When I Used To Be Cool
March 20th, 2006 by Mark Rittman
Most people who read this blog, or know me through work or through the user groups, probably place me as your stereotypical techy. I’m the one who takes a Tom Kyte book on holiday, whips out the laptop on train journeys to try out his new linux VMWare Oracle install, and has a phone with an RSS reader so that he can read Orablogs and the latest OTN Forum postings. Yet once upon a time I was rather cool actually (although not quite cool enough to wear a lilac suit) and in fact I was actually a hip-hop and house music DJ in Brighton.
I started off DJing at parties and club nights in Brighton back in the late 80’s, typically playing hip-hop, house and dance music sets with a mate of mine down at the Art College. Later on, whilst I was at Brighton University, I used to DJ at all the Student Union events and I ran a club night called the "Happy Monday" (this was now 1990/1991, middle of "Madchester") where we played balearic beats, italian house, indie dance such as the Mondays, Stone Roses, Charlatans and the Beloved plus the old student faves such as New Order and The Smiths. Funny enough, when I left University I had the chance of taking up DJing full time or starting on the graduate scheme for the Woolwich Building Society (guess which Rock n’ Roll choice I took) but I carried on DJing at pubs and parties during the early 90’s, pretty much every weekend until I moved up to head office.
Probably the peak of my DJing career was holding down a Saturday night residency one summer at the Gloucester, our local Student Union-run club in the centre of town, and DJing at clubs such as the Zap Club, the Escape Club and other ones in town that have now closed down or changed hands. Whilst at the start I was your typical student DJ, by the end I was beatmixing and working the crowd like the best of them (although I never used to talk over the records, too cool for that) and used to get quite a good turnout. I got rid of my decks around 2000 but occaisionally put together a mix tape using software such as Traktor DJ Studio. Funny enough, we did a "comeback gig" at a local pub where we did all the music and mixing using a laptop on the bar and some mixing software, but in the end it looked like two blokes from the brewery doing an audit and we haven’t done it since - I think part of the appeal of having DJs in a pub is the spectacle of someone mixing vinyl, using a laptop or iPods isn’t quite the same.
In a way I’ve often thought about the parallels between DJing and running a blog/speaking at user group events. Blogging is like broadcasting, but with the immediate feedback that I used to get when playing a track and getting a good or bad response (bear with me here…) Speaking at a user group event, where you walk up to the front of the room, spend the best part of an hour with the audience all looking at you and expecting you to entertain them; even down to one mistake (playing the wrong record / knocking the needle off the record vs. your demo crashing, forgetting what you were going to say) being the difference between a good "set" and one that you look back at as being a disaster. Although of course as a DJ you get to have a drink before you go on which of course is not all that advisable if you’re going to present at Open World, and you get girls hanging around the DJ booth which you don’t tend to get whilst you’re doing a presentation on Oracle OLAP Best Practices.
Anyway, that’s enough of the personal anecdotes, back to regular Oracle stuff tomorrow.
March 20th, 2006 at 9:41 pm
Mid-life crisis, Mark?
It’s funny, I used to muck about a bit on decks too, but my only proper job in a club was doing the lights. It was better than it sounds - lasers, controllable intelligent lighting blah, blah … On a Saturday night I used to get to do a little light show that everyone watched. The DJs got all the girls, though 
Yeah, computers - definitely the new rock and roll. (Not) One thing Hotsos has that DJ-ing doesn’t though … people laughing at your jokes.
March 20th, 2006 at 10:03 pm
No Doug, I’m saving the mid-life crisis for later on, when I fancy a sportscar or a part-share in a yacht. I was just listening to a couple of old mix tapes and it got me reminicing. And then I found some old fliers for nights I DJed at…
Good comment about jokes at presentations. Now there’s another blog posting I could do - how I always end up making at least one innappropriate joke during each presentation I give, more down to nervousness more than a dark sense of humour (although that helps)
March 20th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
Dear me.
Sounds like someone has consumed one too many and is taking a trip down memory lane!
The only comment I may disagree with is that presenting at an oracle event doesn’t attract the females. Mogens always seems to have a crowd of women around him.
Maybe you should start wearing a kilt.
March 20th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
Stone Roses, Charlatans, New Order and The Smiths.
For someone from Brighton, you have decent taste in music.
Are you the bald chap married to Zoe Ball ?
March 21st, 2006 at 12:43 am
But I though reading Tom Kyte on holiday and reading Oracle Documentation while traveling was cool. That what I do. Does that mean I’m not cool?
March 21st, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Well, that certainly came from nowhere! Seeing as you and Doug now mention it, then here we go…
The following clubs should ring some bells with you Mark: Back to Basics, Hacienda and Nation…
regards
I used to do a few house parties on the old 1210’s myself around 91-93 - no residency on my CV though even though my beat matching was spot on
So when did you last buy a copy of mixmag then
Jari
March 21st, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Mark, I have a similar story. I got into computing after being a House DJ for 5 years or so. I ran a site on the web called djtraxx.com that had sound files on it. I still have 2000 records and my 1200s, but they’ve been in cold storage for a long time
There’s even some evidence of my DJ days on the net still:
http://djsets.hyperreal.org/92.html
http://djsets.hyperreal.org/97.html
Keep on blogging!!!
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:07 am
“…you get girls hanging around the DJ booth which you don’t tend to get whilst you’re doing a presentation on Oracle OLAP Best Practices”
You must be doing it wrong Mark. Oracle OLAP really is very very cool
May 10th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
[…] course all this “mashup” talk reminds me of when I used to be a DJ, but it’s no doubt a very interesting idea and one that, as Dan said in his email, links in […]
May 10th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Ahhhh, I remember when I used to be a DJ. Back in the mid 90’s, we were the first ones to bring DJ’s Sasha and Digweed to the US as well as Paul van Dyk. Back then, they were no-names.
May 10th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
@Tom
Paul Van Dyk - I remember “For an Angel” being the track I played at midnight on New Year’s Eve back in ‘99, I think? Nothing beat that bit in the middle where the track stops, the synth picks out the tune … then it all comes back in at the end. Superb.
May 10th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Yes, For an Angel. His 1998 Remix that was originally produced by Binary FInary was classic. I also loved his Cream remix that was originally produced by Blank and Jones. We brought him into Simons in Gainesville, FL way back in the day. Interestlingy, Sasha, whom I met via Rabbit in the Moon, moved to St. Petersburg in the Tampa area and then Sarasota, where I currently am now. I actually ended up fixing his turntables that he and John Digweed created Northern Exposure on. They had beer encrusted on the platters preventing them from turning. They just needed a cleaning but I added new pitch controls, tonearms, monster cables, and liquid blue LCD’s instead of the Red and Green Ones. Most people now use ableton live and final scratch.
May 15th, 2008 at 12:09 am
I did some DJ’ing in college, but it was the ’70s and the music people wanted to hear sucked and house hadn’t been invented yet. I did get to be the sound man for a multimedia comedy show related to http://www.firesigntheatre.com/papoon/(see http://www.firezine.net/faq/falafal/falafal27.html search for The 1976 Natural Surrealist Party Presidential Campoon - A History). Hence the Party references in my usenet headers when I was running linux at home, long ago.