Cyriaque Lamar written for Cracked
Step #1: Suck
When I was 15, I decided to become a DJ, because I didn't do sports and musical theater wasn't doing me any favors.Mystifyingly enough, my dramatic turn as the rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof did not make me
the most sexually active teen in the ninth grade.
Wikimedia Commons/32bitmaschine
The Technics was the mastodon of turntables: heavy, fearsome, and now extinct.
The Technics was the mastodon of turntables: heavy, fearsome, and now extinct.
I really had no clue what I was doing. I didn't know any DJs. Given that my previous hobby had been Magic: The Gathering, the only parties I'd ever attended were pizza parties. In my idiot man-cub brain, the party solely existed for the DJ's edification. One day I'd swagger down to Ibiza and drop a He-Man audiobook over Kraftwerk, and Josie and the Pussycats-era Rosario Dawson would be so agog she'd let me see her butt from a few yards away and we'd kiss with no tongue forever.
Cloud Eight Films
"Dear 2001 Me, I have sent you a gift from the future. It is a DVD copy of director Danny Boyle's Trance.
You will not own a DVD player for another three years, so hang in there champ! Yours, 2014 You."
"Dear 2001 Me, I have sent you a gift from the future. It is a DVD copy of director Danny Boyle's Trance.
You will not own a DVD player for another three years, so hang in there champ! Yours, 2014 You."
"Hey guys, who wants to listen to Fear of a Black Planet?"
And guess what? I didn't completely suck at scratching. In fact, after two years of dutifully dicking around, I wheedled my way in to my friends' band. Sure, it was mostly a Weezer cover band, but that didn't matter. The year was 2001, and to be a band of note, you needed a DJ who stood behind the drummer and read a magazine.
Intermedia Films
"Dear 2004 Me, it's 2014 You again. Stop watching Trance. My timeline is crumbling around me. Untold thousands are dead.
You forgot to take the SATs. Alexander comes out in November, you stupid son of a bitch."
"Dear 2004 Me, it's 2014 You again. Stop watching Trance. My timeline is crumbling around me. Untold thousands are dead.
You forgot to take the SATs. Alexander comes out in November, you stupid son of a bitch."
Step #2: Forget You Suck
After the band, I didn't really DJ for three years, as making fart noises with phonographs all the livelong day is a fine ploy to get a dormitory full of strangers full of Natty Ice to hate you. But after four years, I moved to an off-campus flophouse. The basement was empty. It was the perfect party space, if you ignored the asbestos and mycotoxins and Hantavirus. So, in September 2005, I resurrected my solo DJ act for a bipedal audience. I never could mix, so I replaced the dog-shit turntable with a third-generation iPod.
Apple
I grew haughty, as the iPod did not smell like burning rubber when you turned it on.
I grew haughty, as the iPod did not smell like burning rubber when you turned it on.
Anyway, I was banking on having the photo of my Jagermeister sarong for this article, but I lost it. As a placeholder, here I am in my 10th grade production of Annie.
Please imagine this song playing in my head.
No, you didn't come here for the good times. You came for the worst night of my life ... well and this
Step #3: Remember You Suck in Front of 100 People
The worst night of my life fell approximately mid-October '05. I don't remember the exact day. And, to be objective, as far as worst days go -- in both nonfictional and fictional contexts -- it was a solid D+. Nobody died. The dread cans of the whore of Babylon did not blot out the sky, nor was the Earth pockmarked by fumaroles of diarrhea goblins. Yeah, my Lifetime original biopic would just be an 11-second commercial for dietary fiber.What happened was this: a girl I liked asked me to DJ her housemate's birthday party. She asked because I charged nothing (and she'd somehow failed to notice my 1:4 ratio of Destiny's Child to Sesame Street records). I agreed because I was eager to impress (as I'd utterly botched it a few months earlier. We had a misalignment of priorities -- she wanted me to go salsa dancing; I wanted to misread Schopenhauer and drink Night Train out of coffee mugs.)
My only marching orders were, "My roomie likes reggaeton." OK. One warm cup of the only fortified wine endorsed by Axl Rose later, and I was armed with enough Daddy Yankee to fuel at least nine half-supervised quinceaneras. To my credit, I wasn't a complete dummy going into this -- just 99 percent dummy. That sage 1 percent of non-dummy knew to abandon Hall & Oates and compile an annotated bibliography of Ja Rule guest appearances. But that other 99 percent, the raw-unfiltered-angel's-teat-pure-dumbfuck dummy? He never foresaw that her boyfriend would be the one swinging by to pick up my equipment.
Her boyfriend was a normal guy. But for narrative purposes, I'll need you to imagine him as this 1901 painting of a bedonged titan.
At this point in the story, I should've said either ...
A) "Sorry, I just wanted to steal your girlfriend! Time to get hammered and watch Ronin."
B) "Is this a surprise party? Because a real surprise would be [RUNS TO COUNTY LINE]."
C) "My house has a carbon monoxide leak. Time to get hammered and watch Ronin."
... but I didn't. My free-falling gut told me panicked gibberish (like if I backed out now, Afrika Bambaataa would never induct me into Zulu Nation). I'd taken a sacred oath to furnish a bunch of strangers with no less than three hours of tenuously mixed Top 40. Yes, I'd suffer for The Party. Yes, I'd be their DJ messiah, magnanimous from the mount, transforming Milwaukee's Best into fishes and condoms into loaves. That's right, I'd rock the party so hard, nameless men would wear baguettes on their dicks.
PBNJ Productions/Blend Images/Getty Images
"Aw yeah, make some noise for DJ Starchy Prophylactic!"
"Aw yeah, make some noise for DJ Starchy Prophylactic!"
We arrived at her house. The boyfriend sequestered me in a musky corner of the basement, between the keg and a brick wall. I sat in the basement alone, idly getting loaded and playing mid-'90s hip-hop for an intimate audience of nobody. This suited me. I could handle this crowd: just me, my incipient buzz, and Lil' Kim yelling about tits. I knew these guys. Old friends. I'd survive the night as long as everybody hated the birthday girl.
They didn't. Ninety minutes later, the fashionably late sloughed in by the dozen, ripe with pregame miasma. I deployed the reggaeton. The birthday girl danced with three friends. Gladdened, I lobbed out some more. This was the wrong reggaeton. Wronggaeton. Nobody danced. I doubled back, frantic. "Big Poppa" to Missy Elliott to Aaliyah. Somebody complained that I was playing "old stuff." What fucking monster doesn't like Aaliyah?
Here's the only photo of me from that night. In retrospect, I should have been flattered. People mistook me for a real DJ, albeit one they hated.
All pro DJs use bookshelf speakers.
In 30 minutes, I'd lost the crowd. (I knew this because a sebaceous clog in a popped-collar polo kept bellowing, "You've lost the crowd!") Here is a real conversation I had:
SURLY WOMAN: I need you to play this CD.
ME: Um, I don't have a CD player. Sorry.
SURLY WOMAN: My sister is paying you to be here, so you better play the songs she wants.
ME: Uh, well, I'm doing this for free?
SURLY WOMAN: [GORGON PETRIFICATION BEAMS START SHOOTING OUT OF HER EYES]
Look, "being ignored by drunk people" is inevitably part of a DJ's job, but this shit was ridiculous. This was not the sketch comedy crowd. Three minutes of Dangerously in Love-era Beyonce was greeted as if it were 90 minutes of Billy Ocean and a ripe durian. "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" might've well been "Heal the World."
Or an unplugged stereo and me waving around the alternate album cover to Ben.
White Mountain Films
My mood was the emotional inverse of "balancing a platter of meat on your junk."
I'm pretty sure Cracked has to fire me for publishing this.
Step #4: Give Up?
I know this isn't one of those truly harrowing firsthand Cracked articles about people who adopt a swarm of locusts or whatever, but there is a lesson here: never in the name of poorly researched romance volunteer for five hours of total strangers yelling at you.Why'd I tell you my sob story? I lost something that night. It wasn't my equipment, even though it took me two months to retrieve it. It wasn't my iPod. That vanished a few months later. (Some say it was stolen, but I like to think he went solo.) I somehow even remained friendly with the girl, though she'd ferried me across some undiscovered New Jersey runnel of the River Acheron.
No, my first-ever real gig massacred my joy. I haven't DJed since, save 1.5 small gatherings in '06, for maybe 20 minutes a pop. (Soon after, I learned how a security deposit works, and that was that.) Now I'm 30 years old. The kids are all DJing on their phones. Next, their phones will be their shoes, and then their shoes will be their hats. Shit, dude, I can't wear orthopedics on my head. I'll never headline one of those big EDM festivals, like the Electro Vaginitis Zoosylvania. I've been out of the game too long. Have you ever seen David Guetta DJ? It took him 47 years to learn his DJ face.
It's been nearly a decade since that party, but fuck it, I'm taking it back. That's right, I'M DJING A SET FOR YOU. Using YouTube videos. On the Internet. Let's not overthink this.
This being Cracked and not one of those Second Life raves where everybody is either a dildo or a zebra, I'll keep this short. Two songs, Half bangers, half babymakers. The first is this Italian Michael Jackson cover:
This video is so perfect, I have nothing more to add.
It's way better if you imagine that K-Ci & JoJo are singing from a bunk bed.
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