If you were a DJ playing old records you’d get booed off the stage, or the crowd would leave the room and go upstairs. I kept it close with my crowd, people would come up to me and ask if I had this tune, if it wasn’t in the box I’d play it next week. But it wasn’t a case of these people making jukebox requests but rather that they wanted to feel a part of the scene and know that they had some hand in making the night.

Out of the club into another, the nights were long and people just kept on going. 200 cars in convoy going down the A1 that was a real feeling of unity. You’d end up in a field with or without a generator, but someone would light a fire and in the end you might end up dancing around a car stereo but it still sounded good, people believed that they were part of a new expression, a new movement.

Roll that musical clock forward to 2003 and what remained was a shrink wrapped corporately packaged scene that gets got its kicks from re-releasing and remixing tracks that were created from back catalogues of labels from the 70s and 80s snapped up for next to nothing. As the majors took over distribution so the public channels for independent producers to get their tracks on the shelves got ever harder. Take a trip down the lane of the classic dance music tracks of all time and you won’t find too many happy faces. From Rappers Delight, through to Grandmaster Flash - Christ Larry Heard, the man that gave you Fingers Inc went off to become a programmer. LARRY HEARD!!! That tells you a little bit about how little chance there was to keep a true pioneer from the 9-5!

Whereas back in the day a DJ would take two tracks and blend them to make a third with a mix that could last up to 4 minutes. A DJ now gets a track on promo which are then not released for 4,5 or 6 months and because it is not released, and because it is a great song, many of the top DJs have got complacent.

When I go and here “the top DJs” and I don’t see technical wizardry I see a simple fade between the tracks. What the f*** is that about? In the meantime people go mad for the names, but it was always the local talent that delivered the mixing street knowledge. Nowadays there is not the space for the little guys.

Music has become a disposable in the digital age, the Internet has added to this by reducing people’s hard work into a click. You can skip through a track on your computer, you see no sleeve notes, see no graphic you get no dimension on what it is the artist is trying to convey. All you get is track01-4.5MB! Do you want to download?

Nowadays everyone wants to be a DJ, in the late 80s and early 90s you needed to spend €600.00 on a mixer, now you can pick one up for €150. That means in the old days you needed to be committed to start, nowadays it’s the same amount clubbers blow in a weekend.

This has opened the doors to everyone, a good thing, but it also means that there are 1000s of DJs so a good DJ can’t charge too much to play in a club because the next DJ in the queue will do it for half the price.

Having said all that. Who cares?

Music was never about the money, its about liberating the soul, and the souls of the crowd, together…

Keep listening.....to everything

Analoga Batteria.