In these days of iPod frenzy, every guy who makes a playlist for his house party thinks he’s a DJ.
And that’s got the real DJs–the professionals–a little bit ticked off.
With world-class technology now at practically everyone’s fingertips, an army of iPod-fueled newbies is invading a turf that once belonged to professional vinyl spinners only. Bars like the Tonic Room in Lincoln Park are now offering iPod nights, when patrons are allowed to play DJ–or MP3J, as some dedicated participants call themselves–by selecting songs from their iPods to play for the bar in 15-minute segments.
Some turntablists support the iPod nights, saying it’s great for anybody to be able to express themselves through music. But they note that being a DJ is much more demanding than simply knowing how to download songs from iTunes.
“All those vinyl guys with serious skills will look at that whole iPod DJ thing as really cheesy,” said John Daminato, who spins at Lakeview’s La Taberna on Saturdays.
Being a DJ is “really trendy” right now, but it’s a crowded field, Daminato added. Even DJs who have been spinning for years have a hard time building a name for themselves, he said. To get to the top, they have to do it the hard way.
On a stage surrounded by more than 200 cheering fans at Vision nightclub Thursday, pairs of DJs battled head to head, massaging vinyl records on turntables and sweating under the bright lights. The mix masters were hard at work performing six-minute segments as part of a regional competition hosted by the Dance Music Community, the industry organization that started the prestigious World DJ Championships in the 1980s.
A DJ named Kico won the event and will represent Chicago at the DMC USA Finals in New York in August. If he wins there, he could go on to compete in September’s World DJ Championships.
A victory at that level would elevate Kico’s status in the DJ world, said Jay Reagan, one of the competition’s judges and a product specialist at DJ equipment manufacturer Digidesign.
“You can make way more money,” Reagan said. “Being a DJ could be your full-time job.”
Reagan said that iPods are a huge influence in music right now and that he has seen some DJs incorporate them into their routines. But standing behind the turntables is still sacred.
“I wouldn’t even put them in the same category,” he said. “Playing iPods at the bar is a great social idea. But it’s not good for a club.”
At Sound-bar, a club that regularly draws world-famous DJs, MP3Js would have a hard time, manager Brian Hicks said.
“Practically speaking, it would be hard to be a dynamic DJ with an iPod,” he said. “It would just be hard to keep the club’s tempo going with people looking through their lists and cataloguing their songs. How would it blend? You need a professional to do that.”
Still, the MP3Js are confident that even though they’re not using turntables, they are still pretty darn good at keeping the crowd moving.
The Tonic Room offers iPod sessions every Tuesday night, and some MP3Js, like 25-year-old art director Edmund Gomez of the West Loop, take their work very seriously. Gomez said he spends hours making several playlists and constantly searching for new material.
“I am very passionate about music,” Gomez said. “If I were willing to buy the equipment and learn to use it, I could definitely be a DJ.”
So who’s the real DJ, anyway?
RedEye hung out with established DJs and their MP3J counterparts to find out what’s behind the playlists.
Old-school players
Mario Nieves owns more than 8,000 records. No iTunes. He’s into vinyl.
Best known as B96 radio’s DJ Nonstop and official DJ to rapper DMX, Nieves, 35, said about 70 crates of records are crammed into the basement of his North Side home, where he practices his hip-hop mixes.
A DJ for more than 20 years–but full time only for the last three–Nieves said the iPod craze is good for music because it makes people creative, but that it’s a little unnerving.
“More people want to do what DJs do,” he said. “But they want to cut out the DJ part and make it themselves.”
The iPod is just the latest assault on the turntables Nieves loves, he said. But he’s slowly getting used to it.
He cringed when DJs started spinning on CDs, until he watched Jam Master Jay and decided to stop fighting the technology.
“If Jam Master Jay can use them, who am I to say they’re garbage?” Nieves said. Technology may change the way people play music, but Nieves said that being a full-time DJ takes more than simply putting songs in order. “People can make their own compilations,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean they have the desire it takes to be a DJ.”
Most DJs live a paycheck-to-paycheck life but are willing to struggle for the chance to play their music. “If you make the right connections,” he said, “you can live off of this.”
The construction job he worked before hooking up with DMX paid about $1,500 per week, he said, and now he can make that much spinning for two hours.
Nieves spins in Chicago on Thursday nights at Rive Gauche, Friday nights at Club Mambo and Saturday nights at Minx. It is not uncommon for his work to take him out of town to places as far away as Germany, Alaska or St. Martin. He tries to book one big show per month to pay the bills and considers any other gigs to be “cake.”
His tours with DMX have taken him all over the world and introduced him to stars such as Jay-Z, Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park. For countless other Chicago DJs, however, there isn’t much glamor.
David Chavez, a 27-year-old who spins at Wicker Park’s Subterranean on Wednesdays, said it’s the love of music and his desire to expose people to new sounds that keeps him working for about $200 per gig.
“A lot of DJs out there–even if they are a big name–are not living pretty,” Chavez said. “A lot of them have part-time jobs in record stores and such.”
Chavez said the recent iPod craze is good because it exposes people to more music, but he also said that downloading a bunch of songs for 99 cents a pop doesn’t compare with what he does. Combing local record shops like Gramaphone on Clark Street in Lincoln Park, dropping $100 on vinyl every weekend and fighting for every gig shows a different kind of passion, he said.
“The more the merrier when it comes to music,” he said. “But the bad thing with all these iPod people is that you have a lot of people giving more exposure to bad, commercial music.”–m.c.
New kids on the block
Ayana Richardson and Lauriean Davis sat at the bar of Lincoln Park’s Tonic Room for more than four hours last Tuesday.
The ladies would have left earlier, but they became absorbed in playing music from their iPods as part of the bar’s weekly iPod night, when patrons can play their songs in 15-minute segments.
Richardson, 27, and Davis, 32, lucked out because it was an unusually slow night, and they got to entertain the small crowd for about an hour with everything from soul to old Chicago house music.
“It’s really hard,” said Richardson, adding that she would love to be a professional DJ. “You have to really know your playlist and be able to improvise for the crowd.”It was Davis’ and Richardson’s first experience with iPod night, but some music lovers come weekly and spend hours selecting songs in advance.
Edmund Gomez, a 25-year-old art director from the West Loop, recently started going to Tonic Room on Tuesdays after Wednesday iPod nights at Bucktown’s Get Me High Lounge stopped after the bar recently went out of business.
Gomez was a regular at Get Me High, showing up every week for three months. Regardless of where he’s playing, Gomez is serious about his MP3J skills–after all, he said, he coined the term.
“I set up about four playlists of different genres,” he said. “I make sure that everything flows into the next song as smoothly as possible. I make sure it sounds good.”
Gomez also has a strategy for working the crowd.
“I don’t start playing right when I get there,” he said. “I listen to what other people are playing. I gauge off of that, and it determines what I start out with.”
Richardson and Davis had not yet discovered the science of MP3Jing on their first try last week but said they are eager to return to iPod night so they can show off their diverse song catalogues.
“I definitely want to come again,” Davis said. “Next time I will take it more seriously. I’ll make several playlists. One
15 minutes, one 30 minutes and a one-hour one.”
She may only be an MP3J at this point, but Davis said that discovering iPod night has unleashed her inner DJ.
“It makes me wish I could actually do the real thing,” she said.–m.c.
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Famous DJs
The average clubgoer knows almost nothing about what’s going on in the DJ booth–let alone the DJ’s identity, says DJ Mario Nieves, who works with DMX . Sometimes, though, a talented DJ can make a name for himself in the mainstream. Consider these mix masters:
Moby
Before his 1991 hit record, “Go,” Moby spent the late 1980s spinning at hole-in-the-wall New York clubs. The experience consisted of “playing records at 3 in the morning in the middle of the week to four or five passed out drunks,” Moby writes on his Web site.
Kid Capri
Kid Capri raised the profile of DJs as the official spin master for Russell Simmons’ “Def Comedy Jam” in the 1990s, earning him gigs with stars such as P. Diddy, LL Cool J, Foxy Brown, Jay-Z and Usher.
Fatboy Slim
A big name in the UK club scene, Fatboy Slim gained popularity in the U.S. when his single “Rockafeller Skank” appeared in the 1999 film, “She’s All That.”
DJ Jazzy Jeff
He may have been most famous for being thrown out of the house by Uncle Phil during his days as a guest star on “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” but teaming up with Will Smith earned Jazzy Jeff three Grammys.
Paul Oakenfold
Paul Oakenfold worked as a producer and executive in the recording industry for years until his big break in 1991, when he produced the U2 hit, “Even Better Than the Real Thing.” The group returned the favor by giving him exposure as their DJ on the “Zooropa” world tour.
Perry Farrell
Lollapalooza founder and former Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell also works the turntables. He performed last weekend at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in his techno guise of DJ Peretz, a name he chose because the Hebrew translation is “voice of the land.” This year’s Lollapalooza, July 23-24 in Grant Park, will feature DJs doing mash-ups.
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mcarberry@tribune.com
