Katie Barber // 4th Monday // 14:00-16:00
Phil Asher gave me three bits of advice when I started DJing at Inspiration Information.
1. Turn off all lights on the dance floor
2. Avoid playing anything from a compilation
3. Never play Jocelyn Brown’s “Somebody Else’s Guy”
And these three nuggets of wisdom have pretty much guided my DJing decisions ever since.
1. I’m not a fan of bright lighting, in any situation really, and definitely not on a dancefloor. No lights please, turn them off, take off those bright shiny lights in bars and restaurants too, and at home, I’m all about mood lighting, in fact, I’ve even got a bit of mood lighting in my car. I don’t know, maybe I’m a bit of a vampire, but I like the night over the day. It’s when more interesting things happen; it’s when I’m more aware and productive. As Linda Tequila Logan in Larry Young’s Fuel instructed us “flick that switch!”
2. I pretty much always try to buy the records I like in their original form. This might stretch to a reissue depending on how much I want it but can’t afford it. I think it’s important to understand a bit of context about a record, to know what the intention was for the artist and label, which also means I’ve bought the original after hearing a record first on a compilation; although this rule doesn’t always stand up. After hearing “Metropolis” by Walter Hawkins on the Psychemagik comp “Magik Sunrise” I sought and bought the original release “Wilderness America – A Celebration of the Land”, which is actually a comp released in 1975.
3. Now, I’m certainly not averse to a bit Jocelyn Brown, but come on, we’ve all heard “Somebody Else’s Guy” a million times, right? We don’t need to hear it from a DJ whose job it is to introduce us to something new that we might love even more.
So there you have it, that’s my DJing approach summed up. You can listen to my show on 1BTN at 2pm every fourth Monday. And while I might not be able to turn off the lights over the digital airwaves, I’ll certainly try to make things more about a night-time attitude than afternoon; I’ll play as many originals as I can, without discriminating against any previous decade, and, I will try to steer clear of the big wedding bangers, most of the time.
