5 Things More DJs Should Do and 5 DJs that Don't Suck

So you wanna be a DJ? Well, join the club – it’s 2012 and basically every douchebag with an Ed Hardy shirt and MacBook already fancies himself a Professional Disk Jockey. These dudes are a dime a dozen, and yet somehow, more and more of them keep materializing: imagining a life filled with girls who are as hot as they are drunk, instant celebrity status, free drugs (that don’t even suck!) and never needing to get up before noon again.
I’m not knocking all DJs (in fact, I think a lot of DJs are amazing, talented, and shockingly totally professionally,) but these DJs have a skillset that most DJs do not.

What do the best DJs have in common, you ask?

1.) They can read the crowd – you aren’t playing in your frat house anymore, guys, you can’t just play it loud and turn on the fog machine to get the party going. Every night, every crowd, every club is different and the best DJs know this, and know how to cater to them.

2.) They don’t have an ego – ha, just kidding. They totally have an ego – their livelihood consists of standing in a box above a crowd and basically begging the crowd to pay attention to them, so yeah, they have an ego. However, their ego is not SO big that they are unwilling to play outside of their music genre. Yeah, we get it, you’re a Deep House DJ, but sometimes you really, really just have to play some hip-hop. I know it pains you, but if you wanna keep getting bookings, you have to be at least a little flexible (at least until you’re very well-established.)

3.) They actually make good transitions – listen, everyone in the room at one point has referred to themselves as the “DJ” because they made the iTunes playlist for a party. You, with the headphones in the DJ booth being paid to play music should understand that it’s not just a playlist, and you really have to nail the transitions.

4.) They pick the right songs – this is a no brainer. If you don’t have good taste, don’t become a DJ.

5.) They keep themselves under control – just because Steve Aoki makes a show of pouring vodka into neon-clad underage mouths does not mean you should be getting wasted in the DJ booth. Sure, it’s a club, and alcohol is everywhere (and maybe even free!) but just keep it in check: you’re working the party, not attending it. While you’re at it, do your very best to not: blow lines, molest girls, smoke anything at all, or expose yourself to the crowd; those are really more rules for life in general, but DJs seem to have a particularly hard time abiding by them at work.


Now that you know the rules (at least the basics,) here’s the Top 5 up and coming DJs in NYC – listen, learn, love:

Raffael De Luca

Kyle Rayner

Ricardo Lima

George Garcia

DJ Santa

Everybody's Irish This Weekend

St. Patrick's Day in New York City is nothing to be messed with: The NYC St. Patrick's Day Parade is the longest running in the world, having started in 1762. We may not be as rabid as Bostonians about our Irishness, but we know how to party, and Irish or not, on St. Patrick's Day we do it up right. Let's be honest, have St. Patrick's Cathedral. And there's no real competing with this:

Sure, Chicago dyes its river green, and maybe that's cool, but at the end of the day, the river will once again be an indistinct browngreyblue color, Chicagoans will still live in fucking Chicago.

So get out your green - ladies, don't pretend you don't have a suitably slutty Little Green Dress (bastard cousin of the LBD) already picked out, and come celebrate this weekend. Whether you're Irish or not, there's no harm in pretending for a day... except of course, to your liver.

SXSW - Work Hard, Play Hard

Today mark's the beginning of the 19th South By Southwest Interactive, down in Austin, Texas. If you're not familiar with South By Southwest - or as its attendees often call it SXSW or simply "south by" - it's an annual meeting of the minds of sort. Established tech companies, startups, gurus, and n00bs alike gather for 3 Texan days to schmooze, drink, network, and just maybe get that seed-round funding they need to get their Next Big Thing off the ground.

While SXSW is often billed as a boozy party for tech nerds (and don't get me wrong, it basically is,) it's also a testament to the changing American economy. After the first tech bubble burst in 2000, the tech industry has been, quite quickly, building itself back up. This growth comes not only with the rise of tech giants like Google and Facebook, but also with the many, many, many startups that are launched (and yes, often fail) every year.

While in some ways this new start-up culture represents a shift from the traditional American economy of established industries and their large companies being the primary job engine, in another way it actually is indicative of a shift back to the American tradition of entrepreneurship. Tech has, in a lot of ways, brought back meritocracy. Startup funding - while not exactly readily available - is still out there, and investors as a whole are more concerned with the soundness of financials than they are with the breeding of their proprietors. The best ideas are funded, and the best of the best win in the market.

So, while SXSW is definitively half about partying and half about working, its participants have earned a reason to celebrate. They're ushering in a new era for the American economy, our best hope for remaining the global leader.

Besides, what is America all about if it's not work hard, play hard?

Celebrate International Women's Day by Not Letting Limbaugh, Maher, or Obama Get Away with Their BS

Today, as you may have already known or may have figured out when you saw the Google doodle, is International Women’s Day. A day when we are meant to not only celebrate women (something I’m happy to do,) but also acknowledge some of the gender-based injustices women still face.

It is 2012, and women still earn 21% less on average, are still more likely to get passed over for a promotion, and are still, somehow publicly referred to as sluts and bitches and even cunts by well-respected political figures (all men, natch.) While today is probably not going to mark the day that income equality becomes a reality, it can be the day that we acknowledge and disavow ALL of nonsense that we hear thrown at women.

President Obama recently addressed the now infamous incident with Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke (a Georgetown Law student) a “slut” for -- gasp -- saying birth control was a good thing. Obama said that Limbaugh’s comments disturbed him as a father, and that he personally reached out to Fluke as a result.

Obama, calling Sandra Fluke

What Obama has not done, however, is disavow a single thing that his $1 million donor, Bill Maher, has publicly said about (mostly Republican) women -- most notably calling former Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, a “cunt.” Sure, the context was different (Limbaugh made his comment on a political radio show, Maher during a stand-up routine,) but the fact remains that both men are highly-influential, politically-oriented, public figures who used slurs against women.

It’s all well and good that Obama called out Limbaugh on his bullshit (and, in fact, Limbaugh has since apologized for it,) but for him to do so while ignoring one of his supporters’ sexism is just hypocritical.

So, Mr. President, either care about women’s rights or don’t, but please, spare us the political posturing. What Limbaugh said and what Maher said are equally disgusting. And for you to ignore your supporter’s comments and then hold a press conference about your opponent’s, brings you down to their level - if not a little lower.

Did You Miss Social Media Week? Don't Worry, Your Can Catch Up.

Social Media Week is just wrapping up now, and it's been quite the week. Thousands of conference goers have come together in 12 locations across the world to watch and participate in hundreds of panels. The whole affair is, well, rather social.

If you haven't been paying attention to Social Media Week, or don't happen to live in one of the host cities (Hamburg, Hong Kong, London, Miamia, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Tokyo, Toronto, and Washington DC,) don't worry, you can still watch and even participate. The majority of the events are simulcast on LiveStream, a live event streaming company that encourages its viewers to interact with one another and ask questions as they stream. If you can't watch it live, don't worry, LiveStream archives all of its footage, so you can watch it on your own time later (it's kind of like when you DVR The Walking Dead and watch it on Sunday when you're hungover.)

Regardless of what business you're in or what your interests are, there is going to be a huge amount of content that is valuable and relevant to you available to LiveStream from the week. Whether you're in marketing, work for blue chip company, have a small start-up, have an idea for a small start-up, work for Obama, or work for Mitt Romney, there are tons sessions that are either specifically catered to your area, or are universally valuable.

Social media is not only here to stay, but it is becoming more and more integrated into our lives and company's brands. A lot of really interesting things are happening in the space right now, and getting in on the groundfloor in a way that makes sense for you and your company with some of these new forms of social and sharing, will, likely in both the short- and the long-term provide a tremendous value-add.

So what are you waiting for? Stop just using social media and start really capitalizing on it.

Check out the sessions that are available for LiveStream at http://new.livestream.com/pages/smw

Giants win the SocialMedia Bowl

I'm going to assume you watched the game yesterday, so I'll spare you the play-by-play. Suffice it to say Tom Brady's a joke, and managed to ruin whatever chance the Patriots had of beating the mighty Giants. The game ended with a score of 21-17 (Giants winning, obviously,) and while there certainly were some pretty extraordinary moments during the game, the really remarkable thing about this year's Super Bowl was how integrated social media (particularly Twitter) was with every aspect of the game.

Nearly every commercial ended with a hashtag, during Madonna's performance Twitter had an average of 10,000 tweets every second for 5 minutes, and during the last three minutes of the game, Twitter broke its tweet-per-second record at over 12,000. What this shows us is that social media is living up to its hype: it is more integrated in our lives than ever, and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Not only are brands actively incorporating social media into more traditional mass media advertising, people are turning to social media to discuss events in real-time.

And therein lies one of the most unique aspects of social media: it's both top-down and bottom-up. Brands can interact with people, people with brands, and, of course, people can interact with each other. Never before have we had such a unique perspective into consumer behavior, and if there is any lesson to be learned from this year's Super Bowl (other than that the Patriots are a bunch of hacks,) it is that social media is here to stay, and, if you know what you're doing, it can be one of the most powerful aspects of your brand's marketing strategy. But be wary, if you don't know what you're doing, never has it been so easy for your customers to very publicly berate you for trying.

Lana Del Rey: Born to Flop

After months of anticipation, Lana Del Rey released her debut album "Born To Die" today. In July of last year, her first single 'Video Games' took the hipster world by storm overnight. And, just as quickly, as her popularity grew, hipsters and norms, started backlashing against her. People everywhere were calling Lana "overhyped," without taking a minute to reflect on the fact that they were the ones who had hyped her up to begin with.

For the past six months, we've been forced to listen to Del Rey's futuristic elevator music, almost always with the caveat that she's not THAT good. And, with her disastrous, off-key, ice robot performance at SNL earlier this year, you kind of have to think that maybe she isn't...



And, while the release of her first album was certainly highly anticipated in the music community, you get the feeling that more than anything people wanted to hear it just so they could hate on poor little Lana more.

Frankly, I find her music boring, but I WANT to like it. How awesome would it be if instead of seeing Lady Gaga's busted face everywhere, we got to see this: