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Late Night Tales
 
 
 
 
 
 

Certain professions have the added bonus of coming with loads of great anecdotes. If you’ve ever known anyone who’s worked in Accident and Emergency, you’ll realise that the job brings with it hours of stories about that time a guy was brought in with bite marks all over his bleeding member; or the chap who came in at four in the morning with a milk-bottle lodged up his bottom. Policemen have loads of great tales to tell, as do spies (though if they tell you, they’ll have to kill you afterwards). However, the profession that brings the best storytelling potential is the humble DJ.

I’ve been thinking for a while of collecting anecdotes from other DJs I know. For some reason, being a DJ inevitably throws up scores of funny, odd, and trouser-soilingly terrifying moments. We’re not talking about the innumerable times that morons come up and ask you to play Latino at a Drum and Bass convention. Or the times that some bone-head in a pair of sunglasses asks you to play something “more banging”; or to play a genre of music that has never and will never exist beyond the confines of their own imagination (have you ever asked a DJ to play ‘club’ music? Don’t do it again.) A recent exchange of this kind took place some weeks back. Him: “Can you play some house.” Me: “I am playing house.” Him: (thinks for a moment) “Tare, frate!”
These are all run of the mill experiences, like having to buy your own beer at a gig due to mean promoters (true) being having to sleep in a multi-storey car park because the promoter has fucked up the hotel booking (true) and being threatened with a beating if you don’t play some ‘Greek music’ (again, true). We’re talking about far more memorable occurrences. Like being forcefully thrown out of venues; like getting into fist-fights and having to run away, leaving your friend’s equipment behind (you still owe me that adaptor, Rusu and Flore).           
  Some of these stories are far too recent and painful for me to be able to tell without needing some intensive group therapy. I’d love to be able to tell you all about the person who forced me off the decks, and then refused to let me leave the venue by sitting on my record box, but to be honest, it’s all just too much within recent memory. You need time to recover, for things to die down. Which is why I can just about manage to tell you the details of one of the most terrifying DJ experiences I’ve lived through. It all took place about two years back, in a certain provincial Romanian city.            
Things started to go wrong when I called the owner to say that we’d arrived, and was told that he’d “lost the keys to the club”. If only he’d said “my cat ate them”, I might have been more inclined to believe him. I decided that this wasn’t a particularly auspicious start, and explained that I was prepared to go straight back home without payment. But no, five minutes later I was called back, and assured that the keys had been “found”. I was already suspicious.            
Meeting the owners, I realised I had good reason to be. One was helplessly drunk (at four in the afternoon) and had to go for ‘a little sleep’ as soon as we arrived; the other had track-marks all the way up her arms. They explained that they’d “forgotten” to promote the event. I was already ready to run away, and offered, once again, to cancel the gig. They insisted we stay.           
  A few hours later we were told that the gig was (again) cancelled, since they hadn’t got any turntables. “I just saw a girl arrive with two turntables,” I told them. “SHIT!” they exclaimed. Loudly. I’ve never seen anyone worse at lying, in my life, EVER. Again, I offered to go home, without payment. But no – in fact, we were told that if we even considered leaving, then “the mafia” would have to deal with us. This would have been comic, coming from a near-comatose alcoholic who was a terrible liar, but by this point I was getting scared.           
  I could fill in more details; about how I was so terrified to go back to his house to collect the money that I had to take my girlfriend with me (you took your girlfriend as a bodyguard? I know, I know. I was too scared to think straight); about how he casually mentioned that he “had a gun”; about how we were instructed to play until “the sun comes up”. The upshot of the story was that we ran out of the club, with the club owner in pursuit, at four in the morning, and didn’t stop running until we got to the train station.            
I’d love to tell you some more stories, but I’ve got to dash – I’m already late for my post-traumatic stress counselling session.