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Thread: Can a DJ get work without mixing records?

  1. #71
    Member Adzm00's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by GMan View Post

    Until relatively recently, the con in exploring, appreciating and buying music was the following:

    1) record shop owners wouldn't always have the best music available, and would try and sell you what was left over - ie. sell you what hadn't been sold ( if you were speculatively buying new releases, eg vinyl 12")
    2) when you visited a record store, eg in Soho London, the shop staff would put you under pressure to buy something, having got a dozen 12" off the wall for you to listen - but most releases might be shit
    3) second hand record stores are often dimly lit, so you can't always tell if a record is worn (under a 100 watt bulb a near mint 12" may be only VG rated, and sound all crackly)
    4) in second hand stores, maybe the best vinyl & cds never made it to the racks, but the shop owner or co-workers had it for themselves, so you never saw the full second hand stock available
    5) HMV Oxford Circus London,& other music stores plus various music mags would give rave reviews to average records, hyping the releases
    6) there is much media hype on bullshit music, you feel expected to conform to "good taste"

    The end result of the above process was the long term permeation into society of shit music, leveraged by record labels, & record shops

    We have never been in a better position to explore & buy good music online - without all the nonsense pressure to buy shit music in store - and all make up our own minds, in the long term, as to what is good music.
    1 & 2 – if you don’t like it, you don’t buy it, that is DJing, that is having your own taste, that is building YOUR COLLECTION. In other words fuck them, no one will ever pressure me into buying something I don’t like, and if you are a person that will cave in then that is your own fault for being a massive pussy.

    3 – take a torch.

    4 – gutted, the pros of being a record shop owner

    5 & 6 – YOU LISTEN TO IT. If you like it buy it, if you don’t, then don’t buy it. Again listening to something you don’t like, and buying it because the media said it was good is retarded bullshit, if that is the case then don’t be a DJ.


    All I have got from your posts now, is you are Rodney Trotter, you probably don’t have aids, you have been to loads of shit clubs and then complain there are no good ones, even though you don’t visit them and you are easily influenced by the media or what someone tells you is good.
    www.londontechnoblog.com / www.soundcloud.com/adam-bloy #TeamIdiot
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  2. #72
    Member Mahatma Coat's Avatar
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    And this, ladies and gentlemen is what happens when we let crack heads loose on the internet.
    Once you're in the gutter, you may as well stay in the gutter - Dublin taxi driver

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  3. #73
    Member Adzm00's Avatar
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    www.londontechnoblog.com / www.soundcloud.com/adam-bloy #TeamIdiot
    Cpl. Josh Ray Person:
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  4. #74
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    Everyone's musical taste has equal merit - but I was a plonker and bought shit

    When I was 21, late 80's I was a dead ringer for Rodney Trotter from Only Fools & Horses, and being slightly ugly (scrawny and gangly) like Only Fools & Horses Rodney, I couldn't pull the nightclub chicks, but because I dressed smart and looked harmless and perhaps shaggable, birds would sometimes "reverse-solicit" me, and offer me sex at around the £50 a fling. Hence I got hooked on meat market clubs with poor musical taste.

    Now everyone's musical taste is of equal merit, and because I've been buying music for 30+ years, I just wanted to confide in you, as to how I have been a plonker.

    I am now selling all the shit records I bought. A few other DJs, would be beginner DJs and collectors might or might not empathise with how I went wrong and how I see the solution, as in my previous post.

    It really is best in my opinion to follow your own musical taste online without any influence or any pressure selling from anyone else with vested interests. Don't listen to music magazines, record shop people, explore it yourself using the tools I have used & others that I might not know about. I use Discogs database, youtube and juno.co.uk - you might use other online tools. I have found it's best to get a "reference point" to make sure that my judgement of a good record is true, so as a benchmark I refer to the ratio of "haves to wants" on discogs and examine DJ play charts, bearing in mind some of these charts could be biased or rigged. Sometimes a record can sound good, but after 20 plays you realise it was just catchy without being musically excellent.

    Now professional DJs will have another barometer - the dance floor. A beginner DJ like me, who has DJ-ed live just once in a bar, and I've also done just 3 times as a mobile jock 2005-2006.

    Now, ten years ago, around 2004, I shopped in a record store in Soho, London, near the prostitution and lap dancing district, that was only open for a short period. The man who ran it was nasty to me.
    I would walk in, he would pull around 12 records off the wall for me to play on the decks. He said "put your wants in the left hand hole and the ones you don't want in the right hand hole".
    I went to this shop only 5 times. Each time the man would get around 12 records off the wall, and I would end up with only 1 record I wanted, and 11 I didn't want.
    He soon got tired of me, and got more impatient and nasty with each visit.
    By the 5th visit he screamed at me "what do you mean you only want one record!!! you've been an hour in here? you're fucking wasting my time." I paid for the record I wanted, then had to ask him for a bag. "Oh you want a bag as well" he sneered, embarrassing me in front of the whole shop. I never went back. Horrible man. It ruined my day.

    In a way it's good that things are now online and we can deal with nice sellers on discogs with 100% positive feedback. We don't need to have our musical tastes manipulated by record shop staff .... no pressure sell on juno - you can listen to 100 and not buy any ....

    The purpose of this thread is to gauge opinion as to whether a DJ (not necessarily me) can find paid work without being able to mix, and at least 2 members on here have said effectively "yes it's possible". This is interesting and comforting.
    Thank you for your replies.

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