Over the last forty years I’ve had a few terrible nights out DJing. Examples - the technology breaks down; no-one turns up; I get assaulted. Ah, happy days.
The audience hates me
In many ways, the worst experiences are when, try as I might, the audience and I just never get on the same wavelength. My ideal audience turns up with open minds and a desire to dance. They don’t want the same old same old. They’re expecting some of their favourites but are more than happy for me to mix it up a little, play some obscure gem from yesteryear, new stuff they may not gave heard; or at least for me to cross genres a little. This is a recipe for a great night.
The ideal audience does exist, by the way; I usually get a perfect fit between what I’m keen to play and what the audience wants to hear when I play at the Golden Lion in Todmorden, for example.
Usually it takes work to connect well with the crowd. I’ve been a DJ for so long, I know how to win people over; in fact, I enjoy the challenge. There’s a kind of dialogue, I reach out, try a few things, find acceptable common ground; the customers have parted with their hard-earned cash to be there, and I’ve always taken seriously my responsibility to an audience to conjure up the best hours of their week with the music I play, and create some kind of happy vibe.
But sometimes an audience is so utterly locked inside the parameters of what they’ll enjoy, there’s nothing I can do. I just don’t have the right feeling, music, anything. Even a crowd that considers what they like to be cool or clever can be as conservative as a crowd that’s never heard anything outside the most obvious stuff; basically, they just want the same records in the same order as they heard when they went out last month, last year, and throughout the last decades of the last century. I’m eclectic, I want them to have fun, but I’m the wrong DJ if they’re into predictability.
Most gigs are a success, fortunately, but there are one or two a year when even after I’ve tried every strategy my long career has taught me, the audience are blank or hostile and we’re not connecting at all. Honestly, my morale plummets, and I’m falling out of love with the whole shebang. Time slows, I just want to go to bed. I’m DJing without enthusiasm, but with desperation or frustration. I start wishing that in the mid-1980s I’d learned a proper trade, or become a teacher, or opened a bookshop; anything but playing ‘Go Bang’ by Dinosaur L to a room full of people who’ve just started hating me.
Geneva all through the night
Having said that, I sometimes worry too much if people seem not to be getting it. I learned a lesson in Geneva in 1993 at a club called Grillon RNK. Only around 30 people turned-up. A few danced. A group of five Swiss lads took position close to me, just on the edge of the dancefloor. They had conversations, went to and from the bar, but none of them danced. Or even made eye-contact with me. They seemed like the least impressed customers I’d ever experienced. They dragged me down a little, it has to be said.
Miraculously, the five lads were still there when I packed away. As I stepped out of the DJ box they approached me. One of them shook my hand “Fantastic” he said. They all chimed in, they all shook my hand. “The best music ever” one said. They meant it. They’d appreciated me wholeheartedly. They just didn’t dance; or, indeed, tap their feet. I wish they’d told me this two hours earlier. Or what had seemed like ten hours earlier.
Chances are the next gig, or at the least the one after the next one, the audience will lap it all up, love what I play, screech their enthusiasm, and go home happy. And I’ll be happy too, and so glad I make a living DJing.
Not getting paid
I’ve only failed to get paid twice, which is remarkable really, in a career of approximately two thousand shows.
One was about 1991, at a venue in Middleton - probably the Hippodrome, but possibly not. I now have no idea now who the promoter was; it wasn’t a very good night, it has to be said. In fact, if he’d been straight with me and told me he was losing money paying a venue hire, flyers, posters, and DJ fees, I’d have probably been OK with him, but he just disappeared into the back streets of Middleton, never to be seen again.
The second, in Glasgow, was made worse because I’d shelled out for a hotel; I haven’t been reimbursed for that, or my train fare; let alone been paid my fee. I have lots of messages from the organiser over the last fifteen years saying things like “Sorry Dave, could you send me your bank details again” and “I’ll sort this urgently pal”. In fact, if he’d paid me a fiver for every message carrying an excuse or promise he’d made, he’d have paid off the debt by now. I’m embarrassed to keep asking the kid, to be honest.
No audience
Bad nights might include travelling a long way for not much of a crowd. But actually this doesn’t bother me as much as it used to, partly having learned the lesson of Geneva. For a combination of reasons, a recent gig in Preston didn’t do so well for numbers but the organiser paid me, described my set as “amazing” and him and his mates practically carried me out on their shoulders.
One poorly attended show was in Swansea in around 1991. It could well have been a November; it was very foggy, and my train arrived in early evening darkness. Little B&B, not far from the station. Then I made my way to the Student Union where just six people had paid-in. They were all very good about it, and loved it when I got on the dancefloor with them in a show of solidarity. They stayed til the end. The big tune was ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’. Although, I have to say, it also breaks your heart travelling all day but then failing to give six lovely young people the time of their lives.
The other memorable thing was that in the morning I opened the curtains in the B&B and there was the sea. I had a sea view. Up until than point I hadn’t realised Swansea was by the sea – it had been so dark and foggy when I had checked-in. Then of course it dawned on me – I was in Swansea, and the clue was probably in the name
Getting assaulted
There was one night at the Haçienda when a man with a gun appeared at the door of the DJ box. I have no idea why he’d knocked on the door because I didn’t engage the fella in conversation; I slammed the door shut. A few of my so-called friends have pointed out oh-so-wittily that it was unlikely he was hoping to mug me for my box of second-rate floor-emptiers.
There were several other instances of violence in the 1990s, including a couple at the Boardwalk. A cigarette stubbed out on my forehead. A punch in the mouth which took out my front teeth. I wrote about this is Sonic Youth Slept on My Floor and don’t really want to revisit the incidents, other to say that more than 99% of all audiences are brilliant and lovely and I’d invite them to my house. But there are also violent idiots who attach themselves to clubs. I didn’t want them to win, basically. So I kept on keeping on.
I think all of us involved in running clubs in the mid-1990s came under a lot of pressure. I remember talking to James Barton, co-founder of Cream. Of course, they had a spectacular decade in the 90s but criminal gangs always wanted a part of the action. James; “The sad thing is that anything good attracts the shit and the shit eventually infect it and fuck it up”.
Police standing outside Cream with guns didn’t dissuade clubbers from descending on the club in their thousands. We agreed a lot happens when you’re running a nightclub that the punters never know about, and you never want them to know about. “Yes”, James said “So much! So much!”.
The vinyl straw
At Bowlers, a big rave promoter asked me to play a vinyl-only set. This was twelve, thirteen years ago. The problem was, the guy meant to be sorting the technical stuff on the stage I’d been assigned to made a right mess of setting everything up. I didn’t blame him – he was young man who’d never had to cater to a vinyl DJ before; didn’t know how to wire things up; didn’t realise he’d have to earth the turntables; didn’t realise that putting everything on a rickety trestle table on a wooden stage just a few metres from seven hundred people dancing was going to guarantee the records would skip and jump. Every single one of them. And then someone turned on the house lights killing the atmosphere. Embarrassing. I never took a gig there again. And then the Bowlers owners invited Tommy Robinson to host a rally in the venue. Sigh.
Sabotaged by British Airways
I had a gig in Berlin which turned into a nightmare. It was in part of the Palast der Republik an incredible old building (although I believe that when they pulled it down, they discovered lots of asbestos). My flight went via Heathrow; something I try to avoid to be honest. I arrived safely in Berlin, except my box of records didn’t. DJs of a certain vintage will recall “carousel anxiety” when you’ve travelled abroad to a gig and stand waiting at baggage reclaim hoping your records will soon appear on the conveyor belt. I was told they’d be put on the next flight; they weren’t. I ended-up unable to play – the tunes arrived at my hotel at 6.30am, just in time for me to check out and bring them home.
A zip up fuck up
One time at the Haçienda, a Saturday night in 1988, I needed to pee. The route to the toilets involved me leaving the DJ box up on the balcony, scurrying down the stairs, making my way between the queue for the bar and the dancefloor. And then getting back. At that time there was a key to the DJ box, so as long as I remembered not to lock myself out on the way, all was good. I had a few favourite long records – minimum five minutes long. I put one of them on and off I went.
I still don’t quite know how my timings failed me, but I was at the urinal, I’d finished, I was just zipping back up, and the record finished. I bolted out of the door. The stylus was hitting the run-off groove. Over the speakers you could hear click-click, click-click, click-click at a steady 45rpm. I panic rushed through the packed crowd and back up to the DJ box on the balcony (it seemed to take forever). The vibes were such that the audience were cheering rather than jeering. A few kept-on dancing, blissed out to the sound of the click-click, click-click, click-click; minimal techno thirty years before it became a genre.
Should I stay or should I go?
Ideally, you cope with all eventualities, although that’s not always possible – as I learned on New Year’s Eve 1989/90. I had been DJing for a few months at a club called Isadora’s under the Corn Exchange, on a night run by Dave Booth and Gino Brandilani.
Again, I told the story in my memoir Sonic Youth Slept on My Floor. Dave was the DJ in the main room, playing a mix of psychedelia and the likes of the Stone Roses and Inspiral Carpets, and I was in the smaller room playing hip hop, electro, and stuff like Wood Allen’s ‘Airport 89’. I had one giant speaker in my room, which blew up every few weeks due to condensation and/or beer in the electrics, and it took an age to repair.
New Year’s Eve 1989/90 was my last night there. At about fifteen minutes to midnight, the speaker blew again and, knowing how long it took to get it back up and running, I realised not only my big build-up had been cut short, but that instead of chimes and a big tune at midnight, there would be silence.
The crowd started booing. I knew it would probably take until at least a quarter past twelve to get the speakers up and running, maybe longer, and I’d soon start getting customers wanting their money back.
There was a back fire exit onto Fennel Street. I grabbed my box of records, took a left out of the DJ box, opened the back fire exit, hurried on to Corporation Street, and jumped into a cab. I was home by midnight. When it’s not your fault, and things can’t be fixed; you just got to walk away.
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