A Quote by John Digweed
I've always strived to find those records that people don't know, but they actually go "Wow, what is this?" - and they go crazy to it. To me, that's more rewarding as a DJ, and that's what I always thought a DJ was supposed to do: it's about educating people. Now there seems to be a commercial edge to stuff and people are reacting to stuff they've heard on the radio all day long: to me, that's not what youth culture should be reacting to.
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Traditionally, with a DJ set, you just go hear DJ that has a good reputation and let the DJ take you somewhere. It was up to the DJ what he wanted to play. Typically in dance music, people didn't know most of the songs a DJ played.
Oddly I've been DJ-ing for many years, actually, but not many people know about it because if you go and DJ in a club and you've got 2000 people in there, then obviously about 2000 people know that you're a DJ.
I started in '88 to play House music, it was a huge revolution for me. I went to London and I saw a DJ on stage and that was crazy at the time. I was one of the really respected and famous DJs in Paris, but they would never show me. I was hidden. A DJ on stage and people dancing and facing the DJ, looking at him? I was like 'wow!'
The DJ still has the relationship with the people, I believe. I don't know to call the DJ 'the ambassadors' or what, but we still are connecting the dots, getting the good stuff and passing it on to the people. DJs still have relevance, even with the technology that elevates the DJ beyond being a selector.
I'm just a man. I think people are reacting to something else when they see me. They're not reacting to me, Eddie Murphy. They don't even know me. It's just luck and the God in me they're reacting to.
It's tough when you're an artist because you get to go around the world and make a lot of friends, but guess what? One day, all these people that you love are going to die, from DJ Mehdi to DJ Dusk to J Dilla to Austin Peralta to DJ Rashad.
I've been a DJ since I was about 13, and I started out as a hip-hop DJ. So I was always playing records that would just get people going. I was just doing parties and high school dances and whatever, and then, progressively, I started making my own music, writing little songs here and there, but it was never anything crazy.
Now it's like, I'll go to Starbucks, or I'll go to the mall or anywhere, and lots of people will recognize me, and I'm like, 'Oh, wow, this is actually a thing now; this is happening.' It can get a little bit crazy at times, but I love meeting people, and people shouldn't feel scared to come up to me and say 'Hi.'
I've always been fascinated with radio and broadcasting. I did fake radio shows as a kid, where I was a DJ and stuff like that.
There was a time when people would go search out underground records. Now, underground means free, and people don't really care for it. So now artists tend to go more pop and look for the radio. You know, the radio never wanted you to speak about anything, so the music is kinda influenced by the hands of the radio which wants to homogenize it and dilute it and sanitize it. And for the most part, nobody's takin' the time to seek out the cats that are still tryin' to talk, so they have a difficult time being heard, like Chuck D said.
People who describe culture and values and how people behave - I've heard people refer to it as 'the soft stuff'-they often underestimate its importance. The soft stuff actually is the hard stuff.
You get people who rap about stuff that they don't do all day long. Half those guys, you hear them on the radio, and then you meet them, and you're like, 'Wow. They're so sweet.'
Right now, I don't particularly take different CDs or vinyl - I have my CD wallet that I take everywhere I go; there are different things in there that cater to different kinds of times - but if there's a special DJ thing coming up, I might go through my records and pick out this special selection. It's one the things that means you're improving as a DJ the more you do it, understanding what's going to go down well in a specific place.
I was doing a late-night round as a milkman in 1978 when I heard a radio DJ announce that he was leaving. I marched straight to the radio station and told them I could do better. For some reason, they gave me a go.
I'd heard a lot of Motown and Stax when I was a kid, but the more well-known end of it. On Jam tours, we had a DJ called Ady Croasdell who ran a '60s club. He turned me on to underground stuff and what people call northern soul. It just blew my mind.
Club culture is always going to be a reflection of youth culture, but I think we're maybe moving into a time when the club is a place where older people can go, too. And it's a place people go to connect to themselves, it's not always about the party. It's also about letting off steam and expressing yourself and connecting to other people.
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