The Making of DJ Shizzle. A Scene.

Setting

Interviewer at a cafe terrace outside in Miami… Cam zooms in; Interviewer sits left, dj Shizzle on the right. Interviewer stirs coffee. We see and hear the ocean..seagulls cry. Shizzle has a drink with a straw and little umbrella. Interviewer is bored..DJ is too stupid to know what that is. We break in while the conversation already started .

So what do you do to promote yourself?

-Well, I eat sushi a lot.

You eat sushi to promote yourself?

-Yes.

How does that help?

-I tweet about it. You know…Twitter.

And that gets you bookings?

-Yes. I’ve seen a lot of DJ’s do it. So it clearly works. They are really famous.

Okay. So you are saying that they became famous by tweeting about Sushi?

-Well yes…, except for the older guys.

Why is that you think?

-Well you know…, they didn’t have twitter back then. So they probably became famous by  doing something else.

I don’t know…

So what do you think helped them to become famous DJ’s?

- (thinks)…I think they waved their arms a lot. You know…

Ah, you mean doing that Jesus Pose?

-Yeah! Exactly…

(small pause…dj lurks his straw)

-I heard he was really good.

Who was?

-That guy.

What guy?

-DJ Jesus. He was the guy that started it all.

Started it all? Started what?

-The Jesus pose of course! What else? Duh

O..kay… (interviewer, bewildered look, now leans back in chair)

(phone rings)

-Shizzle

-No…

-I just did!

-…yes

-…yes

-…really? Cool!

-Yeah

-Okay, I’ll call you back…

-Economy?

-Great! Thanks!

-Bye

(hangs up)

-Sorry about that. That was my agent.

Good news? you sounded excited.

-Yeah. Just got a booking.

Where?

- Japan man!

(genuinely surprised) Wow, that’s good. Are you popular there?

-My agency said that sushi tweet did the job. But I was smart about it.

Oh? What did you do?

- I threw in a tiger shrimp.

(silence, dj chews on his straw)

So you got booked in Japan because you tweeted about Sushi?

-A whole tour man. It was the shrimp man!

And you came up with that yourself? Or was it your agency’s idea?

-The tiger shrimp? That was all me! Well.., my agency said I should re-invent myself…but we didn’t know how.

And then you came up with the shrimp?

-tiger shrimp

The tiger shrimp

-Yeah man! You have to think big in this business. Osaka here I come!

(Pause)

But surely you don’t become a famous DJ by tweeting about sushi..I mean, even with a tiger shrimp thrown in.

-Its in the details. I thought about mentioning sake but it just didn’t feel right.

So you purposely tweeted about sushi to play in Japan?

-No..not really.

I ask that because of sushi being Japanese and all and (Shizzle cuts him off)

-No. Dj’s eat sushi everywhere. I actually aimed for Malta.

Malta? Why Malta?

-Because my girlfriend has never seen Malta before.  And I heard of a famous sushi chef at a hotel doing cool tricks…like ehm… catching eggs with his hat. You know..

(pause.. interviewer gets agitated)

But what about the music? And your skills? Surely clubs don’t just book you because of twitter and sushi? I mean, do you produce music?

-Yeah. I do music.

(sarcastic) Oh you do huh? And what do you do with it?

-Load it into my laptop. Then I plug it in… and play it.

And that’s it? So what music do you play?

- Well you know..this one (hums a tune), and then I mix it with this one (imitates beatbox) and man…

people go wild!

(Interviewer looks confused and annoyed)

Well Shizzle, thank you for this interview and good luck in Japan. (gets up from his chair)

-My pleasure. Oh! Wait! I didn’t tell you about my new mash up!

(sighs) Tell me…

- It’s just the artwork…(giggles) Picture this; It’s written in Japanese letters..you know? Not real Japanese but..,well you know. They look  like Japanese letters… And then it says:…

Wait, let me write it down. (grabs a napkin, writes and giggles maniacally)

Take Akuki

presents

Ubetu

I’m sorry but..

-Don’t you get it? Read it out loud!

Take a coo…kie…, presents…You..bet …you.

(small pause)…Right.

-Ain’t that the shizzniz!? (laughs hysterically)

Yeah Shizzle. Thanks for the interview. And ehm…good luck with your career…

-(Overly excited..shouting) You bet ya! I’m gonna be bigger than DJ Jesus! (Makes Jesus pose)

(interviewer walks away..over his shoulder we see Shizzle laughing maniacally in Jesus pose)

Fade out

Dance Music matures nicely. Oh wait..it’s Pop!

I was watching Jools Holland on the BBC just as Miike Snow was playing. I didn’t know who they were so I youtubed it by the lyrics they were singing. I say ‘they’ because  they’re a band. From Sweden. And their sound is firmly rooted in Electronic Dance Music and DJ culture

For a long time I’ve been complaining about the Dance Music scene still finding itself in a niche market. But what I didn’t see is that it slowly but surely became part of contemporary pop music. Bands like Miike Snow and even the now famous ones like Keane and Coldplay are all developing their music as expected from a ‘generation of clubbers’. It’s just easily integrated. It comes natural. It’s been part of their diet.

So when it comes naturally it’s all good I guess. There’s no reason to wait for the Tiesto’s or Armin’s becoming pop stars. They never will. It might appear that way but it’s altogether different.

Stepping out of what you know is mandatory. O yeah, you can still be successful, famous, a millionaire and even be happy with that. Bands like Sweden’s Miike Snow stepped off, broke out and kept the good bits from 24 years of Dance Music. After all, why be a prisoner of your own style?

Check out Miike Snow’s Black and Blue. They’re even better live. Go see them if you can.

My Origines Part 1

Watching the Synth Brittania documentaries on BBC4 today, put me in a nostalgic mood. Seeing all my heroes like Daniel Miller, Vince Clarke, Depeche Mode, OMD, Eurythmics and the Human League made me realize – again- the importance of those artists on me and the effect they’ve had on my career as a DJ/Producer.

I already was attracted by electronic music by the likes of Giorgio Moroder and Bobby Orlando, but these artists still used conventional drums and percussion, based on disco. Unlike most of my peers I wasn’t that interested in Kraftwerk though. To me it lacked that swing that I find so attractive. Even though I was way too young to enter a club or discotheque I longed for the dance factor. So when I heard Yazoo’s ‘Don’t Go’ for the first time I went berserk. From that moment on, I knew what I wanted to do.

That record and Divine’s ‘Step By Step’ , or ‘Native Love’ (By producer Bobby Orlando) hinted at the fact that I could actually produce music without learning a traditional instrument. So I bought a Casio VL-1. The rest is, as they say, history.

In 2003 I was offered to do a remix of Yazoo’s ‘Don’t Go’. It took me almost a year to actually finish that. Most time was spent thinking ‘I’m not worthy!’  This track couldn’t, no, shouldn’t be remixed. I came up with the solution to my problem, by creating a remix in a remix. When you listen to it you do hear those famous synth stabs. And Alison Moyet’s voice.

But the basis came from Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ which was produced by Giorgio Moroder and remixed by another hero of mine; Patrick Cowley. At the same time I wanted to keep the production basic, as it was in the ’80’s. I only used the Roland TR-808 drum sounds in an old fashioned ‘boom – clap’ style. (Further down the track you can also hear the sampled percussion by Divine’s ‘Native Love’). Basically the remix was meant to be a tribute to my fave Electronic Dance Music from that period in time.

When finally finished it took the label months to release it. They just didn’t get it. Neither did I by the way, so I didn’t blame them. In fact, I wasn’t all too happy about it either. Things changed however when it was heard in a club, loud, and  see the people react to it. In hindsight it could somewhat be seen as a frontrunner for what is now known as Minimal. That same year I did the lush production/remix of Girl Nobody’s ‘Cages’. And lush and rich productions where all the fashion. This was just too different. It soon changed and because it was released as a bootleg it is still very much sought after. It grew on me too.

Still, nothing beats the original. As with many originals. Even though I’m a remixer by profession, I still find remixes nothing but a commercial tool. It rarely adds anything substantial from an artistic point of view. But that’s a whole other topic. I’ll save that for later.

In the meantime, should you have never heard it, you will find the unreleased dub version here, along with other music and remixes.

Follow Your Bliss

Here is a quote by Dr. Joseph Campbell that I’ve always thought to be true, though I couldn’t state it as clearly as he could. I’ve lived by it almost my entire life. So, for what it’s worth…it just might be of interest to you too;

“We are having experiences all the time which may on occasion render some sense of this, a little intuition of where your bliss is. Grab it. No one can tell you what it is going to be.
You have to learn to recognize your own depth.All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as the result of invisible hands coming all the time-namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.
When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”

Just weeks before he died in 1986, Joseph Campbell was interviewed for a 6 hours TV series called ‘the Power of Myth’. The interview was taken at the ranch of George Lucas who, because he got so inspired by Campbell, created Star Wars based purely on mythology.

Do check out the videos whenever you have the chance

140 characters are just not enough!

After I stopped writing my columns for Dutch dance portal djscene.nl, I thought it would be a good idea to start a blog. I do miss writing and besides that, the Dutch language only goes so far and limits the number of people who are actually interested in my mind boggles.

Also, until my new website is finally up, this seems a good way to communicate. Another reason to start a blog is because on Twitter – which is my main communication platform nowadays – the 140 character limit is not always adequate in capturing my, at times, brilliant thoughts.

So what to expect from a DJ/ producer? Normally.. not much. The DJ outside his habitat is such a boring species that even biologist David Attenborough himself couldn’t make it slightly interesting. But in my case you just might find some quirky thoughts and opinions on things that matter to me personally ranging from Music (obviously) to Philosophy, Mythology, People, Boxing, Science, Love, Art, Travelling, Films  and Pro Wrestling. Let’s say my interests are… ehm… diverse.

I hope you’ll enjoy your stay here.. eventually.
Harry Lemon

Lemon8@twitter