A Life In Music

OK, for those of you who don't know - here is the deal: I LOVE MUSIC. Some might say I am obsessed with music. I have over 1500 CDs (although they are spread all over the world - Pa, Dublin, Madrid), a laptop with over 10,000 songs (50+ GBs), 4 iPods, and an external 300 GB hard drive that contains a lot of my CD albums in mp3 format.

With all of this music at my disposal and the fact that I think about music, listen to music, read about music and talk about music so much I decided just over 4 years ago after a trip to Ibiza to try and become a DJ.

It hasn't been easy.

I chose to do things digitally with DJ software on a laptop. I can't explain the nightmare it has been and the disasters that I have encountered trying to copy all my CDs onto a laptop but as you can see above I stuck with it.

But once I had some music on my computer, that's when things really got tough.

I quickly found out that in order to get a gig anywhere you need to have a CD. How the hell was I going to make a CD? I spent from Jun 2002 to Feb 2003 buying software, learning how to use it, choosing the tracks I wanted and then mixing & recording the CD (all on my laptop). I enlisted the help of a friend of mine with a Mac and started burning copy after copy of CDs.

Things got off to a great start when I took a copy of the CD to a DJ dude who worked in a record shop that I always went to in Dublin. He had quit the job 3 days before but his replacement had a look at the CD and loved the track listing. He gave it to a mate of his (also a DJ) on a Thurs, I got a phone call on Fri and had my first ever gig on Sun night! Could it really be this easy? Well the answer is no.

The gig was fun even though I was scared shitless. My mates came, my work colleagues came and Jennifer came. Everyone had a great time and loved the music. Two weeks later I was given the chance to play again. I shared the night with about 4 other guys and after my 60 min set the 2 dudes who organised the gig had a chat with me. They were pretty nice about things but basically said that I sucked because a) I didn't look like a DJ, b) I was using a computer, c) I didn't know how to mix, d) I looked like I was faking it & e) I didn't look like a DJ. This coming from 2 dudes who were trying really hard to present a different kind of night with a different vibe, which apparently only worked if you looked and played like everyone else in Dublin.

The next 3 months brought more gigs, more conversations like the one above, more frustration and more disappointment. But finally in July of 2003 I got my first gig in a bar called the Metropolitan. It went really well and over the next 2 months I played there every 2-3 Sundays until I was given the chance to play every week in October - my first residency!

It was great! I was having so much fun - I could play anything, I didn't have to mix or play "funky house" like everyone else and no one cared how I looked using a laptop. I played there every Sunday night for 8 months before switching to Thursday nights for an additional 3 months. But after a year things started to change: the promoter was fired, the owners didn't want to keep so many DJs and the managers started complaining about some of the stuff I was playing. Eventually, I left to move to Madrid and ALL the DJs in the bar have since been replaced by a computer and mp3 software. Pretty ironic huh? I mean, who is faking it now?

But I am now currently enjoying my second residency and the 2nd phase of my DJ career here in Madrid. I now play 2-3 Sat nights a month in a slightly famous cocktail bar named Bar Cock.

But the story behind THAT bar will be saved for another day...