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10 excuses to avoid DJ requests

quote:

10 excuses to avoid DJ requests 9 April, 2009 | 3.50PM * Written by: Terry Church Following Steve Angello�s DJ booth fracas with Paris Hilton during Miami�s WMC, we felt it was necessary to inform our users of the best ways to avoid fighting with a clueless punter when they ask you to play �hip hop� or a certain record. Because violence is never the answer kids. Here are 10 ways a DJ can dodge having to play a request without resorting to a fist fight. These are tried and tested excuses from out in the field and Beatportal has tried every one (maybe). 1. �I�m just the warm up� The golden answer to any request from a complainer is �I�m just the warm up DJ�. It�s a blanket answer that can be used for any request, be it hip hop or classical music. The reply suggests that you�re deliberately playing records they don�t want to hear, so that the DJ after you can come on and play what they really want. That should keep them away from the DJ booth for a bit. But the real beauty of the reply is that it keeps the complainer in the club listening to your set, because they will be waiting around for the next DJ. No one likes an empty dancefloor, even if it�s just full of whiners. 2. �How long have you been here? I played it just before you arrived.� When asked for a particular style of track, immediately reply with �How long have you been here?� Then, regardless of their response say, �damn, I�m sorry I played that track or that sound just before you got here.� Your answer shifts the guilt back onto the complainer who will think they should have come to the club sooner, and the wonderful thing about that is that the next time they�ll be the first through the door. Then you�ll be really screwed. 3. �The guy after me plays that.� An alternative on the �I�m just the warm up� excuse, except this one can be used to screw over the next DJ quite nicely. Afterall, a little rivalry is healthy for the scene. You could even take it further and ask the whiner to write down their requests onto a piece of paper which you swear you will pass onto the next DJ. Then when changeover happens, point at the next DJ whilst winking at the whiner and then run home before the fireworks begin. Another excuse that uses �time stamping� to hoodwink the complainer into staying for your entire set is to count how many tracks you will need to finish your set and then say, �After X tracks, I�ll play it.� (Thanks fballoni!). 4. �The manager won�t let me.� Shifting blame elsewhere is an old schoolboy trick, and if you say the manager won�t let you play whatever the complainer wants that should satisfy them enough to leave you alone. You could even be really sympathetic and say �Yeah I know, I have the new Beyonce and everything, but the guy is such an asshole he only wants this underground techno shit.� Look out for the ones that have a big sense of entitlement though, as they might be savvy enough to go straight to the manager to complain and then you�ll be forced by the venue to play Beyonce�s new one and you�ll have to smile through gritted teeth pretending that you�re really happy to do so. 5. �The CDJs/turntables/laptops are broken� Another rainbow excuse is to blame it all on technology, because everyone has experienced a computer crash, a skipping CD or a faulty wire at one time or another. The great thing about today�s modern DJ booth is that there�s so much that can go wrong. In the old days, it would have been difficult to use the excuse �the turntables are broken� if you were banging out mixes on the 1210s as you were saying it. But with CDJs, turntables and laptops frequently all having a place in the booth, you can isolate one of them to the requester�s music eg: �Have you got any hip hop?� �Yes I do, but only on CDs and the CD players are broken.� 6. �Sure, I�ll put it on in just a minute.� This little beauty was by far the most popular excuse, and it is a favourite for many DJs including Jesse Rose and Paul Woolford (both have told us they use this one a lot). It�s short and sweet, and is likely to lead to very little confrontation. By immediately submitting to the requester it will fill them with a sense of power and satisfaction. They will walk away feeling like they run the club, and might even buy you a drink (which is a bonus). They�ll go back to their table or to their friends happy and content, and most likely they�ll forget they ever asked you for it. But on the rare occasion they realize you haven�t actually played what they asked for yet, you can just respond, �it�s coming up next� and then keep going as you are. DJ Q-Burns told us that he�s a big fan of this excuse too, and favours the more direct �Coming right up!� line. �Nine times out of 10 that�s the last I hear of them,� he said. Another, perhaps safer option, is to have a girlfriend, friend of retarded monkey take the requests enthusiastically for you thereby rendering you all but innocent (Thanks jessetelluss!). 7. �I�ll play whatever you want, if you pay me $100/$50/however much they�ll give you.� Requests tend to come most when the dancefloor isn�t busy, as club pretenders like to exercise control over their environment when they haven�t got anything better to do. But if the club really is lame, and your deep and dirty mix isn�t being appreciated in the slightest then why not take the money and run? Every DJ should carry with them a mix CD of commercial hip hop and pop, so when the whiner requests you to play that type of music, you can demand $100 (after all they view you as a jukebox already) and then slap on the mix CD. Then you can either fake your DJing for the rest of the night, or even better, just leave the club. By leaving you�ll be silently sending a signal to the whiner that if they want shit music, they might as well just plug in their iPods. 8. Fein injury or illness Basil from the 1970s British comedy Fawlty Towers used this trick a lot to escape all sorts of uncomfortable situations. The idea is to fake an injury that�s so concerning that the requester forgets all about the music and worries about you instead. Fainting is a good one, puking is better. No one likes seeing somebody puke, and the smell should hopefully discourage anybody else from coming near the booth again. If you�re really desperate you could pretend that you have cancer and only found out about it today (*sniff). No one likes to talk about cancer. 9. �What was that? What was that?� (Twitterati�s favourite) Nightclubs are loud environments and DJs are likely going deaf, so use these two facts to your advantage and pretend you can�t hear a damn word the complainer is saying. If you keep shouting �What? Sorry. Can�t hear you!� to everything they say, eventually they will leave you alone. It might take 15 minutes, it might take half an hour, but in the end guaranteed, they will walk away. 10. �Do you know who I am? I�m Steve Angello. The Steve Angello/Paris Hilton incident pricked up the ears of the entire tacky celeb world, so the story has traveled rather far. Hilton�s publicity machine did a good job of portraying the Swedish House Mafia man as an ogre who wouldn�t hesitate to glass a small child in the face for looking at him, but still very few people outside of the dance music scene know what he looks like. So you could actually be him, and that should probably be enough to scare most wannabes away from the booth.

SOURCE

# 5 Reminded me of this:

http://www.truveo.com/Dave-Chapelle...y/id/1538782153

Hahaha #8

"Hey man, play some hip-hop!"
"OK I have some com*BLARFFF*"

when i used to dj along time ago , it wasn't so much the requests that bothered me in that I enjoyed the challenge of fitting in something you hadn't intended. What i hated more than anything were people taking up space in the dj booth. I would be much happier if they just wrote it down and left it in a "suggestion box" with their bra and waist size.

#11

"Fuck you."

#12

"how the hell did u get up here? SECURITY!!!"

http://www.canyouplaythatonesong.com/

some hilarious ones in here

13 - "only if you suck my dick"

and if he said yes ?

I'll usually get something like this:

Them: Can you play some Benni Ben -
Me: No, I fucking hate his music, and it doesn't fit with the genre I'm playing.
Them: Oh common, he's so good!
Me: No, he's not. *Puts headphones back on and resumes mixing*

5 out of 6 times I'll get a request for Benassi. I even had a guy tell me that he had a CD with a "hard to find" new Benassi track in high quality. The track was Get Loose, which not only was over 3 months old, but also was available for free from Beatport during their DEMF promotion.

despite how annoying it is

you should always be nice. If they think you are a dick, they will tell everyone they know and being a dick means you are a bad dj. Skill doesn't have anything to do with it.

The best strategy is to have absolutely nobody in your booth. The second you let one person, another comes and you will just get more people.

creating distance is good because it makes you more unaccessible which has this mysterious thing that make people think you are more important than you actually are. But if you say anything remotely mean, well just make sure you have a big enough following that a few dumb retards won't change things. You still have nothing to gain tho.

If anything , you should just take that opportunity to give them a flyer for the show or sell a cd. Be nice or just don't bother. Smile and act stupid.

Nice idea, but a lot of those are fairly naive tbh

1 is often countered with (if you are actually the warm up) "there's no one here yet so it won't matter if you play it"

2 usually gets "play it again then!"

3 can work (I also sometimes resort to "they'd play that in the other room") but

4 rarely works, they pipe up with "I'm the customer" or bollocks to that effect

5, along with just saying you haven't got it, usually results in "what have you got?" or "can I look through your collection?"

6 is definitely the most effective, until they start telling you that you have to play it next for some far fetched reason, or keep asking "how soon?", then they'll either get angry if you say too long, or come back a few tracks later and complain that you haven't played it

7 rarely results in them actually paying you, unfortunately and usually means you have to follow it up with another excuse

8 can be dangerous if you've only got 20 seconds left of the current track

9 is often a cue for them to get out their phone and write you a little message

10 only works if they've heard of Steve Angello... in fact the punters at most clubs probably wouldn't be stopped from trying to get their request played if you managed to persuade them you were the f***ing Pope.

how about pretending to speak a made up language?

I usually ask if they've seen the flier that says in big bold letters :: HOUSE, ELECTRO ,PROGRESSIVE ::

..and follow up with a "can you read?"

"It's my girlfriend's birthday and she gets violent when she hears Lil' Wayne."

Good point actually, when people say

"Can you play it because it's my birthday"

a good response can be

"It's my birthday too but I've gotta play this shit to cunts like you"

i'm usually down with the not letting anyone in the booth, otherwise when i'm doing top 40, i'll just have a sheet of paper out along with a pen, does wonders, you get phone numbers that way too

"If I play your request, I have to play everyone else's requests, too, and that's not very fair, is it?"

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