The Freaks Come Out at Night: The DJ

Look how awesome I look when I press play on my iTunes

What would a nightclub experience be without the DJ? I mean besides “better”. Talk about the most overrated job in the nightclub; this has to go to the DJ. The DJ gets so much credit for basically clicking play on his iTunes playlist, mincing around like a drunken hobo and then occasionally telling people what to do.

“Everybody get down!”

“Put your hands in the Air!”

“Everybody Scream!”

Gees, what a control freak! He could at least say Simon says first. Then he’ll play whatever the “flavour of the month” song is about 4 times every hour and yet you’ll still hear a million women scream “Oh Em GEE! It’s my song!”

Let me get something straight here, a Club DJ is not a live act. I understand there are electronic musicians who make dance music and some call themselves DJ’s, but the guy who clicks play on his iTunes then occasionally listens into his oversized earphones and pretends to finely adjust certain buttons and dials is not a musician. He is as much a musician as the guy who presses play on the DVD player is a movie director or the guy who forwards email jokes is a comedian.

Heaven forbid these “DJ’s” actually try and do some real mixing… what usually happens is either a garbled mess of 2 songs where the beats don’t sync and you end up dancing like a one legged man wearing roller skates during an earthquake (an actual description I’ve heard of my dancing). Even better is when there is that “death” between two badly mixed songs and everyone on the dance floor kind of just stands around staring at each other like they were all crammed into the largest most awkward elevator of all time (except at least there there’d be elevator music).

Regardless of what’s playing I’ll be trotting side to side doing the boyfriend dance in a circle around girls’ handbags while some strange loner guy who is clearly way too “in touch” with the music dances in a world of his own on stage or on top of one of the speakers hoping that it will attract some equally strange mate.

Sometimes DJ’s will be a little less authoritarian and ask people for requests. Although not once has one of my requests been acknowledged, probably because the requests are to “stop playing immediately”, “stop butchering my ears” or the ever popular “eat #### and die”.

Thank you Mr DJ for everything you do. From the way you peroxide your hair to the way you wear your sunglasses inside. From the way you pretend to be doing something important from behind your laptop to the way you always find the most inspiring things to shout over the microphone.

I salute you for without you the nightclub would be a very different place: A place I could possibly stand going to.

The Freaks Come out at Night…

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t go “clubbing” often, in fact I’m quite proud of the fact. Don’t get me wrong: the thought of standing in an overcrowded fire hazard with a bunch of sweaty drunken strangers as we “shake what our respective mothers’ gave us” while paying exorbitant drinks prices, is incredibly appealing to me, I just have better ways to waste my life (and my money).

Once in a while I am caught up in the frenzy of festivities such as birthdays and other celebrations, which for some reason, need to culminate in going to the club. The propensity towards ending up in the club is directly related to the number of single people in one’s group of friends;  the number of women with unhealthy self denial as to their age and stamina as if clubbing the night away would delay the ides of March marking the assassination of their fading youth;  or if there is a newly single member seeking to regain his confidence (because nothing builds confidence quite like dancing like a retard and rubbing up against some floozy with more body glitter than self respect).

What a theatre of dreams!

Regardless, on occasion I will find myself at the club doing the “boyfriend dance” (swaying side to side to the beat, pretending to have a good time) as we form a circle around the ladies’ handbags as the DJ plays crappy dance hit after crappy dance hit, occasionally breaking the monotony with random outburst of wit such as “Shake it, ladies” or “What happens in *club name here* stays in *club name here*” – yeah, except syphilis, idiot. Ever so often he will play a fairly decent song for about 10 seconds, before butchering it by revealing it to be a Dance remix of said classic.

Then we head to the bar to order shooters with names that sound more like experimental surgical procedures or what a coroner might right down in his report under the heading “cause of death”. As we shovel money across the bar, the only thing that is preventing me from going completely broke is the fact that service at the bar is so slow one only gets about one drink every hour.

As I take a look around the club, it doesn’t take long to identify several key “personalities” present; people I would hazard to say without whom the club experience would be vastly different, perhaps even enjoyable…

Over the next few posts I’d like to present my impressions of these amazing characters. Here in the magical world of the night club; a land of mystery, intrigue and cover charges.

First up… the bouncer