The DJ Anti-Profile: How not to write a DJ bio

ell, I remember—back in the days when raves were promoted primarily by flyers printed on actual paper and distributed to record shops that had bricks-and-mortar storefronts you could go and visit—that a “DJ profile” used to just mean someone’s name and their affiliations to rave collectives…and, later, to record labels. Sure, those DJs that were big enough to have an agent probably already had a paragraph or two about them written down somewhere, but they circulated in a smaller, closed circuit of “professionals” behind the scenes. About 15 years later (for me, at least), even beginning DJs have a carefully-crafted “bio” to email to anyone, to bundle into their press kit, and to post on their blog, personal website, MySpace Music profile, Facebook fanpage, Soundcloud user page, Resident Advisor DJ page, and so on. The move of event promotion from paper flyers (where text space is expensive) to the internet (where space is cheap, but attention is hard to keep) has vastly expanded the amount of information we expect to have available for a DJ: a few well-targeted web searches about any particular DJ will provide you with a discography (including collaborations and remixes), DJ-charts (where a DJ lists his/her “top ten” records of the moment), several versions of the DJ’s biography, images of him/her, DJ-mixes/podcasts, videos of the DJ performing live, and—if s/he is doing well—a few interviews. These changed expectations mean that DJs launching their careers now are under enormous pressure to generate “media presence” at levels that DJs of the 80s and 90s never even imagined. In particular, the “biographic” aspect of the DJ profile has become an important element of career-building and marketing; and, like any other type of marketing, there are certain narratives (story lines, themes, events) that “sell” well.

In other words, there are clichés and standard formulas for writing a DJ profile, and

Sightings on the dancefloor

have a bunch of stuff I want to write about from last weekend—and I’m not even sure I’ll be able to get to all of it—but I wanted to post this note on here before it slips my mind and the affective impact of all of it wears off.

I suspect that I underestimate the extent of my readership. Every once in a while, I meet someone who has been forwarded one of my blog posts through a mutual friend (when I arrived in Berlin for example, nearly all of Bob & Donna’s friends had read at least some of my writing or heard about it). Every time that happens, there’s a brief moment of scary-fun disorientation, where the pleasant surprise of being deemed worthy of reading (and forwarding) collides with the realization that the ever-important “first impression” happened without you—that is, it happened with your text / performance / product instead of with you. It’s sort of like getting caught with your pants down, but with an exhibitionist twist: you kinda like it, but you just wish you had thought to wear more fashionable underwear.

So recently, I’ve had a whole slew of these experiences, including one last night that really surprised me.