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acidflash · 6 years ago

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The Secret DJ

This is the third book in succession I’ve read about the phenomenon we love and know as Electronic Music. I think that’s what to call it anyway. As time goes on I like using that term less and less as “EDM” becomes more and more infused into our everyday lives. Either way, whatever you want to call it each book has been significantly different in its approach to this intoxicating lifestyle but equally enjoyable. “Ninety” by Johnny Proctor was a foray into fiction and Acid House, “Sonic Youth Slept On My Floor” by Dave Haslam was a memoir that heavily focused on his DJing and now we have “The Secret DJ”, a memoir of sorts but it reads like fiction with its larger than life escapades! I loved it and would highly recommend reading this to anyone. I’m not sure this is particularly a “book review” per se but I talk about it and what parts of it mean to me.

The Secret DJ is a series of tales from a now fifty something DJ who was one of the original “Superstar DJs”. He takes us on a non-chronological journey of debauchery, realism, philosophy, narcotics, comedy and education. Several characters play a supporting role, none more so than Tour Manager his, well tour manager obviously. Except he sounds like the most useless tour manager ever and is saved by the fact he sounds like the most hilarious wingman you can imagine. Possibly not for The Secret DJ but certainly for the reader.

The book is written obviously from an anonymous source and focuses purely on life on the road as a working DJ, apart from a couple of life-changing events. There’s no childhood stories that give you hints of the life to come, there’s no background as to how he became a DJ, it’s just straight in with the mostly comical japery and what it’s like to endure/enjoy that lifestyle that is so revered by many, but so few could ever withstand.

As someone who started DJing back when few people did I can empathise with so much of the book. I’m around 10 years younger so although I was part of the first army of “bedroom DJs”, there were far fewer of us than there are nowadays and there was no sync button. Much of his outlook is “I’m an old bastard and it was much better in my day”, and as much as I try not to be, my outlook is not too dissimilar. Of course it’s wrong, there are undoubtedly things that were much better “back in the day” but there are also better things nowadays. Sometimes the same thing is why it was better then/now. We had no camera phones so everyone just got on enjoying themselves, but few of us have much of a record of the great times we had bar what we can remember, which let’s face it isn’t a lot. Clubbers nowadays can keep physical memories of these great times. I’d prefer to just enjoy myself and not worry or cringe about what people I’ve been out with might slap on social media but there are certainly pros and cons to both sides of that argument. Likewise how organised things are these days. There was so much adventure 20/30 years ago, you didn’t quite know if things would happen or not, there wasn’t always security, chill out zones etc. so there’s better safety nowadays. Whatever way you look at it there were good things and bad things about the different eras.

Anyway I digress. There were many passages I’d like to highlight but I don’t want to give too much away. Nothing more annoying than reviews or previews that give away all the “best bits”. Instead I’ll tell you the ones that resonated with me the most. You can read it yourself for the funny parts, of which there are many.

His description of how the art comes more naturally the less you try for instance - “Have you ever tried too hard at something physical, a sport or a game? Have you noticed how you are never better at it when you’re not trying at all? It’s that.” Bang on. Once you can do something on autopilot then you’re sorted. Most of us probably drive a car without thinking about what we’re doing most of the time, it’s like that. Once you start thinking whether your clutch/accelerator co-ordination is correct then you suddenly start changing gear poorly.

Likewise, mistakes. We’re human. Be immediately suspicious of anyone who appears to be mixing “perfectly”. Little mistakes show up reality. Technology is doing most, or all, of the work if absolutely nothing is going wrong. I almost always used the crossfader to mix, and once I got so deep into a mix where I was using the channel slider I forgot the crossfader was still stuck in the middle. The record eventually ran out when I’d faded it out almost perfectly, I slammed the channel slider back up triumphantly thinking the crossfader was right over and had a great surge of adrenaline. Then the next song started, not only were there huge brass stabs at full volume but obviously completely out of time with the record that was playing. Took me around 5 seconds to work out what the hell was going on before I stopped the record. The following month I turned up to play again at the same club to discover they were selling the set I’d done that night on CD. The first half the monitors barely worked so there were trainwrecks and then there was that big mistake. I was mortified. Everybody who I spoke to over the next few months loved it and didn’t care so I stopped caring. Ride your mistakes out, realise everyone makes them and eventually you’ll lose the fear. Unless you are playing in front of 5000 people obviously….

Treating people in the service industry not only with respect (as any even remotely respectable human being should) but to turn it round and be the subservient one. In turn you will be treated much better and for longer. I don’t work in the service industry but in a role that has similarities, trust me when I say the better you treat me the further I will go to give you a great service. In The Secret DJ’s case he also treated them well so that when things inevitably got fucked up later on he was also in credit. Plan ahead in other words.

Talking about Tour Manager he fondly describes how he is the only person made a better person by cocaine, “Some people genuinely have great trouble coming forth from their shell, and sometimes the mollusc within is very special”. Great words and instantly endears you to TM. Their relationship is clearly very special. Well I guess it has to be when he’s useless at being a tour manager!

Talking about the “Shazam generation” and how the research has been taken out of record finding, he says “Being a DJ is about being an authority, which comes through contact and immersion, not mental tourism. In this Information Age, the true hazard is that information gets confused with knowledge. Just cos you have something doesn’t mean you own it”. Incredibly sage words.

Twice I actually cried with laughter. I find laughter to be incredibly infectious and rarely laugh hard on my own even when watching something funny. To laugh at a book so hard that my daughter thought there was something wrong with me takes some doing. Without particularly giving anything away, one downer-addled adventure ends with him saying “If this was a film, there would now be a montage of stills of ascending idiocy”. My head was already doing this, seeing it written out in words tipped me over the edge. Secondly, “MOORSEBERRY SHREWSCAKE”. I couldn’t breathe by the end of this story. Seriously, I couldn’t.

On fame - “One day people loved what I did, then they didn’t. But the things I made were the same. Odd”. We can see it as punters when someone’s musical output doesn’t really change in terms of quality but suddenly a newer, younger kid is on the block and they’re forgotten about. A fickle mistress indeed.

As the book edges closer to the end a very sobering event happens to The Secret DJ. I must say it did knock me sideways a bit, I wasn’t expecting it to hit me so hard. He hinted early in the book that he “lost it” in some way and went off the radar but it was shocking. He writes it in a very blasé way too, I think perhaps as a defence mechanism - making light of what is a very serious situation. How he even managed to survive is a miracle, far less write the book.

Lastly, an extremely poignant quote. “To this day I have no idea how you can spend so much joyful time with another human and end up not seeing them ever again”. I’m sure most of us who spent many years clubbing can fully understand this. Outside of family I had the most amazing time of my life with a few people you can easily count on your fingers. With the exception of one I’ll probably never see them again for various reasons. It still fucks with my head a bit, even years later. How did we go from saving the world, looking out for each other no matter what the situation was, feeling like there was no-one else in the world either understood us or even existed, having the maddest adventures that bound us together for ever more, to never seeing each other again? Growing up I guess. Drifting apart. Shit going down.

Think I’ve hit several tangents there and I was meant to be telling you how great a book it is. It’s a great book for two reasons, the storytelling is first class and will take you through a range of emotions, which lets face it is what you generally look for in a book isn’t it? But also I can connect with so much of it. Like Dave Haslam’s book I mentioned at the start there is so much of the book I get on a personal level. Some of its music-related and some of it’s personality and some of it is both. I guess those of us who obsess enough about music to go down the DJing route are probably similarly built.

One last thing, and I suppose it’s the elephant in the room. Who is he? There are a vast array of clues, although he says something near the end that means you can’t read too far into a lot of them. After all, why write a book anonymously if it’s easy for people to guess? There aren’t too many people he can be and I have a good idea but I like the myth. There’s not really any sniping or secret-telling about other DJs apart from the odd short anecdote and none (apart from the famous Steve Angello incident) are ever named. It just feels like a guy wanted to write a book about his adventures but didn’t want people to know it was him. I know how he feels.

Order it here: The Secret DJ https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0571334482/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i4yxBb5729B54

If you fancy the other books I mentioned you can order Dave Haslam’s here:

Sonic Youth Slept On My Floor: Music, Manchester, and More: A Memoir https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1472127528/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_D5yxBb66E5E24

and Ninety by Johnny Proctor here:

Ninety https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1979953414/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_f7yxBb8C98A14

Review: http://acidflash.tumblr.com/post/174467922138/ninety-by-johnny-proctor-a-review-zico-is-a

#HouseMusic #DJs #SecretDJ #ElectronicMusic #books

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