Guns and Records

I’ve been spinning records in front of people for about 4-5 years now.  When I say in front of people, I mean house parties, weddings, clubs, etc.  I’m primarily a hip-hop DJ, and also incorporate reggae, rock, Baltimore club, and b-boy breaks into my sets as well.  The crowds I play for are pretty mixed as far as race, age, and sex go.  Here’s the story of how it all started:

Music’s been a part of my life since I was just a kid.  My mom was constantly playing records in the house.  Since we didn’t have cable, and didn’t get any kind of video game system until long after every other kid, my mom would put records on and sing along to them.  I began to learn the “Hair” and “Jesus Christ Superstar”, and was singing Bill Withers while my friends were playing with Lincoln Logs.  Then, a few years later, I was introduced to Rap music.  This was before the culture of Hip-hop was born.  There was just Rap.

I couldn’t get enough Rap.  Run DMC, Eric B and Rakim, Boogie Down Productions, Big Daddy Kane, and Public Enemy were constantly in my tape deck.  I devoured as much beat-oriented music as I could.  Around the same time, I found out about skateboarding.  Skaters were a kind of low-level hoodlums.  We tore up other people’s shit and ran from the cops.  We listened to Hardcore and Rap music.  Both of these genres of music had messages that seemed directed right at me.  Yeah, my mom’s pissing me off.  I hate the government too, Chuck D!  At the time, Dead Kennedys and D.R.I. were just the white KRS-Ones.  I listened to Rap to feel good, and Hardcore when I was angry.  Sometimes the two were interchangeable.

As I got older, hardcore was changing, and so was Rap.  There was now an entire lifestyle associated with Rap called Hip-hop.  I’m sure you all know of the 4 elements: MC’ing, B-boying, Graffitti,  and DJ’ing.  Out of the four elements, I found DJ’ing to be the most appealing.  I had no idea how to even get into being a DJ.  I was too young, and too poor.  There were still great artists in Hip-hop, and I was still drawn to the intelligent Rap like A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Black Sheep, and Pete Rock  & C.L. Smooth.

Fast forward to New Jersey circa 1997.  I was perusing the internet one night, and I found a New Year’s Eve mix by Fatboy Slim.  As I heard the opening buzzsaw notes of Armand Van Helden’s “Necessary Evil”, I was blown away.   I went out and bought everything I could find by Fatboy, the Chemical Brothers, and especially Daft Punk.  I was still without the means for purchasing any DJ equipment, but I had new inspiration.

By the time I moved to Texas, I was certain I could save enough to get some ‘tables and a mixer.  I found a bunch of local record shops and met some DJs.  They gave me advice and told me to search pawn shops and the newspaper for equipment.  Finally, I found some pretty crappy used tables and a mixer at a pawn shop for $250.  I started buying records off of other DJs and used record shops.   The more I practiced, I began to realize that I didn’t suck at this.  I wasn’t anywhere near good, but I found myself mixing house records and not completely fucking it up.  As I gained confidence, some friends let me set up my gear in their living rooms and play during their parties.  I went mostly unnoticed, but at that time, it was OK.  That meant that I wasn’t awful enough to draw attention, either.  Where this was going, I didn’t know.  What I DID know was it made me really happy.

As I shopped for records in actual record stores (and not garage sales), I found that record companies had been still producing Hip-hop music on vinyl.  I had no idea.  For every 5 house records I bought, I’d pick up one Rap record.  I started searching Ebay too, and was amazed to find that I could get some of my favorite albums and singles from back in the day.  Soon, I would pick up 5 Rap records to one House record.  Then I stopped buying House altogether.  I concentrated all of my efforts in practicing being a Hip-hop DJ.

One day, my brother told me that there was a bar in town that had some turntables set up and allowed people to come in and mix for 30 minutes at a time on Monday nights.  I told him that I wasn’t interested (mostly due to me being scared to death to perform in front of people).  Then, one of our mutual friends wanted to have a birthday party.  My brother suggested the bar that had “Open Turntable Night”, except this would be a Saturday night.   He talked to the bar’s owner, and got the guy to allow me to spin records during the party.  For some reason, the bar wasn’t busy that night, so he said OK.   I played that night , and impressed the owner so much that he offered me Saturday nights from then on.  I’ve been there ever since.    That was 3 years ago.

I make a decent side-living from the gig, and have made a shitload of friends playing the music that I love.  I’ve had a lot of offers to play in other clubs (and have taken one of them, only to leave the gig 6 months later), but find that the combination of a regular day job along with a weekend gig  is perfect for me.  I don’t get sucked into the DJ lifestyle of only seeing people after 5pm every day, and never having weekends free.  Our bar’s been bought by new younger owners, and things are looking up even further now.   Sure, I’ve got to deal with drunken idiots every week requesting shitty mainstream music, but it comes along with the territory.

If you’re interested in becoming a DJ, go buy some shitty used equipment and get good on it.  If you can be good on crap equipment, then you can be good on anything.  First and foremost, LEARN TO MIX WELL.  Scratching and trickery is just icing on the tasty cake made of good mixes.  A good DJ is a good mixer first, and a scratch DJ second.

Any questions, just comment below.