elitism, privacy, djs, blogs and "giving away stuff"

besides the purely business aspect dan mentioned upthread, why else do people hide what they're playing/collecting?

is it ok for other blogs to "give away" rare treasures?

i suppose friday afternoon is a bad time to start a thread?

dan perry thinks we're all sycophantic vampires ;_;

Macallan, you 18 year old you! ...

oh c'mon, jaxon - friday, thank god, night's allright for fighting.

(goes upthread to reread the 'riginal post:)

I swear we already had this discussion somewhere, or maybe it was on a dj mailing list I'm on where we have this discussion every week.

Some hip djs have been using those weight things that you put down over the record while it's playing. Do they do it because it somehow sounds better...or to block the label?

Most DJs are pretty good about sharing what they're into and turning people onto songs, that's why they do it, but at the same time, it's competitive out there and it's a great feeling to put something killer on and have everyone go "wtf is that???".

I don't really think it's that bad to pull the secretive move, especially when you'll end up telling people what's what soon enough, or everyone will find out right away. There's such great traditions in dance music, from Hip-Hop DJs washing off or blacking out their labels, to bootlegs purposefully messing up the titles or just supplying the name of the song and not the artist, and in the pre-internet days, that added to this great sense of mystery, something that's really lacking in this day of mp3 blogs and discogs.com and all that. I think that's all part of the culture and it's fun to preserve. I just imagine jaded kids with soulseek filled harddrives who can't even imagine what it's like to pay 12 dollars for a record because the cover's cool...or god forbid, because it's produced by somebody with an italian last name! This is the DJs revenge...a way of saying "see, there are STILL records that nobody's digitized, soulseekized and bloggerized yet".

I want to inspire that feeling when someone's like "oh man, what is that!". I still get that all the time. I think it's something that should never die.

otm x 10

it's silly to care about "jaded kids with soulseek filled harddrives " because there are more interesting people out there than these guys, people (with love, lol) that are actually transformed by this add-friendly effervescence of selected free fresh music, and live this in their own music selections , in the music that they make and who knows what else. being bored by some music at one point is a good thing; the discomfort is an incitative to keep on searching.

i don't think being secretive about tunes is elitist in the slightest especially if you are someone whose sole occupation is music.

also, quite often the reason those secret tunes are in the hands of so few is because those few are so good at what they do and it takes time, dedication, etc.

I never understood the DJ concept that by "discovering" a song or rekkid in a second hand store that they somehow have the right to claim ownership in any way over it. You're not a musician, you're a dj. A wave of construction workers may put the building together, but it's the architect that made it.

I'm not tossing shit at you specifically Dan, but I grew up with _literal_ one-of-a-kind vinyl and shellac passing through the house on a daily basis and got tired watching people hoard them like they were rare paintings. The tedious sort of silliness that kind of mine-mine-mine collector/ specialist/ i-know-more-than-you type thinking leads to tends to only serve to isolate the work of artists. If it's your livelihood and you need to protect trade secrets, more power to you I guess, but saying you're preserving a tradition by obfuscating the people you should be glorifying seems a bit disingenous.

But then I'm real into the idea of a level playing field and still longing for a day when that celestial jukebox touches down and we can all pluck whatever fruits we want for ourselves. Not looking to be TOO much longer now...

a good dj does a lot more than just collect and play other people's tunes !

"There's such great traditions in dance music, from Hip-Hop DJs washing off or blacking out their labels, to bootlegs purposefully messing up the titles or just supplying the name of the song and not the artist, and in the pre-internet days, that added to this great sense of mystery, something that's really lacking in this day of mp3 blogs and discogs.com and all that. I think that's all part of the culture and it's fun to preserve."

I think these are pretty lame traditions actually. It's much more fun to be able to know what song you really liked and then discover more stuff by and about them.

I want to inspire that feeling when someone's like "oh man, what is that!".

telling that person what it is that they're hearing is part of the fun. its why i started djing in the first place.

yeah that feeling is great but what does that have to do with leaving them on the hook for the rest of their lives? (if it's just a dancer not a RIVAL)

a good dj does a lot more than just collect and play other people's tunes !

i agree! so the 'lot more' should be enough to separate them from mere listeners, if that's what they're after. don't hate, disseminate.

i think dan selzer is talking about things that are relativley obscure right now but will be acute records releases in the near future, no?

The label thing is totally fair. It's more the dj secrecy ("look we don't have tracklists on these mixes ha ha ha") that bugs the shit out of me.

random friday thotz:

* Dubplate hoarding and white labels ruined Drum & Bass.
* Getting that "I gotta know what this is" feeling must be a genetic trait of DJ DNA.
* My first impulse when I hear something great is to want to share and talk about it with friends, ilm, other djs.
* I have, and have access to, so much music it's not really a big deal if some kids don't wanna share all their goodies.

yeah it's not a big deal but why not give them shit for it.

a good dj does a lot more than just collect and play other people's tunes !

-- tricky, Friday, July 13, 2007 11:25 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

birthday dedications

i mean i'm ranting as someone who's too busy/wasted/joyful on the floor to be bugging the dj. I like to keep things ephemeral when i'm out but WHAT IF I DINT?

tbf the idea of hanging round the dj and trying to find out what they're playing is pretty lame.

ya but that's different from going up and asking cuz you like something a lot.

the coolest is bringing a legal pad, small pencil you find at the mini golf courses and one of those mining helmets* with the light on the front

*some clubs have a dress code so be sure to call and ask

"birthday dedications"

commentary about how beautiful the bride looks

i'm not a deejay, so have at it:

Skot's Rolling Vinyl-To-MP3 Conversion Carnival Thread.

there used to be a time when i didn't talk about certain things cuz i didn't want to drive the price up and i was waiting until i found a better copy! i was kinda bummed when i saw that chubby checker bootleg at the record store. i feel somewhat responsible for that. until i wrote about it on the internet there was not ONE reference to it on-line. not a one. and you could still buy it for five bucks on ebay. it wasn't even listed on his fan-sites or in discographies. which i always thought was bizarre. and i kinda hoped that by writing about it someone would take the next step and track down tapes or rights or whatever. my brother talked to the sundazed dude about it. but that was kinda silly to think that. so you get a crappy euro boot straight from vinyl. or hell probably straight from an mp3 blog!

what annoys me is when i know the track but can't remember the artist/title info for the life of me and the dj won't tell me. aka torture.

and i did drive the price up on ebay of that record. but i don't feel bad about that. cuz i have two nice copies.

insider trading.

I don't think blogs or discogs have removed the "what is that" factor. They've just made it so that the "what is that" buzz isn't about Stardust "Music Sounds Better With You" or basically the gigantic records of the year, it's about any one of the hits coming from unlikely places or new artists/labels.

As such the skill for the DJ remains the same. Albeit with less emphasis on the closed circle of DJs getting promos of a big record and the power that comes with that, as regards which, good riddance.

Personally I'd always tell people what a record is, if they're a person on the dancefloor or whatever. But it's different with other DJs, a little.

I have got pissed off with fellow DJs (well, one) at the night I play at asking me to "swap some music", or saying "hey can you email me that track" out of sheer laziness and total lack of feel for the music that goes off versus whatever shit they're buying.

Not that I am some flawless selector or whatever but there's a major difference between someone being psyched about a record and you telling them the name of it and someone, a DJ, who just wants to gut all your secret weapons from your set and appear clued in.

Sure you don't own the record or you didn't make it, but as a DJ these tunes are your identity and this is even more the case if they're less well known.

On the otherhand sometimes, with other DJs, it's great to swap music but only where I know they actually are putting time and effort into finding stuff and they give me music I've missed. It has to be reciprocal, or even sometimes you can know the other person's taste and recommend something that you're not crazy about yourself but you think they might like.

If you're going to use someone elses taste as a filter for DJing then you need to be a worthwhile filter to them too, basically.

But as regards the guy in the club asking about a record, I'd always tell them.

You're not a musician, you're a dj.

I think that's why this whole type of thinking/attitude evolved among djs. They want the glory of being a musician, of having people bow down before them, of having people come up and go "omg what is that?". There's a childish "i'm not tellllling, it's miiiiine. i have the coolest toys on the block" aspect to it, too. A dj's ego can be cancerous to the, er, spread of music. But that's really not what most djs care about.

Of course you want people to go "omg what is that". And that is about the spread of music! Just because you want to be the part of that process where someone hears a record and doesn't know what it is, does not mean you aren't a part of that process at all.

As I said, good DJs have identity, if you don't, then what's the point. And identity=records others in your town/club/city don't have.

^^ correct

I'm not saying that "omg" reaction is never about the spread of music or that there aren't some djs who have that has their main desire, but I get the feeling those djs are in the minority, and the reason that reaction is one djs enjoy has more to do with their ego than them being a humble messenger.

xpost, I think they do/can have the same records. My identity often came from playing the 2nd track on the B side of a release others were collectively playing the hell out of.

lol

bonus beats megamix

HA HA HA HA HA TOO FUNNY MAN

sorry, i think i omitted the word "often" from your post and it sounded funnier that way.

no offense intended.

none taken

FUCK AN A SIDE, YOU KNOW?

b side winz again

out of curiosity, what thread is the original exchange from?

noize ask selzer

I think some of you are putting words/thoughts into my mouth. I never said anything about leaving people hanging for ever. Soon as any mysterious item comes along, somebody trainspots it the next day. If I post a mix and don't include a tracklisting, I'd tell anybody what a song is if they ask. People are missing the fact that I enjoy being on the other side as well. It's just fucking human nature to take part in this game. When Mixed Up At the Hague came out, it wasn't like, oh here's an authoritative release with 28 pg liner notes telling me everything I need to know, it was just the amazing world of mystery. And a good result of that is that instead of implying "this is it, this is what's out there", it makes you realize there's so much more to discover.

forks, in the end, of course the mix glorifies the artist and of course, if the song is THAT good and you do a good enough job getting it out there, you're going to do a great deal of good for that artist. I never implied nobody would ever find out what it is. And in the end the whole point of DJ culture is the opposite of any elitist urge to be the only one who knows it, it's to entertain people by sharing other people's music with them, I just think you can't fault somebody for basking a bit in the glory. For being a DJ who's happy to play you your new favorite song. That's half the pleasure of being a DJ, otherwise we'd all spend the rest of our lives playing Wanna Be Starting Something at Bar Mitzvahs. Like Ronan says, if you don't have that, you can be severly lacking as a DJ. Having spent some years in various aspects of dance culture, despite the shitty parties I usually end up DJing, a lot of people who go clubbing really like hearing good music they've never heard before. When your magic jukebox arrives, which is already basically here, nothing will change, there will still be people discovering music on it and sharing it with other people, whether a DJ, a blogger, a tastemaker, your best friend, whatever. At no point am I talking about limited editions and "I'm the only one who has this record". Obviously I could care less about the record collecting mentality of limited editions and one of a kind items.

Alex, those may be lame traditions, but they existed for various reasons a lot of the culture grew up around that. Sometimes it was only obscure because it wasn't legit and they didn't want to get sued. Of course that's a lame reason, but being on the receiving end is like being handed a puzzle, one that in solving in your own manner, you're able to unlock other doors that you might not if somebody gave you all the answers. Without that puzzle, I think too many listeners get really lazy. Here's the canon, this the whole story, read the liner notes and listen to the music and you've got it all covered.

But I feel like a lot of you are responding as if my post was all about how I need to horde music and keep everybody in the dark, when I'm just commenting on a silly aspect of record culture that I miss and I think is FUN to play with. It's just a little game. Obviously I'm in the business of telling people about music I like!

And as far as Acute goes, I don't feel like investing a year and thousands of dollars on something when I may as well blog it right now?

i think the deejay thing is still cool. that's part of the fun! wondering what someone is gonna play next. wondering what the hell you just heard. we can finally get this cool college radio station where we are (it was blocked by an npr station for awhile) and i love it! they are constantly playing things that i've never heard. the other day i waited outside a store for ten minutes in the car to hear what a song was and they still wouldn't tell me! it was kinda agonizing. it was a great song. but it was fun waiting. and even fun not knowing.

I have never DJ'd, but as a listener and a fan, I support the secrecy. I love the anguish of hearing a great song you know you may never hear again. It usually happens in clubs, or streaming DJ sets online, or weird radio stations in the middle of the night.

When I was high school age, I used to record stuff off the radio all the time. There would always be these unknown tracks. Some of them took me years to ID - some of the I've never ID'd. Those unknown songs are some of the most memorable for me. If I heard one of them somewhere now, 17 years later, I would flip out for sure.

The modern equivalent for me is either streaming internet radio, or downloaded recordings of live DJ sets. It still happens from time to time, but everything is so much more accessible now. All I'd have to do is cut a snip out of one of those sets and post to some message boards asking for a track ID.

i definitely like hearing something or finding something special that i know not many people have heard or remember, but like i said, i'm not a deejay and i'm no longer wrapped up in collectorscum world like i kinda was in philly where it was all about hunting and gathering and boasting about finds that nobody had ever heard. that's one of the reasons i still like ilm so much. i love blabbing about stuff! i love turning people on to stuff. my competitive streak has kinda faded away. i love getting all the e-mails from lost and forgotten artists who thank me so warmly for saying nice things about their 30 year old records. latin freestyle people, and folk people, and new wave people, and 70's hard rock people, and maggozulu people. i'm glad they know how much i dig them. they have all saved my life more than once. before the internet i was like a vault. that and i didn't know anyone else who would even care.

When I ask a DJ what a track I like was, I'm fine if they shoo me away if they're concentrating, but I would never imagine they'd do it because it was a secret, or that they might be pissed off afterwards if they'd told me.

I can tell you why it bugs me actually, and it has to do with two different uses:

(a) the first use comes from environments where it's important for people to demand and maintain respect from those around them, sometimes for reasons of basic safety

(b) then there's the use where it tends to come with "inappropriate" and basically means "behave appropriately to the context you're in" -- "don't talk during the sermon, it's disrespectful"

And the way it's used now tends to involve taking the latter (unimportant bits of etiquette like "what is the appropriate way to ask a DJ what he's playing") and blowing them up into the former ("this is an issue of personal respect and you WILL respect me, MF"). It turns a complaint about manners into a chest-beating contest over who gets to demand groveling from the other person.

in my head it rhymed with "brody" and i thought it was some cali style insult

many DJs are actually playing out to meet people, & I know Jaxon is a 100% gentleman enthusiast, this DJ just sounds like he was way far out on the 'distractable / irritable' side of the spectrum

Sure, and not to belabor the point, or to play Capt. S-a-j, but, the guy's fucked-up response after jaxon included a "glowing praise" of his set in his correspondence with the dude, would indicate that the dj guy responded with a dick-ishness all out-of-proportion. That kind of shit bugs me to no end. Why can't people just be human, etc.?

Again, if the guy had whatever problems with j. and his friends, he could have just as easily not responded to him...the response seems all out of proportion, and from a basic communicative standpoint, fails to specifically address any particular resentments which may have brought on the dj's irritability. It reads as just sort of a vague "fuck you..." dismissal, or even worse.

http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:IDMCE3EFR4MVpM:http://www.bruiserbrody.com/BrodyCover.jpg

for me, it should always be about spreading music. i have no problem giving away all my secrets when im deejaying out, it keeps me on my toes looking for more new shit that people arent down with. its not about keeping something obscure or anything like that, fuck that nonsense. when i put a mix online, i do a detailed tracklisting so people know what's up. when its rare/obscure records, i wish them good luck finding them. the closest thing i do to anything like this is that in general i keep some of my favorite dancefloor jams that arent really too publically known for my live sets, not my online mixes. but thats mainly because i dont want to play them out to myself when im going over the mix!

if some deejay ever gave me shit like the cat jaxson mentioned (name and shame, dood. fuck that guy.) i would fucking sock him in the mouth.

another thing, many of the top shelf "obscure" music deejays buy shit from dealers. its not like theyre out there digging up every single thing themselves! fuck that nonsense. everyone needs to get over it and play the fucking record and tell people what it is.

You'd punch him over myspace?

Lately I've been finding the inverse of the situation being oddly annoying. I mean blogs that post loads and loads of the best music they can muster, assumedly for purposes of credential. A certain blog, by which I mean Random Circuits, I find has been so on point in the last two months or so in terms of providing downloads for now up to 5 or so tracks a day, which are so consistently good (and usually better than most to all other tracks I download) that it's actually making finding new music too easy, overwhelming, and thus not nearly as fun. It's a really stupid complaint, but I sometime can't help but feel robbed of my own musical autonomy.

And yeah, you should run over that DJ with a car or something.

the digital distribution mechanisms have totally killed all interest in record hounding i ever had. and i'm a nerd. and i listen to music all day. new shit still. but the days of crate-diggin have evaporated. it's been a bizarre personality shift almost. i used to spend hundreds a month. way too much. debt. etc.

we're drifting in a major flood. what i listen to now is more accidental. it's the islands i wash up on. they dissolve all too quickly with the current and i get washed to the next bit of solid in this flow.

i love music, but post-scarcity of this data... and information about this data... it's a cloud that can barely be walked anymore.

it's one reason why i don't post on ilm anymore. i gave up writing about music after zine writing for over 10 years. after writing over 200,000 words. i used to evangelize the gospel of music. spreading the good news about something obscure that you can't just buy.

now the news is everywhere. fed by people with more free time and still hold onto some vague notion of being heard in the din. the music is right there too. why should anyone write a review ever again? let the kids hear it for themselves. (eh, maybe nobody really read a review anyway. they just looked at the numbers and....)

hey, but the beat goes on right? we've had fun. we'll have fun.

that's not really true...I only started a regular blog about 4/5 months before using Beatport every day.

people read it, I think, because they have a choice of everything and want to hear about what they might like, pretty simple.

it may be easy to be a DJ with digital downloads or whatever, to literally play records, but being a good or a great DJ is always going to be difficult.

If anyone on the floor asks I will tell them. If one of the other DJs ask I will tell them.

But during the week or however long before the night I'll not tell people what I'm listening too / what I've found / what's in the set just so it's a surprise for the night and I still get the 'hey what's that?' reaction.

I think the "disrespect" shit is really an entitlement thing, "do you know who I am"/pride bullshit.

"but being a good or a great DJ is always going to be difficult.

-- Ronan"

truer words have never been spoken. pleny of people have ridiculously ill record collections, but are collectors and not deejays. they can play some good music, but they cant lift it up to something beyond that. not everyone should be a deejay!

otm

every aspiring/pseudo dj needs to come to terms with this

you're only going to encourage them

every aspiring/pseudo dj needs to come to terms with this

-- winston, Friday, February 1, 2008 7:09 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

you're only going to encourage them

-- omar little, Friday, February 1, 2008 7:09 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

lol, encouraging people is bad!!

i agree w/ pipecock totally (!) that lots of collectors make for wack djs, no matter how great their collections ... but saying 'every aspiring/psuedo dj needs to come to terms' with the idea that not everyone is cut out to be a dj is kinda bullshit. dare to dream dudes

no i mean encourage the god complexes of current djs ^_^

i think it's great that so many djs are open to revealing their tunes but

i don't think i've ever asked a dj what he was playing because

a) it's usually too fucking loud to broach the subject

b) i don't want to distract him

c) i'm dancing

d) i probably won't remember anyway

BUT if i was wearing the dj hat, i really wouldn't mind it.

if i recognize a tune and can't recall the name, i might ask because it'll drive me crazy..

the absolute WORST are the guys that hang out right next to the decks constantly peering at the label..

when i've djed the only thing i don't mind are people making requests. they can talk to me all night about what i'm playing for all i care as long as they don't do that.

requests are a barometer to me of how good a job i'm doing ... whats requested, why, when, by whom, how they say it

i charge for requests

you are a jukebox

what do i win?

i love when ppl ask what the song is. it means they're enjoying it and they never heard of it so i am cool. win-win.

http://twitter.com/MikeSimonetti/statuses/6102484223

djs are so serious and so greedy and so full of themselves. like seriously, you are playing other peoples music. dont you get it?

thank you

wow good thread

yeah! would much rather read this then another predictable 'state of music today' thread

I have got pissed off with fellow DJs (well, one) at the night I play at asking me to "swap some music", or saying "hey can you email me that track" out of sheer laziness and total lack of feel for the music that goes off versus whatever shit they're buying.

i met this one local dj and i told him about my mp3 blog and he said 'oh, i know that one, i've totally stolen songs from it to play out' :-/

I spent the whole summer DJing weddings...and none of these issues ever came up.

http://www.acuterecords.com/requests.jpg

Before I finished scrolling down, I thought that it was going to be song requests scrawled on a wedding reception napkin. Now that I've seen the whole thing, I really do hope that someone had napkins with elephants on them.

not a napkin but a table card.

is simonetti referring to a specific incident there?

He was having nightmares about the years of DJing with me, no doubt.

djing weddings: so fun

hey dan, you know that klein & mbo remix/re-edit you did with simonetti years back, when did you do it and *how*? (ableton or directly recording sounds on top of it?) i play it out regularly, love it

I never remixed or re-edited Klein & MBO. Mike may have done something on his own but I'm not familiar with it. I know there's a Greg Wilson edit that finally came out.

The only edits I've ever done were functional ones for my own use, and I use Digital Performer.

weird, the one i've got here is titled:
Klein & Mbo - The Big Apple (Mixed By Mike Simonetti & Dan Selzer)

maybe it's spliced from a mixtape?

that's the second song from our Crazy Rhythms mix, thus "mixed by" I guess. It's straight off the vinyl LP, though with judicious EQ'ing from some folks who helped. Nothing added to or taken away.

ahh makes sense, sounds mad different to the original tho

was there a 12" or something? All that was done was EQ. In the beginning is the tale end of Moroder's Night Drive (awesome slow instrumental version of Call Me from the American Gigolo soundtrack) over the spoken part and at end a tiny bit of the Slang Teacher drums coming in. If you don't have the CR mix, I posted it at http://www.danselzer.com/

I just imagine jaded kids with soulseek filled harddrives who can't even imagine what it's like to pay 12 dollars for a record because the cover's cool

yeah paying 12 dollars for stuff is cool

the whole thing with the internet letting people listen to records before they buy them, that's a bad thing. it's not like there's that much music out there, anyway, we should all be grateful for whatever scraps of music we get.

http://fontsinuse.com/static/reviews/0/526f86b2/full/2013-10-4328cheers09.jpg

Did you read the rest of that post?

I am SAD that we know what we're buying because it was EXCITING to take that chance because you had no other choice. I'm not suggesting going back to that.

i still wanna know who that dj that jaxon disrespected was, just so i can avoid ever accidentally enjoying anything he does

also i just saw that post by mehlt about random circuits. i used to 'write' for that blog, until i realized i'm awful at and don't really enjoy writing about music, and that i was just using it as an outlet due to my lack of opportunities to dj. it's funny to see that someone got something out of it, but also somehow appropriate that it had the effect of making their life a little bit worse.

that's why i buy records, for the random discovery element. it goes from being top-down (authoritative tasteful website -> youtube -> download) to this random walk path-dependent type thing, your knowledge builds in fits and spurts in different directions. your criteria for buying things slowly becomes informed but also has an abstract intuitive element, just trying to suss out the vibe based on the artwork

^^^^ altho scott seward jaxon jacob sanders influences my record buying so so much