HOW MOST PEOPLE LISTEN TO MUSIC

                                      (Skrillex)

Most people just wanna have a smooth sound in the background, they are happy with what the heck ever, like slick, a bit vocally 60’s soul or something very easily digested. Ask me and I say it's boring. 

To dj for those people is like inviting someone who has lost the taste buds on a truffle and oyster feast. Meaningless.

People who have never developed their taste in music shouldn’t be allowed to speak about the subject at all.

I have discovered that I consume, discover and listen to music differently than most other people do.

If I hear a song or an artist once, the chance is big I will remember it the next time. My brain takes in music like other peoples brains takes in names, faces or macro economic facts. 

I analyze and register the voice, the arrangements, what timeperiod the song was recoreded in, but also what other artists that must have inspired the singer and/or the band and the next time I hear the song I know after a couple of seconds into the song right away what it is and by who. Guess that is a necessary skill when you work with music. Can't stand when I show people some music and they ask me what it is and I say ”guess” and they say some artist out of the blue that they might know about but who doesn’t have any similarities with the artist in question.

Or like another time when a guy tried to be cool and impress me and started to play air guitar to a song by Lykke Li, when it was obvious there were absolutely no guitars in that song what so ever. 

Awkward I remember.

Or even worse,when people stop discovering new music. They ”develop” a "style" when they are 20, out of  let's say 10-15 albums (like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Michael Jackson for example) and then they listen to that same crap day in and day out for the next 10 years! Unbeliavable. Like being brainwashed, or like having the same style and wearing the same clothes as when you were 20 until this very day. Well, I guess some people do. (I could never…)

I function like this. I listen to as much new released  music as possible on blogs, at party’s, through friends, etc. If I like it I download it and then it’s with me in my dj playlist for a couple of months. Never more. A new song is cool and fresch maximum 6 months after the release date, after that it isn’t funny and inspiring anymore, like who the hell wants to hear a remix by Lykke Li released over a year ago and played at every club since ,out now? The only exception are certain retro songs which you can play out at all times.

There isn’t anything worse than when I’m in the middle of a dj set where I have free hands and some loser manager without taste in music comes and screams; ”Hey! Put on some Ibiza music”  while I’m in a set of much cooler New York nu or old disco, something totally experimental or something else (yes, it’s actually happened-in a Costes place in St Germain this summer) That just proves their total lack of taste and nowledge in what music is and all I want to say is; ”Listen, I have 15 years experience of professional music listening compared to yours two, so shut up and let me do my job please.

I love all kind of music and can be standing in a bar dj’ing in the middle of a retro set when I suddenly feel an urge to hear really heavy dubsteap, so while I let my autopilot (my two hands) mix the song played at the moment I listen to an over- remixed version of Skrillex on highest volume possible in the headphones, the other mix goes on and people just notice that I dance a bit different.

I appriciate a Chet Baker song as much as I love a Luciano set at Pacha in Ibiza, or an Italian love song from the 60's. It’s different, but the feeling of love for the music is the same.

I sometimes feel I can’t play exactly what I want when I’m out working cause I have to take into consideration other people's underdeveloped taste in music and are afraid they would start to complain of pure ignorance if I played something that didn’t exist in their small and under developed universe of music, which is sad.

Well, the work of a dj is and remains to show people what they didn't knew they loved.

Peace.