I only have heard of two, one has been in a plane crash and one in a train wreck.
What makes a DJ a star? The ones I’ve seen play other peoples music and talk between tracks. Saying stuff likes “give it up for Mercedes” and “be sure to tip your waitress” What elevates Sam and AM to celeb status?
They do it well?
They date celebrities and work at their parties?
Modern DJs don’t just play records. They interleave songs in real time, create some of their own music, etc. In many clubs they are the attraction because they do it so well. I’ll let others who know about the subject take it from here.
DJs have always been “celebrities,” even back in the Dark Ages when the term applied to radio announcers. Anybody “of an age” knew Wolfman Jack, for example. If you lived in Southern California and had a gram of music in your soul, you knew Jim Ladd, Paraquat Kelly, Denise Westwood, Cynthia Fox and the like. Djs have always been a part of the Tribal Drum, wherever it manifested itself.
It isn’t about choosing music although that is a part of it. The type of DJ you are talking about can use two or more record players and manipulate the tracks to mix them and scratch them together. That isn’t an easy skill. They also need to have a good sense of the crowd and great announcing skills.
Moving to Cafe Society from GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Many, if not most, of the more famous DJs these days have radio shows. Almost every major radio station has a star DJ that may also do parties and put out albums. Most of them are not known for their turntable skills, but rather their on-air personalities, and the connections they have. Most DJs in this category are rap/ hip-hop DJs like Funkmaster Flex, DJ Clue, DJ Khalid, etc. Others like Mark and Samantha Ronson, or DJ AM, made their name doing music production and parties, and playing a wider variety of music. Most exclusively club/party DJs are not famous.
Many of the more popular trance DJ’s are huge celebrities within their genres.
Simple. If you prefer recorded music to live, and most of us do nowadays, the sense of live, scenester celebrity has to fall somewhere, and it falls on the DJ.
What kind of DJ are you talking about? The term referred to several different and distinct types of people (although they all work with music).
Radio DJs can, of course, be celebrities - I can’t figure out why you’d think otherwise. They’re personalities, not just sentient jukeboxes who play the music and shut up. They talk between (and sometimes over) the songs, sometimes just introducing them, or saying what they just played, but frequently doing more.
Not all are Big Names, and the names are getting smaller and smaller, as the market fragments, so we’re probably not getting a new Wolfman Jack or Casey Kasem any time soon, but you can still get a DJ who’s a small-scale celeb in his or her market.
Then, of course, there are the DJs who actually make the music - some of them can be internationally known, even today.
Then there’s the guys who do nothing but play records at clubs or parties…they’re the ones you wouldn’t say were celebrities.
I saw Samantha Ronson and DJ AM both do DJ sets at Lollapalooza this year. I don’t remember much of DJ AM’s set, but Ronson basically just played a bunch of Daft Punk songs for 20 minutes or so.
Heiresses are celebrities now?
Real estate moguls are celebrities now?
It’s whoever the public is captivated by. Rave parties got really popular in the US in the late '90s and DJs were a dime a dozen - the best ones acheived some mainstream success for awhile; Moby, Paul Oakenfold, Fatboy Slim. Some got famous by dating famous people; Samantha Ronson, DJ AM.
It is a bit disappointing, in that the celebrities of the old days were mostly scientists and benevolent religious and political leaders. Now it’s whoever looks good, dates the right people, makes the cover of the right magazine, etc.
Larry Levan
Two club DJs walk out of a bar. One says “Want to go see a movie?” The other one says “I dunno, who’s the projectionist?”
And in the case of Ladd, Westwood and Fox, you still do. On 95.5 KLOS. I’m not sure there has ever been a better DJ, in all senses of the word, than Jim Ladd.
I would even throw Uncle Joe Benson in there for good measure, having KNAC and KLOS under his belt.
For club DJs (rather than radio hosts) it’s not just a case of playing one track after another, it’s which tracks you play and when you play them.
The best DJs will play tracks - their own and others - in a way that makes you feel you never heard them before. They will think about tempo, and key, and tone; they will read the crowd and play 'em like a fisherman with one on the line.
If a projectionist showed a bunch of Bugs Bunny cartoons before a screening of Schindler’s List it would affect the way you view the film. If a DJ plays a 110bpm ambient track and then a 170bpm d&b monster you get the same effect.
In the early 1990s acid house DJs would drop in sample after sample into tunes, changing their vibe… not only needs great musical awareness but mad skillz on the decks to find, cue and drop the sample in the right place.
So there was a reason the best DJs achieved fame… they gave the crowd what they wanted. Sure, you could put on “In the Mix 2006” but it doesn’t allow any flexibility if the crowd are in a particular mood.
DJs are having pretty mainstream success now. Tiësto sells out stadia in Europe and fills at least on Arena in the U.S.