The DJing FAQ

Some commonly asked questions about my DJing...

How much a week do you spend on records?

It varies according to how much is out- from ten or twenty quid to way over £100. I think the most I've ever spent on records in one week would be about £300 or £400.

Blimey! You must have a lot of records!

Yeah. You reach a certain point at which you stop thinking "Wow, I've got loads of records" and start thinking "Where the hell do I put all this crap?"

Surely it can't be that bad?

You haven't seen some of my records.

Ah. So you don't like everything you play then?

No. Most of what I play I tolerate, in that I'm not bothered one way or another. Some of it I like. And some of it I actively hate. You can probably guess by looking at the guide to my music taste...

You play stuff you hate?

Sometimes you have to. It's not down to whether I like what I'm playing, it's whether the audience does. I'd far rather be getting a good audience reaction from something I hate than clearing the dancefloor with something I like. My music taste does affect what I play, but I try and keep that to a minimum.

Still, it must be great DJing for a living.

It beats working a 9 to 5- I don't think I could handle that. However, it has its drawbacks- my sleeping patterns are notoriously bad.

But you can't complain- you get paid for going out!

Er, no. DJing isn't like that- you're too busy playing records to spend much time socialising.

It can't be that difficult though!

You'd be surprised. It's very easy to DJ badly, but it's a lot more difficult to DJ well. With some mixes of audience it can be extremely difficult- if you've got an audience of indie kids, punks, goths and hardcore metallers in the same club you can guarantee that most things you play will appeal to only a small fraction of them and the tracks with a crossover appeal have been played to death. Even with an audience which is nominally homogenous, like at Resurgence, there are very few tracks which will appeal to the majority of the people there. And don't forget getting hassled for requests...

Does that get annoying?

It can do, especially if someone's really persistent about a track which you don't want to play.

Surely one track can't hurt?

That's what they all say. But one track really can screw up a night- first of all if you're trying to work round to fitting it in, then if it clears the floor it can totally destroy the" flow" of a night- one of the arts of DJing is getting people to dance to stuff that they might not have gone for if they weren't already on the floor, and a floorclearer kills that "flow of people" you've worked up stone dead.

But can't you just throw on a guaranteed floorpacker?

Sometimes that will work, sometimes it won't. There are occasions when a night never properly recovers from a floorclearer- all those people who were "up" are out of the rhythm and never quite get there again.

But why worry about how many people are dancing?

It's the only way we can tell if people are enjoying the DJing- and a lot of people do go out to dance and get bored if they're off the floor for a long period of time.

Why can't you just throw on a load of obscure undanceable "interesting" stuff?

I tend to do that more at the start. If I did it later on the night would collapse.

OK, but sometimes even when I ask for stuff that will go down you don't play it!

There's only a finite amount of tracks I can play in a night- if you reckon about 15 tracks an hour, it's around 60-70 tracks a night.

But sometimes even when you say you will you don't play it!

Normally, if I've said I'll play something I do my best to play it. However, sometimes the night will turn out differently to expected, so a track which seemed a good idea ar one point might not be an hour later. And of course, sometimes I just forget, or run out of time. Sorry.