Sex And Drugs and Aural Violence

I used to do something first thing when I woke up.

Before I’d even had a coffee let alone anything stronger, I’d work out what music was the absolute last thing in the World that I wished to hear right then … and then subject myself to precisely that, on the grounds that it would seriously alter my frame of mind and it would be fascinating to see just how angry I’d get as a result … or if, interestingly, it had a different effect for once — mostly though, it just made me extremely irritable and aggressive.

In the same vein, I may have to give up smoking more often — long enough for the withdrawal symptoms to leave me on that knife-edge of ‘all but homicidally in need of a drag on a fag’ but not so long that I get over them.

Then I’ll chain-smoke myself back into the same state of addiction I was before I gave up.

And repeat the process from the top.

It’ll have a wond’rous effect on my mood and frame of mind … leaving me in that giddy state of being ready to murder someone at the drop of a … well … anything will do, really … just give me an excuse … PLEASE — seriously … I am so obviously spoiling for a fight … I’ve been pushing you … and pushing you … and pushing you … and you still won’t throw a punch … are you taking the piss or what!?!

With any luck, not long afterwards, I’ll be going to prison and they’ll be going to a funeral.

It won’t happen though — whenever I’m in that frame of mind even skinheads have more sense than to take me on … not even three to one.

<sigh>

I can never get a fight when I really want one.

I guess I’ll just have to make do with taking it out on the dancefloor.

Whenever promoters ask me if I have any idea what I might do at their party this time, I look them in the eye and, in all seriousness, say “hurt them … what else?”

People do seem to enjoy it though … so I guess all’s well that ends well.

After all, when I’m on the dancefloor myself …

“There you are, locked into the groove … pounding away with your stomp on … your every move a strictly controlled martial art blow or block … your body all but rigid with the tension of containing them and keeping yourself from slaughtering everyone in the room in a dance of gleefully ferocious abandon that would appall the most twisted of the legions of Hell …

And the next thing you know … instead of driving you even harder towards the edge of the abyss over the edge of which you will jump, screaming and foaming at the mouth … there’s this airy fairy, wave your lighter in the air and reach for the lasers breakdown that goes on forever and kills the vibe deader than your grandparents’ sex life.

I hate fluffy shit. <sigh>”

Maybe I’m misinterpreting their question.

I mean … they know that’s what I’m gonna do — that is, after all, why they book me in the first place, I assume … that and the fact that the dancefloor seems to enjoy it.

So maybe they’re just enquiring about whether I know, in advance, how I’m gonna do it.

I’ve always worked on the basis that, whoever you are … whatever your tastes … whomever you may be going home with at the end of the evening ¹ … you ain’t going nowhere until I’ve fucked you on the dancefloor first — and you’re gonna be walking home like John Wayne.

“And we keep coming back to do it with a smile on our faces, secure in the knowledge that the music we play will spike their brains with laxatives, post pictures on the internet and leave them in a bathtub of ice, wondering what the hell has just happened.”

Yep … when I’m listening to new music, deciding what I might get and play at the next party/gig/event/wherever, that’s precisely what I’m looking for … music that will fuck the dancefloor up so badly that the next thing it knows is that it’s come to in the back room of some ropey old apartment, in a rough tenement block, in a dodgy part of town, married to a Swedish prostitute by the name of Helga, with four kids aged two to four and no recollection of the last three to five years never mind how it got there in the first place.

If it passes that muster, I’ll buy and play it … otherwise I keep looking.

But, no, I have no idea how I’ll be doing it at any given event — we’ll see on the night.

I know some DJs plan their sets in advance but I prefer to see what the dancefloor responds to at the time and see where I can take it … how much I can get away with and still not have them bottle me.

Of course, it does sometimes mean I find myself in some very strange places …

… like booked to play chillout, but having to respond to a dancefloor that, in the space of five minutes, goes from enquiring whether I’ve got any dubstep on me to informing me that someone told it I was gonna play dubstep … and ending up playing a psychotic mix of chillout, breaks, jungle, dubstep, d’n’b and fucked-up ‘it-said-it-was-prog house-on-the-tin-honest’ in the chillout room between 7am and 10am because people nagged me for it and I suddenly found myself backed into a corner with no appropriately chilled dubstep left, so … erm … alright … ah … oh, fuck it, you badgered me into it, so suck on that! Oh! … So, you like that, do you? … Alright then, try this for size!

Or following Kylie with obscure loungecore Nine Inch Nails remixes, mashing Marylin Manson into Pink Floyd for five minutes, Elvis over minimal techno, Fine young Cannibals into the Chilli Peppers, Madonna into the Monkees …

But, it’s all good fun … and I do like my bad-and-wrong filth-and-sleaze … and I couldn’t give it up, if my life depended on it.

So, I might as well accept the inevitable, enjoy the ride and hope others do too — seems to be working out so far.

Could still murder a cigarette right about now though. <sigh>

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¹ Man, woman, child, dog, cat, chimpanzee, whoever, whatever.