There was an attempt to…be a superstar DJ

A love of music has been one of my only constants in how I like to spend my spare time. Whilst any attempts at creating my own tunes have never really taken off (* future blog post klaxon *), I enjoyed putting together playlists for friends and my own enjoyment. This started in the era when these would be on cassette tape (look it up,kids), with the distinctive “clunk” between tracks to signify the switch between one song and another.  Later, this would transition into burning a CD, which was infinitely easier, but an element of romance seemed to be lost along with the nostalgic clunk sound.

I always harboured an ambition for my tastes to be seen as “eclectic” but in reality I was far from being some John Peel-esque figure with my finger on the pulse of the music scene. I was just someone who spent a *lot* of money on random second hand CD’s and occasionally, there would be one or two hidden gems which could be thrown onto a playlist and was quirky enough to maintain some level of cool.  

As fun as these playlists were, the next logical step seemed to provide an additional layer of creativity and to create a DJ mix;  in 2005, I was listening a lot to fan remixes, mashups, and covers and I figured that there would be some good candidates that would have a decent chance of being blended together into one continuous experience. There was one slight problem; I was not cool or old enough to own anything on actual records. This was a time long before the renaissance of vinyl and all the insufferable twattery that comes with it from middle-aged men like me. However, I did have a computer, and I managed to find some cheap software that claimed to do all the clever beat matching stuff for you.  I would be missing out on the full DJ experience of holding earphones to the side of my head whilst bafflingly rubbing a record back and forth, but if I could still create something reasonable at a fraction of the cost, that would be a result.

Of course, creating an actual mix that sounded half-decent was never going to be that easy, even with the assistance of technology. There were many nights of staying up into the wee hours, putting together something my booze-addled brain would think was genius, then listening back the next day realising it was utter shit.  (Many years later, I’m still following this creative process today when writing my blog entries).  

The results of my efforts were only shared with a select group of people; Basically, anyone who was unfortunate to be sharing a ride in my car where there was no escape from me suddenly “discovering” a burned CD of my mixes to put on for the journey. Most of these playbacks would be accompanied with me announcing “here comes the good bit” just in case, somehow, it wasn’t obvious to anyone else but me.

However, with the advent of services for the cool kids like Soundcloud, I unearthed and uploaded a few of these long-forgotten efforts for your “enjoyment”. If you want to hear the soundtrack of someone who believes they are weaving an aural journey of exploration, but who is really just getting lucky with a few computer-assisted transitions and good source material, you can find them here: https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/Bq1g6VPXLpybGrMi6

So, if I enjoyed it so much back then, why did I stop? The biggest influence on calling time on my superstar DJ career was undoubtedly Spotify. As the majority of the planet slowly switched over from buying to streaming their music, and with platforms that allowed anyone and their dog to become a curator, my efforts felt less special in comparison to the millions of people out there who actually had talent and know what they are doing. The only thing that may entice me to return to the digital decks these days is the joy to be gained from watching my kids fold inwards with pure embarrassment from me attempting to be cool by saying things like “digital decks”. And that, these days, is more than enough reward for me.