But Who Will Save The DJ’s Life?

A fight for the soul of music

I was born and raised in the Orthodox disk jockey faith. 

For me, there is none but the DJ. A mythical figure, capable of the supernatural, he can make his followers writhe in ecstasy as if their whole bodies speak in tongues. Indeep, the 80’s R&B group, went so far as to proclaim the DJ as savior. In 1982, their legendary track, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, extolled the DJ as a lifesaver. His song saved a distressed woman from dying of a broken heart.

Yet, one would be remiss to limit the fabled powers of the DJ to a mere lifesaver. Reverse engineer most births and conception begins with the omnipotent DJ playing Marvin Gaye for a crowded, late-night dance floor. Few can resist his musical advances as he leads singles onto the dance floor, encouraging them to leave as couples, and then convert vertical into horizontal energy.

My teenage years in New York were spent admiring these great men of talent and wisdom. I waited in lines for hours on the far edges of the West Side to hear them weave the musical gospel on their wheels of steel. I danced for hours with fellow devotees at The Tunnel, Twilo, and Sound Factory in the direction of the DJ, like Jews praying to the Western Wall. With each record played in these sweaty, smoke filled temples, the DJ passed along the words of the gods. No one, especially not I, dared challenge his divine scripture. Those heretics who tried met miles of velvet rope and scores of off-duty NYPD turned bouncing mercenaries.

I wanted to be a DJ. I longed to live on the other side of the velvet rope. I desired to travel from sunrise sets in Ibiza to sunset parties in Goa, converting unbelieving heathens to the will of the DJ with the bass-heavy words of my scripture.

My calling came in October 2001 when I met my turntables via Craigslist. The seller lived on 23rd and Park and had a triumvirate of addictions: speed, Ukrainian escorts, and DJing. The turntables were the first to go in support of the other two. I imagine the escorts were next.

While desperate for cash, the seller had conditions. I had to promise to carry on the legacy, passed down from DJ-to-DJ since Kool Herc first married those two turntables on his alter in the Bronx. A DJ’s music was meant to be thoughtful and challenging. As a musical raconteur, tracks were meticulously selected after endless hours of digging at the city’s record shops. Each song had a purpose; layered together to create a journey of emotion and adventure that connected with each person on the dance floor. 

Anyone can make you dance to Michael Jackson or Stevie Wonder. A DJ makes you lose all control of your body and feel closer to God.

Over the next year, I became a shut-in. I bought thousands of records from Dance Tracks on 3rd Street and Satellite Records on the Bowery, wore out countless needles, and explored the endless sub-genres of music from Nu school breaks to French house. Eventually, the venues grew from my bedroom on Avenue B to house parties, bars, and clubs. From there, the famed clubs off 12th Avenue and the full moon parties of Koh Phangan were mere steps away.

But, no one ever warned me about “Them.”

“Them,” the Beckys and Chads, the names DJs use to describe the I-pop-my-collar-while-chugging-Miller-Light-and-believe-that-music-born-and-died-with-Journey, and his female companion the I-was-and-always-will-be-a-Tri-Delt-and-drink-vodka-sodas-while-swaying-arhythmically-to-Katy-Perry. These were the people I found at bars and clubs, seeking not my musical salvation, but a soundtrack to binge drinking in pastels and bad decision-making with people named Trip and Amber.

To the Beckys and Chads, neither music nor the DJ seemed sacred. Hours of careful musical preparation and thought by a DJ were no match for an easy dose of thoughtless bubble gum pop.

As a pious man, I naively believed that I could convert them. The Beckys and Chads merely needed my divine musical guidance and direction to liberate themselves from Top-40 musical slavery. However, as I attempted to lead them into the musical promised land of Afrobeat or electro, I faced dance floor insurrection.

My nights behind the turntables began to blur into a set of repeating struggles for the soul of music.

Scenario 1 — A Becky taps me on the shoulder. I turn to look at her. She has sad, soft eyes. I remove my headphones and lean in with a sympathetic ear - maybe she lost her puppy.

“How can I help you?” I ask.

“Yeah, so it’s, like, my friend’s bachelorette party, and this music is, like totally, not working for us. Can you, like, play Party in the USA, like, right now?” The Becky demands.

Scenario 2: A hand slaps me on the back. Before I can turn around, a Chad has his arm wrapped around me. He smiles as both hands clutch a Coors Light.

“Yo, brah. Some, like, Living on a Prayer would, like, totally kill right now,” the Chad posits.

Scenario 3: An impatient Becky stands next to me, looking annoyed. I avoid her resting bitch face and devote my faculties to the dancing populace. She eventually steals my attention by touching the turntable. The music skips.

“What are you doing?! Don’t touch the record!” I yell.

“Now that I have your attention, I don’t like this music. What else do you have?” The Becky commands.

These were neither the characters nor the scenarios I envisioned during my years of intensive DJ study and practice. What happened to the trust and respect the dancing youth were supposed to show their DJ elders? Where were the miles of velvet ropes and dozens of black shirted muscles separating me from the commoners? Why didn’t they understand that I, the DJ, knew what was best for them?

In response, I became more devout. In this war on musical terror, it was me against them. My approach gained me respect among other DJs and a small and growing fan base, leading me to new gigs each weekend. But, each event brought new Beckys and Chads with the same insatiable desire for the cannon of terrible music. Still, I kept my promise to my DJ forefathers. I would not sacrifice an eternity of musical enlightenment for the indecisive Carly Rae Jepsen.

At first, I engaged in diplomacy. I politely greeted each Becky and Chad and told him or her that, sadly, I left my copy of whatever terrible song requested at home. We smiled at each other as they head back to their group of friends to share the bad news. Tonight, there would be no  Macarena. Oh, the humanity.

With time, I developed a reputation as a DJ open to negotiation and soft on musical terror. The line for requests got longer, and the song suggestions got worse.

Diplomacy had failed. I opted for shock and awe.

No requests. No interaction with the commoners. Those with requests got my hand in their face waving them away or a simple, “Never!” To the persistent ones, I had them escorted from the club. I would play what I desired regardless of what the masses wanted. The Beckys and Chads would learn to like my music, or they could drink their Jack-and-diets elsewhere.

The new strategy proved unhealthy, unsustainable, and even got me fired from one bar for not “playing well with the crowd”. My night was quickly replaced with a more Justin Bieber-friendly party, cleverly named “Becky”. In the places where I retained my DJ pulpit, I played the music that I liked, but my body remained tense all evening. I waited in constant anticipation of the Beckys and Chads, lurking around every corner of the dance floor, biding their time before accosting me with their requests.

I developed paranoia. They were out to get me, all of them. And then, one day I snapped.

One night, a sweet 20-something-year-old girl politely asked for Grease Lightning during one of my sets. I stopped the music and told her that she should never waste a DJ’s time with her terrible music suggestions. She called me an asshole, grabbed her friends, and left the bar to “boos” from the crowd. At that moment, I realized that I hated DJing, and worse, I hated myself.

The Beckys and Chads did this to me, I thought. I stared up to the heavens, crying out for guidance from the DJs of yore. Oh, great Grandmaster Flash, why must you test me so? The heavens provided no answers. I was alone in my struggle with the Beckys and Chads.

Still, I kept on. I could not let them win. I would not turn my back on DJing. I returned to the negotiating table. This time, I approached each request as an interview, trying to understand the psyche of my opponents.

Becky — “Hey, can you please play, like, Barbie Girl?”

Me — “Let me ask you something. Why do you feel the need to come bother the DJ and ask me to play your music? I don’t go to your job and tell you how to do it.”

Becky — “You know, it’s, like, my favorite song ever. My friends Lindsey, Tiffany, the other Lindsey, and the other Tiffany would be, like, so totally pumped to hear it, too. It was our going out song in college.”

Me — “Interesting.”

Becky — “So, does this mean you will, like, play it?”

Me — “Never.”

With each interview, I come to learn more about the Becky and Chad’s rationale behind each request. All songs were memories.

Like a Prayer was the pre-game song for the Tri Deltas. The Beckys would sit together, applying and then reapplying make-up while not-so-quietly judging each other. Their finely manicured look would go unnoticed by a Chad playing beer pong for hours before he drunkenly enticed a Becky to his room for an evening of uninspired coitus.

Don’t Stop Believing transported the Chads to the impromptu dance floor of their fraternity house. All the brothers, regardless of their fear of dancing, would sway awkwardly, raise their beers in the air, and passionately sing with Journey as the song hit its dynamic crescendo. The song, an ode to persistence, would be repeated over-and-over each evening, always garnering the same dramatic response from the brothers with each playing.

Now, in the post-collegiate world, for four minutes and twenty seconds of each guilty pleasure, the Beckys and Chads could again be social royalty. They were no longer men and women with office jobs, mortgages, and children, but the big men on campus and the mean girls of the dance floor.

As such, Journey was Prozac. And I was no longer just a DJ, but an aural psychiatrist, able to heal the Monday to Friday depression with a weekend dose of party rock. I struggled with how to balance my need to help the fallen and heal the sick while still maintaining my moral uprightness as an Orthodox DJ. After hours of soul searching, I decided to embrace the remix.

To the Becky who asked for Lady Gaga, I played a sultry, moombahton remix of Alejandro. To the Chad with a penchant for yacht rock, I offered the funky French house version of Hall & Oates’s Rich Girl. In truth, the compromise made neither me nor the Beckys and Chads happy. I struggled with the deep internal dilemma that Katy Perry, no matter how you remix it, will always remain Katy Perry.

For the Beckys and Chads, some were satisfied with the remixes, while most complained about the bastardization of their favorite guilty pleasures. One Chad went so far as to equate my playing a Baltimore House version of Don’t Stop Believin’ with the British artist Chris Ofili making a collage of the Virgin Mary from elephant shit.

Rather than retry diplomacy or shock and awe with the Beckys and Chads unsatisfied with my remix compromise, I chose benign neglect. I stared at each incoming Becky and Chad’s request with a confused look, pointing at my ears and simply saying, “I can’t hear you.” No matter how loudly they yelled, I said the same. If they attempted to push a glowing smart phone in my face, I said, “I can’t read.” In my house of musical worship, the Beckys and Chads would be neither seen nor heard.

Over the decades, I will admit that I have played my share of bubble gum pop. The purists call me a musical heretic and I deserve it. I strayed from the path of righteousness and succumbed to the will and mental health needs of the Beckys and Chads. As such, my gigs will forever remain in mediocre venues, playing music, some sacred and some sacrilegious, to rooms full of my musical nemeses.

I try to console myself by saying that everyone, even the Beckys and Chads, has the right to unleash his inner pleated-khaki-pants-wearing-Travolta to whatever song overpowers one’s urge to awkwardly stand in the corner and start freaking the dance floor. But in truth, no amount of J. Crew-clad dancers, dancing with reckless abandon to Bon Jovi will ever comfort me.

I regularly tell myself that I will never play out again. I feel dirty and ashamed, like a low-class musical prostitute. However, I can’t bear the thought of going back to the other side of the velvet rope and being a mere commoner again. While the Beckys and Chads are not the house-music-loving, jet-setting revelers I originally envisioned preaching to in outer borough warehouses, I can, at least, boast having a congregation — albeit a slightly douchey one.

Now, I stand at the DJ pulpit, waiting for my moment of reckoning. One day the musical rapture will come, as The Smiths so wisely portended in Panic. I pray that when the disco is burned down, and the blessed DJ is hung that the DJ gods will have mercy on me for being a reasonable man. For despite all of my DJ transgressions, I have still never played Grease Lighting.

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If I Can Make It There is a collection of stories about the things and people, including me, that move through New York City. A celebration of the characters who crawl through endless traffic, slog through the subways, and stroll under the shade of scaffolding.

Like our fragmented and broken transportation system, some stories race with enthusiasm to a red light and others remain hopelessly stuck behind a double-parked Mercedes with New Jersey plates and blinkers on as the driver screams over the honking, “Just hold on for a minute! I’m only stopping in for a quick dinner at Sardis.” 

And, all of these stories could occur nowhere else but the greatest city on Earth - New York Fucking City.