if you never learned how to read good and prefer the pictorial version, follow this link: http://www.ishkur.com/articles/trancecracker.php
many of you are guilty of this to some extent, including myself at times. dj worship happens across all genres but right now it seems the electro/progressive house kids and skrillexites are the biggest perpetrators.
you dress up in your 'rave' attire, grab some party drugs and pay $70 to see some asshole who bought 100 copies of his own track on beatport and now charts consistently so you can tell your friends "i was theeeeeere when he dropped that dope lmfao remix of freebird, man". catch is that you look like a construction worker that stole his baby sister's pacifier, the drugs you took are probably slowly turning you into a lizard person, and you paid $70 to see some flavor of the month dj rinse the same tracks that everyone else is playing in a slightly different order.
at the show, you don't actually dance. you put your hands in the air for about 3 minutes of every song and then fist pump for another 2 after the drop comes. you spend half the time at the bar with your friends, paying $15 for a well cocktail to impress your lady friend, and getting pictures taken with a glowstick by your groin. really, really clever stuff. then the drugs kick in. you head back to the dancefloor and fist pump even harder than before, close your eyes during the breakdown and end up bumping into a few people spilling their drinks all over yourself... about 10 minutes later realizing you're dehydrated and too fucked up to stand.
the show ends and your friends find you passed out on the toilet with a mix of vomit and feces over the stall. you go home, get some sleep and wake up nice and early to brag on facebook how amazing the light show was. in the back of your mind, you know perfectly well that you can mix just as well and play the same trendy fodder as the dude you just paid a ridiculous sum to see. regardless, you keep on the same routine weekend after weekend. why?
because you're a sucker for marketing. you secretly care about the djmag top 100. you listen and buy tracks on beatport based on what's charting -- what's good to you is what's good (read: easily digestible) to everyone else. for some strange reason, you're okay with seeing and hyping a producer who's been djing for a laughably little amount of time. half of the people you admire for their production skills are either re-cycling vengeance loops or using ghost producers. but that's okay because they have a nice light show.
you worship these 'artists' and their peers not only because of direct marketing but also because of indirect marketing -- the thought that you too can play the beatport top 10 and obscure electrohouse remixes of some shit ludacris song to 1000+ people crowds. in the hopes of turning this fantasy into a reality, you take up music production. you start this foray by pumping out cheesy mash-ups that can just as easily be done on the fly by a half-ass djs. then you see your favorite producer has a remix contest up, cough up some cash for the stems and toss vengeance drum loops over them so they give the illusion of coming from someone other than an amateur. 2000 other kids do this and the label makes a thousand dollar profit, beatport sees the other 5k. you never make it big and end up as the middle age fat dude that everyone laughs at because he's still trying to dj pop music in the hopes of staying relevant with the kids and maybe getting a handjob from some drunk underage girl.
you continue to viciously defend the djs and producers that single handedly turn dance music into nothing other than a commodity. same shit as the billboard artists you so love hate on. keisha is a slightly more successful version of deadmaus, chris brown is afrojack but with darker skin complexion. all this for what? you don't owe these people anything.
now, minus the bad drugs, most of you are probably not this person to a t. nevertheless, i think a lot of people could benefit from deleting beatport from your bookmarks, cancelling the djmag subscription, and spending time digging for music that doesn't consist of supersaws over pre-made drum loops. be more discerning with what songs you purchase. be more wary of paying money to see someone live that you outperform yourself. there is a wonderful world of music out there and djing for others is a great way to share it with people who might not otherwise have a chance to hear it. be yourself, stop trying to be like another dj or producer. most importantly, discover yourself. tomorrow, you might laugh at some of the garbage you like today. for this to happen though, you need to step out of your comfort zone and really explore what other music is out there. alternatively, please give up djing and/or production. the world needs a lot less generic shit right now, not more.
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Originally Posted by The Blackest
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