We’ve all had them, that one person who won’t leave you alone when you are DJing. Whatever it is, none of us like to be bothered when we’re at work. DJing requires a lot of focus and concentration; it’s a lot of work and sometimes people just don’t get it. It can be difficult to keep your cool.
The most recent example of this that I can recall is some guy telling me that he was also a DJ and that I wasn’t mixing properly. I was spinning some hip-hop at the start of my set and wasn’t blending the tracks, just dropping them in. He wasn’t happy and I told him that I would be doing blends a bit later on when I switch genre. He walked off and came back about five minutes later to repeat his nonsense.
In this case, the first thing I thought to do was to ask him to show me how to do it then. He jumped at the opportunity and I let him cue up the next track. The only thing I was nervous about now was if he scratched my records as I knew full well what would come next. He brought in the next track and completely trainwrecked it.
Thinking back, it was a bit of a daft thing to do and I probably wouldn’t do it again, but it was about half an hour into my gig at the residency I had. The bar staff found it amusing anyway and I just carried on as usual after he gave up. To be fair to the guy, he did stop bothering me and stayed for a good few hours, even complimenting my mixing later on.
So, over to you: What’s the worst experience you have had with a punter while DJing? How did you deal with it? How often do you have to deal with these kind of situations?
Christian Yates
