Hey, Mr. DJ! Mixers & Spinners Speak Out – The Multiview

We here at Street Team Interviews always dig going out to hear a good DJ spin. Notice I use the word “good.” Every once in a while, you’ll inevitably come across a DJ who, despite all their expensive equipment, massive headphones and obvious intensity, seems to have no idea what they’re doing, what they’re playing or what the crowd wants. We happen to know several good DJs and thought we would pick their brains about what it takes to be a DJ, what they’ve learned in their time and what they might pass along to future DJs. Have a look and let us know what your thoughts are in the Comments section.

Q: What would you say the mark of a good DJ is?

“Not being too selfish in what you’re playing. Knowing what your crowd is going to like. Knowing what songs will transition into other songs whether you’re mixing them or not.” – Jeremy Wheeler, The Bang!, Ann Arbor, MI.

“Definitely reading the crowd. It’s not necessarily putting on your favorite tracks, but it’s being able to tell what can affect a crowd in a way that you want, you know? It’s feeling out the crowd. It’s really listening as a DJ rather than producing sound. That’s what I think.” – Brian “Just B” Alvarez, Ann Arbor, MI.

“I honestly think the mark of a good DJ is knowing their crowd. I’ve seen plenty of DJs that are not the most proficient mixers or beat-matchers, but that didn’t matter because they knew the crowd. They knew what the crowd wanted to hear and found a good way to work it into the night. Also, being able to play with a dynamic. You never want to start the night off with the big track that everyone wants to hear, you have to work into it; Get everyone feeling the vibe, get them all out of their seats, get them dancing like morons, then drop the hot track and send them threw the roof.” – Brad “Dumbchild” Hicks, Ann Arbor, MI.

“I’d say the mark of a good DJ is being able to tap into the feel of the crowd and roll with it. Nothing is worse, in my opinion, than being out on the dance floor with your hair slapped in a pony dancing your face off and then a real stinker comes on. We’ve all seen it happen. Everyone looks at each other, makes a face, and walks off to get a drink or something. Urgh! The worst” – Ayron Michael Nelson, Ann Arbor, MI

Q: There used to be a stigma that, if you weren’t pure vinyl, you weren’t legit. Now, you almost never see a DJ without a laptop or some digital mix equipment. Do you think that stigma still exists in some circles, or has DJing simply evolved naturally with technology?

“Stigmas exist everywhere and they are different everywhere. If you go to Chicago there’s gonna be a different stigma there. If you go to Detroit there’s gonna be a different stigma there. It all matters on the person who’s making these generalizations about what they think that DJing is all about, when really all that matters is you’re playing good songs, people are dancing, and that’s it. What matters is, at the end of the night, if people had a great time, fine. Who cares [about stigmas]. But people certainly do– they not only think of it as an art, it is an art and each way of DJing is an art. It’s whether you can appreciate the certain way someone is doing something or not and if someone is doing something you disagree with.” – Jeremy Wheeler

“I think it definitely has stuck in a lot of cultures and there’s a lot of basement DJ that are just going to play vinyl and they’re not going to [deviate] or they’re going to stay true to their craft and only stick to vinyl. My philosophy, and I struggled with this a long time, was, how do I affect the most people I can the quickest as possible and for me, that was a digital route. If it’s a matter of skill, like, I’ve evolved from CDJs to doing things on laptops to now I’ve got [Serato Scratch Live] Vinyl and [Serato] Scratch [Live] with the whole feel of the record. To me, no one can really tell me that I don’t know how to mix or I don’t know how to scratch because I’ve built my own skill levels and I guess I really don’t knock people like Girl Talk who use Ableton and stuff like that to produce all that big sound. It’s a constant evolution and everything is evolving. If you don’t keep up with it then you’re just going to get left behind. You always pay homage to the old and respect that, but things are on a new level. It’s always changing. Music is evolving and you have to keep up with that. Buy the new [mediums], the new technologies, what’s available. It’s coming from so many different places now because of the technology. I think that it’s just a blessing that all this technology came out. It makes jobs a lot easier and you get to hear a lot of people input on music that you wouldn’t normally hear. You get to hear a lot more opinions because of it and I think that’s always a good thing. Whether [that music] is good or not? Leave that up to the people to judge, but who cares what everybody’s talking about [in terms of stigmas].” – Brian Alvarez

“I know that stigma exists. Especially here in Detroit. It almost seems to be a hypocritical argument. Some people who will dog on people who don’t use vinyl are the same people that are using Serato. Serato is laptop DJing! Just because you are using time-coded vinyl does not make you a vinyl DJ. See, I am a laptop DJ. So, I am the guy with the least amount of table space (or on the kiddy table) and the guy that gets fucked on playing time. The thing is, most real vinyl DJs are collectors (those are usually the cool guys) and I’m cool with that, but its the guys who do use MP3s and still get all up in your shit talking about how Traktor can beat-match for you and whatnot that I can’t stand. Mixing and knowing how to work a crowd is DJing, that is the fundamental definition. If people want to dog me because I use Traktor, have them stand behind my laptop and mix like I do. Hell, have them stand behind their decks and mix like I do — live, with no cue monitor! People don’t like laptop DJing because of the same reasons people don’t like electronic music. It is accessible. When things become accessible, everyone thinks they can do it. You just have to take the good with the bad.” – Brad Hicks

“I’m sure that there are people that look down on what I do. I used to use both vinyl and laptop then my digital music collection caught up and passed my meager vinyl collection, so I thought to myself, ‘If I continued to carry this crate of records into every gig knowing full well I have every one of those songs in my laptop, who am I doing that for? Am I trying to get street cred?’ I understand fully there are advantages for some folks. I just don’t happen to be one of them. I consider what I do more “party steering” mainly because I don’t have any superfluous DJ skills per se. I simply like good music, and like to have a blast.” – Ayron Michael Nelson

Q: When did you know you wanted to be a DJ?

“Last year? [laughs] I don’t know. When I really cherish DJing is when I’m DJing for bands. When I’m DJing for nights when bands are playing and stuff. DJing for parties and DJing for groups I’m used to and I’m completely comfortable with. It’s when there’s a little bit of anxiety involved and when there’s a little bit of the unknown involved, and if it goes off well, that’s when I really enjoy it. DJing between bands is something that both Jason Gibner and I have both enjoyed and tried out and I think that, yeah, when you’re out of your comfort zone and if something really works, I think that you really appreciate that more.” – Jeremy Wheeler

“Wow. That is such a deep question. [laughs] I have been involved in hip hop since I was a little kid and when I was a pre-teen, I was writing rhymes, I was breakdancing, I’m a graffiti artist, a producer and basically, I had a hip hop group and they broke up and I said, “What way can I affect people and still be on the music scene and just be dependent on myself?” DJing was the most natural route, so it really completed my circle for me. It was a natural progression. It just kind of pushed me – everything in my life pushed me into DJing and just prepared me for it, so it was a natural progression for sure. Definitely? It was probably conversations with buddies and I saw a lot of other DJs who were doing so-called hip hop and I guess it kinda goes back to your question, you know? Technology being more readily accessible, it had all these other DJs that, to me, sounded like shit, so I felt like it was my job to come up and get some turntables and to represent. If people liked it, then let the people speak, you know? And they have. I feel like I’ve made my spot in Ann Arbor and people have told me that they like what I do, so really, it was a natural progression but it was probably some conversations that really, like, it dawned on me like, “Dude. This has to happen! This is where I belong.” How long ago? Hip hop has been running through my blood since I was, like, a little baby, damn near. But probably a few years ago– a couple years ago. Probably like two, two and a half, yeah. And then I just went for it. My girlfriend at the time was skeptical. She was like, “Aww, I don’t really know if he’s gonna — he’s taking on this huge task of doing all this stuff.” It wasn’t that she wasn’t supportive; she was just worried about whether I was going to make it or not and, well, here I am.” – Brian Alvarez

“I used to sit in my room and listen to Tower 98 in Monroe all the time. I always thought it would be super cool to be a DJ on the radio. When I got into High School I started as a mobile DJ (doing dances and stuff like that) and I was actually pretty good at it. That relies more on your willingness to be an MC though. Two years ago was my first time out DJing again and I realized that you can do the same things with the music and working your mix, that you could with the mic.” – Brad Hicks

“I’ve been to a lot of parties and I’ve had a lot of fun, but I just got sick of someone else deciding what me and my friends wanted to dance to, so I decided to do it myself. I was talking to my friend, Louis, one day and we were talking about how no one was playing the sort of music we really were into at the time and someone needed to cause it was some good shit. So, we teamed up, then he moved away to Chicago. Some time in there I was asked by A2DT to play a party that was super fun and that’s when me and Smiley started playing together and it is a real blast, then he moved away to Chicago.”- Ayron Michael Nelson

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Q: Best and worst gigs ever?

“Worst gig: 2004 Metro Times Blowout Pre-Party. We were supposed to DJ the Garden Bowl which included sets by the Alphabet, the Singles and the Avatars. The Avatars included my lovely lady, Mariah, on vocals and our lighting set builder, Chris “Box” Taylor on guitar. We planned, being a mix-tape DJ, we planned on just DJing between the bands but what we didn’t know is that the owner of the Magic Stick wanted us to DJ the entire night at the Garden Bowl during the bands. It threw a big cog into our plans of what the night should be and it turned out to be a complete mess. It was a poorly planned, poorly thought-out night on everyone’s part and we drove home with our tails between our legs. Certainly, one of the factors that made us not go to Detroit for a long time after that.

Best gig: Last year, New Year’s 2008, we decided to not do bands on a New Year’s Eve for The Bang! which we had done every year previous and are going to do this year as well. We decided to throw a game show. We decided to make a Plinko board; we decided to make a pizza wheel; we decided to make the great big wheel like on The Price is Right and up until the day before we were making things, up until the minute before we got on stage in front of the lights, in front of everyone, we did not know how it was going to go. We did not know what the prizes exactly were going to be, we had no idea exactly what was going to happen. The next thing we knew, we were in front of the lights and the show started and 45 minutes later, we ended and everyone had a blast. We had a blast. It was hard to even comprehend where the time went. It was such a fantastic feeling and it was right before midnight. It was a beautiful, beautiful thing because we made this crazy-ass game show happen. We had no idea how we were going to do it. Even when we were doing it, we had no idea and that’s my favorite gig. I’m very thankful for everyone involved cuz, god damn, how did we pull that off? I still don’t know. [laughs] It really was [the best gig ever]. It proved that no matter how much or little time we have to do some kind of gig, we can pull it off. No doubt.” – Jeremy Wheeler

“Best gig ever has to just go out to, like, my favorite thing is an eclectic crowd that appreciates all genres. I put all genres of music together. It’s very important if I play AC/DC and Tupac that they’ll appreciate both of those songs, so to me the best gig is a crowd that likes to dance and will dance to George Clinton to some funky shit to some real ghetto shit.

Now, worst gig? That was a little bit more obscure. I really don’t have a best gig. I just like people who appreciate the music. I have had a worst gig and it’s bad. Well, there’s two of them. One of them was a house party and it was so ghetto. It was a 14 year old birthday party and the parents were upstairs and I guarantee you, it is so ghetto. It was in their basement, in their house, the parents were upstairs drinking Hennessy and it was like, “Oh yeah…” Everybody’s downstairs doing whatever the fuck they want and there was a fight at the end of the night and it was just like– it was rough. This past Thanksgiving, though, takes the cake. I get up to this gig on the east side of Detroit, I’m thirsty as hell. I’ve been loading shit up all day and I ask for some water and all they have is some brown-ass water cuz it’s the east side of Detroit. I was the only white guy there. Everybody there was black and looking at me. I was comfortable; I grew up there. There’s no problem with me. But they were looking at me like, “Oh my god. What the fuck did the dude hiring do?” You know? So, I proved myself, I had a great time, they enjoyed themselves. However, it was like, they were asking for every gangsta song that I didn’t have. They were a lot bigger than me. They were, like, pushing me around. To me, a true mark of a DJ is, ok, you play techno and all that shit, they’ll be happy with whatever… Play a hip hop! Play [somewhere] where a lot bigger motherfuckers are pushing you around asking you for that song that you don’t have, then you come up to me and tell me that you’re a fucking DJ. That shit is hard. I mean, granted, it’s a little extreme, but… I learned something that night; not to get paid in cash. He paid me in damn near all ones and told me that he had to sell a few things before the gig; so literally, I had a plastic bag with rubber bands and a wad of fucking money. He cut me an hour early and I ran out of that place. You’ve never seen a DJ pack up so fast. There I am on the east side of Detroit with a stack of fuckin’ cash. It was ridiculous. I mean, it was a fun gig. It paid well, but it was definitely nerve-wracking for sure.” – Brian Alvarez

“Worst gig was playing a party at Above Ground Hair Studio in Ann Arbor. I played my set and went out to have a cigarette and some dude walked up and just punched me square in the face. No “hello”, no “I’m gonna punch you”, no “Your set sucked” (I would have at least respected that). Dude just wound up and blaw, in the face. It wasn’t all bad though. I didn’t spill my drink.

Best gig… hummm… I would have to say anytime that you finish your set and feel good about yourself is a great gig. In particular, I had a great time spinning at Babs’ Underground Lounge last New Years Eve [2007/2008]. That place was packed and I’ve never seen people dance like that in that bar.” – Brad Hicks

“In my opinion, every gig is the best gig ever! I always have fun; if there’s 20 people or 200, me and whomever I’m playing with have fun. There have been nights that I’ve had too much fun and stumbled home early (which turned out to be a blessing…cops and fights and junk), of course the occasional power outage, but that ends up being part of the fun. I don’t feel I can say there is a truly bad gig.” – Ayron Michael Nelson

Q: Advice for those just starting out who might want to be DJs?

“See what’s going on around you. See if there are any holes in the scene. See if there any events that people aren’t throwing that you could apply yourself to. If there is something that you can add to the scene, that you can do that’s different, then fill that void and be a master of it from Day 1. If you do that, then you’d be surprised how fast people might jump onto it. I mean, if you do something that everyone else is doing, it’s gonna be hard to differentiate yourself, but there’s plenty of room for wild shit to happen when you decide that you are going to fill this void, that you are going to be this thing. Shoot for the stars and see what happens. Don’t be like everyone else. You can’t. If eight other clubs are doing an 80s night, don’t do an 80s night! Do a glam-rock night. Do a psychedelic 60s night, you know? Who knows! Do a college alternative 1988 night. I mean, do anything other than another 80s night. Or do a really awesome electro night because that’s what everyone loves right now and more power to them. It’s cool music and we need more nights like that.” – Jeremy Wheeler

“Have an opinion. Do not follow the radio. Have an opinion in music. Have something that moves you. Essentially, you’re a salesman. This is a business, if you want to get into that aspect. If you want to DJ in your basement, that’s fine. Do your thing. If you want to be out here getting money, stay true to yourself. Have a backbone. Every salesman: it’s not necessarily what they sell, but how they sell it and you have to have an opinion and you have to be passionate about your music. And you have to be extensive in it. You have to do your homework. Do your homework. Find out where everything came from. Have a respect for all different types of music as best you can. That’s what I would say. Treat it as a business. Take yourself seriously or else no one else is.” – Brian Alvarez

“Don’t be pretentious dicks. Decks and a mixer don’t mean that you can walk around owning shit. Respect your fellow DJs and they will respect you. Play your heart out, and know your tracks. Remember, you are entertainers. Oh, and have fun when you are out there on the decks.” – Brad Hicks

“I guess I’d say give it a try. I say just play what you like to hear, not what you think people will think a cool DJ would play. That’s the worst! Play stuff that rocks! Have a Mega Blast and hopefully the crowd will follow…and soon you’ll be steering the party with the best of them.” – Ayron Michael Nelson

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