged up dudes, if you hire a good DJ, let him do his thing, and if you really want to hear this one song that brings you back to your days of actually being cool in school, ask nicely.