I Fooled the World into Thinking I Was a Successful EDM DJ–For an Art Project
thump.vice.com
thump.vice.com
Now I know this plan is foolproof. Check this out. First of all, you and me start working at the bank. Doesn't matter the position, okay, just so long as we get in there, all right? Then we just go there every day, do the work, gain their trust until we get them in the palm of our hand. All right. So how we get the money? That's the beauty of it, bro. They deposit the money into our bank accounts, week after week, month after month. They're not even gonna know they're being robbed. And then 20 or 30 years later, we walk out the front door like nothing even happened.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ActLikeYouBelong/comments/4cb4yw/fooled_the_world_into_thinking_she_was_an_edm/d1h7aml/
In other fields we expect the luminaries of a craft to have achieved that level with some significant effort/insight/accomplishments, and I don't know about you, but 6 months is NOT enough time to truly master a craft. (I say as someone who has spent multiple decades spent in multiple instruments, physical crafts and otherwise, and still find myself a joke next to real experts, and would not attempt to pass myself off as such)
I would say the "luck factor" plays more a role in djing than it does in many other fields (most performance fields are similar in this way), which would be fine if it were acknowleged, but there does seem to be some deifying of the DJs, and many who I interacted with seemed to, as we put it in tech, drink the koolaid a bit too much. Like the author I got tons of praise for my sets when I would occasionally have thrown together whatever bullshit I had been listening to the day of in an hour before I went onstage, and I felt like a bit of a sham for that; I would certainly not try to pull similar shit in my professional career and I think that's quite telling.
I take the article as a request to "See through the smoke and mirrors" and as a shitty DJ I'd definitely echo that sentiment. There are some amazing producers out there who get little to no credit, because they haven't gotten critical mass necessary to start passing themselves off as DJ-famous despite putting a huge amount of effort into making some damn good music. I'd be the first to nod to a "Well life isn't fair" statement, but thus the article, and my emphasizing that it's for us to see each performer for what it is and not lessen the accomplishments of either group for the other; but to me that requires being able to distinguish what each performer is and is not.
I spend way too much of my regular life being analytical (heh..) and thinking instead of enjoying, and I really don't understand why it's so popular among music fans to always look for the flaws in everything instead of finding the beauty. I understand that as a someone who has seen through the smoke and mirrors it may be tempting to clear the smoke.
But I came because of the smoke machine, and when I look back I'll remember the warm feeling of empathy, fun and joy seemingly flowing through the hazy air - not about how much time or effort the DJ spent on the tunes. That doesn't make me stupid or ignorant, I'd argue it makes me the opposite.
https://newrepublic.com/article/118854/edm-and-hippies-how-r...
I think it's because we react in such an emotional way to the music, that it'd seem odd if just about anybody could manipulate us in this way. And people pretend as if the work required to perform music had some kind of inherent value: if it took you half a lifetime to learn, it must be good, and vice versa. Plus, fandom is both familiar and entertaining.
That said, I'm not sure pretentiousness is that rare in either EDM fans or DJs: https://youtu.be/hOj0E_ryI2U?t=64
You don't get to compose for the Olympics while being a simple hack.
There's layers of sophistication. Sometimes becoming a better musician means learning to put more into a song, and sometimes it means less.
A good example of this: Ahmad Jamal, Surrey With The Fringe On Top, particularly the section 50 seconds in - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM7PDwzY9LA
More mainstream is the drumming in "Seven Nation Army" by the White Stripes.
I love both at times, complex music that I can keep listening to over and over and finding new elements to enjoy, and also simple music where it has been boiled down to only the essential element that perfectly expresses a particular feeling.
Horses for courses. The "sophisticated listener" should be intelligent enough to understand that.
If you like to play status games that's of course unacceptable to you, as one has no way to separate the plebs from the connoisseurs.
Music certainly has no lack of self-important individuals.
A google search for "unearned pleasure" comes up with lots of interesting results. I would expand that to the idea of "unearned success", which I think is implied to be a bad thing in our society.
There's a limit of course, but I wish our society was less focused on consumption and competition and more interested in trying to help make the average person's life less stressful and more fun.
This was the part that struck me; the imposter syndrome, even after achieving commercial success. If you become a sought-after EDM DJ (or software developer) it's not because you were able to fool the world. It's because you've taught yourself how to give your customer what they need. The people consuming what you make already know you're a professional - and you're the last one to realize it.
Congrats to the author and her mentors for figuring out what it takes to build a popular act.
I sure did roll my eyes and make wanking gestures during the opening paragraphs. No, people aren't at a club to sit back and sip weak tea slowly whilst listening to the intricacies of a beautifully difficult piece of music. They are here to dance. And as the DJ, your job is to give them beats to dance to and keep the party going. Any number of these people may be listening to and loving that difficult, cerebral music at home, but you can't dance to that shit and they are in this place to move their asses.
[edit] spelling
I was expecting lovers of dance music to... love dance music. Not dictate what's right and what's wrong while passively agressively suggesting that mainstream listeners are ignorant.
I've seen this attitude many times from smaller groups which see themselves above the masses. They need a justification for the fact that their tastes are not popular and that becomes often "the masses are stupid, only we understand the true nature of whatever".
They also started with insider connections, which is probably the biggest thing that let them overcome needing "luck" to take off.
The lesson here is that a mildly competent attractive woman can easily get jobs in entertainment/marketing.
To me, it sounds like the author just has a chip on their shoulder about EDM in specific. That goes insufficiently unexplored, but the reason is probably best described as "salty."
Yet, the article is dressed it up VICE-magazine's carefully managed branding and is designed to look like an authentic entity exposing something meaningful. All flash, no substance. Irony, thy name is VICE.
What does this mean? (Honest question.)
> we were suddenly being booked and questioned our "realness."
well...
> Tobias has used his know-how to make an online platform called ...
Oh I see the article is an ad. Just like her whole career.
You know you live in postmodern times when someone can write an "honest" article about how their career is phony in order to sell a product. Just, wow.
She also happened to ride the wave of "we need more female DJs" (Jan 2014):
http://thump.vice.com/en_au/article/the-reason-there-arent-m...
The hook for promoters was that it was a twofer - two female DJs on the flyer for the price of one.
What she doesn't get is that everyone doing EDM thinks it's a joke too. Nobody takes it seriously (except getting best time slots).
I guess what I'm stuck on is, what was the "art" in the project? Being a DJ or fooling everyone? Seems like it could be a case of imposter syndrome, but I'll bet it's simply clickbait.
Depends on the subgenre.
Why do so many DJs play the same songs over and over and over again from night to night?
I've been to so many clubs that very rarely play new music, and very often stick to the same playlist night after night.
It's so incredibly boring to hear the same songs over and over and over again, and saps my will to go out at all, because I know I'm rarely going to hear anything new. There's only so many times I can get up the energy to dance to even a great song that I've heard ten thousand times in the last 20 years.
I know this varies from DJ to DJ and scene to scene, and some do play new music, but I've just seen this happen way too often, and wonder how people can even stomach working as a DJ if they're not interested enough to find and play new music, and restrict themselves to playing the same stuff over and over again.
It really bores the hell out of a lot of club goers too, and I'm convinced its contributed to the death of some scenes.
Also, why do some clubs have the same fucking DJs for literally decades? Why can't they let some fresh blood in?
Clubs are not venues for new music, on the whole. Taking in truly new music is challenging in a way that most people out to get drunk/high and dance their ass off just don't want.
I have a list of tracks that I know will start a dance floor, every DJ worth anything does. They aren't effective because they're new or innovative, but because they connect with a large percentage of people. The party starters are hits from when the audience was in college or high school; you just have to look at your crowd, and pick the right year, play some songs from their era, and the crowd will be happy.
I think the best DJs will expand the horizons of their crowd a little bit, by playing something interesting and new for the people in the crowd. But, as much as I might like to do a set of all my favorites, I know I can't play Kraftwerk and Dead Prez and The Big Boys in the same set...I can probably get away with one such obscure track (and, I'm often surprised to find somebody in the crowd recognizes it, or asks who it is because they really like it and hadn't heard it before). You've gotta empty the dance floor every now and then to keep the bar ringing, anyway, so you can do it with the weird tracks.
So...if you want to be paid to DJ in almost any environment, you have to play the music the audience wants to hear. Hell, you can effectively be a jukebox playing nothing but requests (which are always hits) and people will be happy; but, if you ignore all requests, the crowd won't be happy (though clubs are less prone to requests than private parties, in my experience). If you achieve a huge level of success, maybe then you can play a majority of your own tracks...but, even the biggest names who are also "producers" are mostly just playing the hits and waving their hands around while visuals and pyrotechnics go off around them.
The thing is, after a while, you can get a sense of what kinds of music is danceable and catchy, and know that there's a high chance you'll fill the dance floor with it, even (or especially) if it's new.
About popular oldies: each of these was new once, and some DJ had to take a risk to play it for the first time somewhere before it was popular. I'll be showing my age here, but I've seen on multiple occasions cases where a new danceable, catchy song will come out, and would have been perfect for a club, but it doesn't actually get played in clubs for a decade or two. Then I'll finally hear it played in a club, and by then it's already stale, and has lost a lot of the energy and excitement it would have had were it played when it was fresh.
Also, even if a DJ lacked confidence in their own ability to pick danceable new music, and felt that they had to stick to the tried and true oldies: there are so many great oldies out there! Why should they stick to the same exact 10 oldies every night when there are hundreds if not thousands of them to pick from?
Then, in my experience, most DJs don't stick to just the popular club hits. They play obscure music all the time. Even music that is virtualy undanceable, and clears the dance floor as soon as they play it. So they're taking risks, and sometimes even paying for it by the audience clearly not liking what they played. But they play those very same obscure songs night after night. It's obvious that no one's requesting these songs, and the DJs don't give a shit that people don't like them, but they play them anyway. So catering to what the audience likes is not an excuse in that case.. and that happens all the time. All the time.
So my questions are:
1 - If DJs are brave enough to play obscure songs, why do they have to be the same obscure songs all the time?
2 - If they feel the need to play old hits a lot, why play the same old hits over and over again?
Regardless of my preference for variety, the people hiring DJs generally don't care about that metric. My favorite DJs in the market where I've worked were playing really obscure stuff for their whole set...but weren't making a lot of money doing it. But, it was clear that they loved the genres and artists they were playing.
Lots of people who have succeeded in the startup world attribute it to one thing or another they did but a lot of it is just damn pure luck.
This woman faked her way through... if she had wanted she could have continued down that road and be a bona fide DJ and none would be wiser.
She didn't, though. The only thing she faked was her attitude about what she was doing.
Anyone can play some popular tracks and mix into the EDM scene for a while but that's not going to get you on the Resident Advisor Top 100. Serious DJ's (I'm talking the likes of Ricardo Villalobos or Nicolas Jaar) have a religious like commitment to the art and performing sets is only a fraction of what they do.
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2001/apr/22/features...
My problem with people that played crowd pleasers was that there was an aspect of them being 'poseurs'. Rather than having a confident idea of what a set should be and putting together something amazing for that night and that crowd, it was almost as if the poseur-DJs were second-guessing things and overly concerned with BPM values, all very mechanical, if skilled. They also were not challenging the audience or creating new music for them. Nonetheless at least they tried, at least they were there in front of a crowd for their mistakes to be heard by all, at least they invested in vinyl (as it was then) and they were able to keep our inclusive crowd happy (if not challenged).
Our scene was 50-50 as far as gender but when it came to organisational nounce and DJing it was mostly male. I do not think that we created an impenetrable male-only clique, plenty of ladies around, just not hitting the decks or having money at stake.
The poseurs did earn acceptance over time in some cases, we gave them the space to get some confidence or whatever it was that was lacking and they earned their place on the scene.
How would I have felt if this 'art project' had infiltrated itself into our events? Probably pretty rotten but times really have changed. Back in the day you could not have 30000 tunez on an mp3 player and have the computer mix things for you. You had to take a choice 150 or so 12" records, all of which had to be bought when they came out as limited pressings with white labels and what not. So to have enough in the bag to cover all eventualities during an hour or so of a DJ slot one would have to have £1000 of vinyl with you, fresh vinyl with sensible back catalog. This was a convenient barrier to entry and probably would have been too high a bar for 'art projects' like this.
You can take the piss out of any medium and any art form and call it an 'art project'. You could even go along to a Trump rally and chant the usual chants and call it an 'art project'. You could wear a football shirt and go to football matches for the first time, posing as a fan and calling it an 'art project'. You could fool people int thinking your graffiti was a 'banksy' and call it an 'art project'.
Beyond the blog post, where are the fruits of this 'art project'? What is being truly created? I don't see any creation of note, just cynicism and assumptions, fakery and nothing really proven.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otM22QcIHYw - a group of untrained people could not put that together and play it live in 6 months. No way, no how.
Maybe with a bit of training and a lot of auto-tune, someone with a decent voice could be a 'pop star', but even that... probably more than 6 months.
There's a ton of music that's got years and years of practice behind it.