More than just the beat
DJing envelopes the lives of its practitioners.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
It’s 4 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon, and Chuck Prichard is already working, almost seven hours before he will morph into DJ Chucky P and man the turntables at Cajun’s Wharf.
Although he won’t start until 10:45 p.m., he’s preparing for the night ahead, as Cajun’s employees filter in and Little Rock cover band Big Stack warms up in the background. Over the next several hours, Chucky P will check his equipment, perform a soundcheck and recheck his already prepared setlists for his two sets.
In the world of DJing, preparation creates perfection, especially when it comes to the music that keeps the crowd swaying.
Michael Shane appreciates Chucky P’s level of planning. As the music manager and resident DJ at Little Rock’s distinguished Discovery Night Club, Shane often is at Discovery by 9 p.m. on Saturdays. Crowds usually don’t start developing until around 11 p.m., with the dance club swinging into full gear after midnight. But Shane wants to be prepared before focusing on his turntables in the club’s Discotech.
“I’m the guy who always thinks that things will go wrong,” he said. “There’s a lot of things behind the scene that people don’t see. You have light machines, and the sound, and the fog machines. And even though they all worked last weekend and haven’t been used since then, there are always things that can go wrong.”
While both Chucky P and Shane work full-time day jobs, their passion is behind the 1’s and 2’s, keeping the dance floor moving. It’s a hectic life — juggling daytime careers and personal lives with nighttime obsessions.
“It’s tough at times to have a personal life,” said DJ Debbi T, a local DJ legend who has DJed at countless Little Rock clubs and is now general manager at 2720 Nightclub in Hot Springs. “As a DJ, if you’re always booked, you’re never at home, always on the road and spinning in a club somewhere.”
Besides the challenges of balancing a personal life with the club life, DJs also have to balance diverse musical tastes among their clientele and be on guard at all times to protect their equipment from drunk or overzealous patrons.
“If you’re standing too close to my gear and bumping into me, you won’t be for very long,” said Greg Mobley, a local DJ known by the name G-Force. “I’m always keeping an eye out for drinks getting too close to my gear. Liquid and electronics don’t mix.”
G-Force has been DJing for the past 10 years on a semi-regular basis and the last three on a regular basis at clubs such as Deep, Cajun’s, Discovery and 2720. At 37, he was first introduced to DJing during the ’80s hip-hop breakdancing craze, purchasing a friend’s brother’s mixer, turntable and record collection as the sound hooked him.
Through G-Force’s DJ journey his music collection has grown. He has about 5,000 CDs, around 3,000 LPs, 1,500 45s and even cassettes.
“DJing can go deep in all kinds of directions: record collecting, the gear that’s used, making your own mixes, production, DJ battling [and] club DJing,” G-Force said. “I’ve touched a little on all these areas over the years.”
But for a diverse DJ such as G-Force, who might play an art opening one night and a hip-hop show the next, an expansive music collection is a needed tool.
“I’m known for being diverse and like having different types of gigs to play,” he said. “I play to the audience and try to give them what they want but also give them what they’re not expecting. Depending on where I’m at, I may sound completely different. A set I play at an art opening wouldn’t sound anything like a set at Discovery, and Discovery doesn’t sound like Cajun’s. The age of patrons has a lot to do with what works and what doesn’t.”
While they are sometimes misconstrued as the phantoms behind the turntables, DJs are not the hidden beat masters. They are constantly taking the temperature of the crowd, searching for the right flow to light the dance floor on fire.
“I watch the crowd and just keep an eye on the crowd,” DJ Justin Sane said. “It’s a whole test. It’s hit and miss sometimes. You can’t get frustrated. You can’t give up. You just have to figure out what to do; you have to tweak it a little.”
At 25, Sane is one of the younger DJs on the Little Rock scene, but his talents behind the turntables already have earned him some high profile gigs, including being a resident Discotech DJ at Discovery. He started off DJing at parties in eighth grade while friends listened to Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots, and Sane is quick to dispute the misconception that DJs have it easy in the booth.
“People look at DJing as an easy job,” he said. “It’s not. We’re up there performing. We have just as hard a time as other musicians. It’s a great job. But it’s work as well.”
Just like other musicians, DJs create their own music, building tunes from a simple beat or bass hook, but they also are remodelers — mixing, remixing and chopping music in their search for the elusive beat.
For Chucky P, remixing is a job requirement considering he sometimes DJs at country music clubs, private parties and weddings, where musical tastes are as various as the partygoers.
“People think DJs are just some guy who went to Wal-Mart or LimeWire, and downloaded the music and he’s just playing it,” Chucky P said. “But that’s not the case. I look for music continuously. I go and find the music I want to play, and I will remix it to get what I want out of it. That’s what being a DJ is.”
Technology has made it easier on DJs, though. Many DJs today — including Chucky P, G-Force, Sane and Debbi T — use the New Zealand created Serato Scratch Live software program on their laptops. It allows them to play and distort digital files using turntables.
And as technology has changed DJing, the local electronic music scene has transformed as well. The State Fairgrounds’ Hall of Industry was home to near monthly raves in the late ’90s and early ’00s, attracting crowds from Arkansas and surrounding states. The more successful raves could draw up to 5,000 people, with dancers partaking in the pulsing electronic music and oscillating lights.
That scene all but disappeared following a couple of high-profile incidents, including the death of a 17-year-old in August 2001 at a warehouse rave. As suddenly as the rave scene ushered electronic music to the brink of the mainstream in the late ’90s, the music had retreated to the clubs by 2002.
“The DJ culture had to go through a change with the end of rave,” Sane said. “People who discovered rave in the warehouses had to get comfortable with the club culture.
“Electronic music is underground music. It’s been like that since the late ’80s. It had its commercial successes, but dance music is always going to remain underground music.”
While it’s underground, the electronic music scene in Little Rock is not out of sight. Chucky P has started playing along with cover bands such as The Gettys and Tragikly White, while G-Force is a constant turntable influence at many hip-hop shows. While the DJ community has embraced other Little Rock music genres, the local DJ culture is tight.
“I know a bunch of DJs in Little Rock and I’m close with quite a few of them,” G-Force said. “I think the community here looks out for each other like a family. In general, I think DJs are more competitive with themselves rather than others. Everybody wants to be the best DJ they can be. There’s plenty of work for all of us, and we all seem to have different goals.”
In the end, it’s the search for the music, with its pulsating rhythms, hypnotic beats, grooving bass lines and pulsing beeps and blips, that keeps local DJs going.
“DJing is hard,” Shane said. “The club life is very taxing on you mentally and physically. You do it because you love it. You don’t make that much money.
“Ultimately, it’s all about seeing people dance to what you do.”
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