I'm sure there are nice people, sorry to bitch so much, etc., but, man, I'm burnt.
Someone I know was talking about throwing a disco party and it just really underscored it all. I need to make some changes. I don't even know where to start.
Disco. I love it. Or rather, I love uptempo r&b from the 1970s and 1980s. But this dude was talking about it as if both the actual history and the critical revaluation had never happened. Like still with the leisure suits and fake afro wigs and gold chains and suburban shit and yes this is the suburbs but still. "Like" Studio 54. Aren't people confused? Well they have to read first, but still? When people say they like Blondie and New Order and they hear those basslines? When they hear New Order went out clubbing? Studio 54? New Order in midtown? Midtown??? New Order waiting in line outside with junior stockbrokers with houses in Jersey buying stepped-on shit from dealers who know they'll never see these suburban fucks again? Downtown, idiot.
A disco party. With no Salsoul or Prelude or West End or Leroy Burgess or Patrick Adams or Larry Levan, probably without even entry-level serious shit like "Love Sensation". What the fuck.
Then this dude had the audacity to tell me that disco was the easiest of all genres to DJ with. Just fuck off. You have three turntables? A rotary mixer? Serious skills on the isolator (which in turn means knowing every drum fill and drum break and breakdown on every ten minute extended remix in a crate or two with, I dunno, at least 100 records)? You have doubles? How tightly can you loop those doubles? Oh, and let's not forget, you know, that whole live drummer thing. How long can you hold a mix when both records have live drummers and they are both changing tempos in different directions? Do you have all those tempo changes memorized? Oh, and how perfect is your pitch? Do you know all of the records in your box that change keys in the middle? Are you ready to anticipate? Will the next record be in key? Which one? To match what's playing now or what happens after the bridge? You do know what a bridge is, don't you?
Disco is easy? Fucking idiot. Disco is the hardest. By far. Any monkey can mix house made with drum machines, and, increasingly, many do.
But why I am sad I guess is that there is something really self-miniturizing about listening to this. Especially when the other person actually knows I am a DJ. Condescending idiocy. I guess I could have said something but I didn't even know where to start. In order to help prove Godwin's law, I'll say: it's like dealing with someone who actually believe that the Nazis were left-wing because they called themselves National Socialists*. There is such a fundamental breakdown of signification that you have to trace the assumptions back to some place before memory, before cognition.
It's not like I haven't dealt with this before. Just usually I get to meet up with people afterwards and laugh and know I am right and move on. But here. Fuck.
*These same people probably also watch those crazy Youtube documentaries about how the Frankfurt School Socialists brought us political correctness. So Socialists kill "fags" and also ask that we call them "homosexual" instead in order to not hurt their feelings? Socialists are really a confusing bunch, no?
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