Moby (00:07):

Hi, Lin. Hi Mo. Hi Bagel. Hello. So there's something I'd love to do today that I think is fun and exciting. What

Lindsay (00:15):

Would that be?

Moby (00:16):

I want us to have a Moby Pod episode all about DJing for a couple of reasons. One, I think it's interesting. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> two. You have on many occasions, well, many, many occasions. Expressed a few an interest in learning how to DJ. And so here's what I'm thinking. I thought we could have a little tutorial, as it were. Um, a masterclass on the history of DJing.

Lindsay (00:46):

Cool.

Moby (00:46):

Maybe talk a little bit about my own introduction to the world of DJing.

Lindsay (00:51):

Amazing. And

Moby (00:52):

Then, uh, we could have a Lindsay and bagel DJ lesson.

Lindsay (00:58):

That sounds like the best thing ever. Bagel. We're gonna learn how to DJ. You wanna learn how to DJ? It's gonna be so fun.

Moby (01:04):

<laugh>. So what I've done, I prepared a little bit. Okay. And by preparing, I took a song that I've done with Lady Blackbird.

Lindsay (01:13):

I love Lady Blackbird.

Moby (01:15):

I love Lady Blackbird as well. So I took this song called Dark Days. Uh, I don't believe it's been released yet. So it's an unreleased track that I've done with Lady Blackbird. And I broke it down to like an acapella and some different instrumentals. And so I thought it could be interesting to sort of like make a, um, what are the kids call them? Mash A Mashup. Mashup. Sure. So we're gonna make sort of a little bit of a mashup,

Lindsay (01:37):

Like a Girl Talk style Sure. Mashup.

Moby (01:39):

Exactly. That's what we're gonna do, is like take some instrumentals and then Lady Blackbirds vocals on top of it from this song, dark Days. Cool. That sounds okay? Yeah.

Lindsay (01:47):

Sounds amazing. Okay.

Moby (01:49):

Anything else before we dive in to my, hopefully not pedantic history of DJing,

Lindsay (01:56):

But also I don't know anything about the history of DJing, so I don't think it would be pedantic. Mm.

Moby (02:02):

Remember who you're talking to.

Lindsay (02:04):

<laugh>,

Moby (02:05):

Like

Lindsay (02:05):

Good point. Yes.

Moby (02:06):

I could, I don't know that there is a subject matter on the planet that I wouldn't, I could be pedantic about my ability to be pedantic

Lindsay (02:14):

<laugh>. I mean, that is a, is a gift in and of itself. Um,

Moby (02:18):

A gift. A curse. Yeah. A function of insecurity and inbreeding. <laugh>.

Lindsay (02:22):

No, that sounds like a really comprehensive table of contents, so to speak. Okay.

Moby (02:27):

Okay. So should I start?

Lindsay (02:29):

Yes, please. 'cause I actually, I love, I love history that's so meaningful, but also so very recent, you

Moby (02:37):

Know, and, and one of the things that I find really fascinating about the world of DJ culture, and at some point we should do an episode about electronic music, because that's also a really fascinating strange, uh, history. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So, but DJing, what's so interesting is it's utilitarian. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Like, it's basically, it was never a bunch of people trying to invent something new. It was just necessity being the mother of invention. Right. Uh, so, so are you ready to, for a trip back into the history of DJing

Lindsay (03:11):

<laugh>?

Moby (03:11):

So it started, as far as I can tell, almost in World War II,

Lindsay (03:17):

World War II DJs?

Moby (03:19):

Yes. In World War II in the UK is vinyl was relatively new. You know, vinyl had been invented, I guess, by Thomas Edison.

Lindsay (03:27):

Cool. New technology on the scene.

Moby (03:29):

Yeah. So, recorded music, you know, up until really late 19th century, early 20th century, recorded music, practically speaking, didn't exist. And then Vinyl, the gramophone was invented. And up until that point in the look like, like mid 20th century World War II era, if you wanted music for a party, if you wanted music for a concert, for dancing, for whatever, it had to be played live. But the thing is, live music was expensive. Yeah. And it required a lot of people and equipment and all sorts of things. And so the story that I heard is that during World War II, in the UK and London and Birmingham and other places, people were going into bomb shelters. And obviously you couldn't have a band in a bomb shelter. That

Lindsay (04:16):

Would be

Moby (04:16):

Weird. Maybe they did, maybe they tried. But what you could do is bring turntables down. And apparently people had to spend a lot of time in bomb shelters. So they're way underground there in a bomb shelter, there isn't much power. But there was enough power for turntables. And so the story that I heard is there's this guy named Jimmy Savile, and he is credited with being the first DJ, meaning the first person to have two turntables. And going from like record to record to record to record while people danced. Whoa.

Lindsay (04:46):

In a bomb shelter,

Moby (04:48):

Either in a, a bomb shelter or maybe he started in

Lindsay (04:50):

Bomb shelter, some sort based or something like that. Yeah. That's really cool.

Moby (04:53):

But it was because people wanted to hear their favorite songs, but they couldn't afford to hire a band. And so someone was like, well, let's just play the record and jump around. That's fun. So Jimmy savi, I'll, I'm gonna give him credit. Maybe someone else did it first, but he kind of should be given, in my mind, the credit for inventing modern DJing, the

Lindsay (05:11):

Smooth transitions back and forth from table to table.

Moby (05:15):

I don't know how smooth they were. It might've just been like, play a record. Stop it, play the next record. Stop it. Play the next record. Stop it. And then here's where it starts to get interesting. From my perspective, although maybe 1943 bomb shelter DJing is pretty ing it's pretty interesting. So in 1953, there was a bar in Paris called the Whiskey a Gogo. And the woman who ran it was this woman named, I love the fact that modern DJing was essentially invented by a woman. So Régine was the first nightclub DJ in a way that we might recognize today. You know, like playing in a discothèque and you, you know why they're called discothèque? Why it was called disco music, et cetera. Because

Lindsay (05:56):

The disc goes,

Moby (05:57):

They played discos. Like so, so the Oh,

Lindsay (05:59):

Discos.

Moby (06:00):

So the is the word. Yeah. So they would have a sign out front to differentiate it from where a band was. And it just said disco. And that just meant we play records here, we don't have a band. Oh,

Lindsay (06:11):

That's fun.

Moby (06:13):

<laugh>. So she Régine started playing discos and started playing dance music. She kind of invented dance music in 1953. Crazy. Yeah. And then let's go across the Atlantic Ocean. And you know where we're gonna go. New York, not New York, not yet further south. Jamaica.

Lindsay (06:34):

Jamaica.

Moby (06:35):

Jamaica is where a lot of modern, especially hip hop DJing came from. And this, I think this is really fascinating. So Jamaica, they would have these street parties where they would play records. And the guy who picked the record was called The Selector. 'cause he selected the records and then they started doing something that you might recognize. They started talking over the records. 'cause they would have a party and they'd be like, Hey, come to our party. And then they'd, they'd start rhyming. They'd be like, come to our party. We're having fun. It's the best party under the Sun. <laugh>.

Lindsay (07:09):

I would go to that party <laugh>.

Moby (07:12):

And that's how hip hop was born. That's how Rapping was born. So then there was a DJ in Jamaican named Kool Herc. And

Lindsay (07:19):

Like Hercules.

Moby (07:20):

Yeah. And so he came from this tradition of like, someone playing a record. Well, someone else spoke over the record and he moved to the South Bronx and he invented hip hop. Like cool herc, Kool Herc. This, you can sort of point to this One guy who invented hip hop Kool Herc. He brought it from Jamaica. Started in Jamaica and he brought it over. Wow. So at this point we're get, we're getting into the sixties and disco, like Régine's, disco dancing culture has started to spread. So you have, in, in Europe, they have these, these bars, these nightclubs where people, DJs play records. And then in the South Bronx and in Jamaica, you have DJs playing records while someone else talks on top of them. Then we're getting to the birth of disco, which I am gonna give credit to a guy named David Mancuso.

Moby (08:09):

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So David Mancuso hung out with Timothy Leary and like the psychedelic guys of the 1960s and just fell in love with dance music culture. 'cause he would go to these psychedelic parties where people would take LSD and dance around. And so in 19, let me think, probably like 19 70, 69, he started what I think of as the first disco dance club called The Loft. So you have Régine in Paris who invented modern nightclub disco DJing. And you have Kool Herc who kind of took DJ culture from Jamaica and brought it to New York and sort of invented hip hop. But David Mancuso invented disco.

Lindsay (08:50):

And disco and dance music are different, or they're the same thing.

Moby (08:54):

Disco is dance music, but disco in the seventies meant something very specific. And here's where it be. I think it becomes really interesting and subversive in a way. It was almost exclusively gay music and gay culture. Wow. The loft in the seventies, it was gay, just like a hundred percent unapologetically gay at a time when like Stonewall was happening, where if you were gay, you got beaten up and put in jail. So disco started at as this subversive gay black Latino culture. And then it spread like wildfire, you know, with the Bee Gees, with KC and the Sunshine Band with Donna Summer, the

Lindsay (09:29):

Famous disco artists. Yeah.

Moby (09:31):

And at the, as it was spreading, like wildfire, hip hop started to really develop as well with Grandmaster Flash, um, Grandmaster Caz, Grand Wizzard Theodore, some other people like Red Alert Mr. Magic. But it was hip hop was very New York based. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> as was disco music. So in the seventies you had hip hop in one part of the South Bronx and Queens and Brooklyn and gay disco happening next door, basically. So by the end of the seventies, disco culture burned out. Why? It burned out for a bunch of reasons. Some understandable and some horrifying. Uh, the understandable is it became a very easy way for people to make money very quickly and easily. So it went from being this like underground gay, black, Latino music culture to being like disco duck, you know? Right. By the end of the seventies that sort of become like novelty music where people were making ridiculous disco songs. But the pernicious reason it died was simply racism, homophobia. Mm. And the story that illuminates that best was when they at, at Kaminsky Park in Chicago, they had an anti disco rally, I think in 1979 or 1980 Disco

Lindsay (10:50):

Demolition or something like that. Disco Demolition. Yeah. Is that what it was? Yeah.

Moby (10:53):

Yeah. I think that's what it was called. And they burned disco records

Lindsay (10:57):

In like

Moby (10:58):

A stadium with like 75,000 people gathered in a stadium to burn disco records.

Lindsay (11:04):

Why were they so mad that they wanted to burn it? Is it like when conservatives shoot up, like Yeti coolers or

Moby (11:11):

Something and burn books and so on one hand, disco had become, it was ubiquitous and it was the pop music of the late seventies. So maybe there was, people were reacting to that. Was it that it

Lindsay (11:21):

Was mainstream or was it that it was gay and it,

Moby (11:24):

It was largely that it was gay, black and Latino. 'cause here's the thing, I there's an interview with a security guard who was at the, this Disco bonfire. And he said, he said, I looked at the records they were burning. Half were disco records and half were just black records. Wow. Like they were burning Bob Marley records. They were burning Marvin Gaye records. They were burning Billie Holiday records. So it was much more racism and homophobia than anything. Anti disco. Where's

Lindsay (11:51):

Comiskey Park? Chicago.

Moby (11:51):

Chicago. Which becomes very interesting as the history progresses. So disco functionally speaking, it kind of ended, it had been driven underground except for, um, well, I mean a few places it still existed. But there was one club in particular, uh, in Tribeca in New York. 'cause at this point, Tribeca was a no man's land. Just

Lindsay (12:14):

Warehouses. Just

Moby (12:15):

Warehouses and old abandoned buildings. And they opened a club there called the Paradise Garage. And it was in an old bus garage. And it was, I'm, I'm maybe overstating it, but it was sort of like the last repository of disco culture. And it's 99% gay. And this was also before AIDS had started. So it was super degenerate in good and bad ways, but it was like, it was hedonism just straight up hedonism with disco music that you couldn't really hear anywhere else at this point. 'cause it, it had been killed off. And the DJ at Paradise Garage, who's become just legendary is Larry Levan. And so Larry sort of invented, he took what David Mancuso was doing and made it even more modern in a way, like making his own remixes, et cetera. Uh, okay. So Larry Levan's DJing at the Paradise Garage, and there was a young guy hanging out there named Frankie Knuckles. So Frankie Knuckles,

Lindsay (13:20):

Frankie Knuckles is such a cool name by the way. Yeah. Did was he, was it Knuckles? 'cause he would punch people?

Moby (13:25):

Frankie was so gentle. I can't imagine him. I could imagine him like frowning at someone. Like unfortunately all these people have passed away. Oh. But Frankie, I got to meet Frankie. 'cause he lived down the street from a record store I used to go to.

Lindsay (13:38):

And he was the nicest. Oh,

Moby (13:39):

Frankie so gentle. There's this wonderful picture of him with the Obamas. 'cause they were all good friends. That's

Lindsay (13:45):

Cool.

Moby (13:46):

Frankie was hanging out at the Paradise Garage, and for some reason, I don't fully understand, moved to Chicago and he started DJing in Chicago at a place called The Warehouse, which became like the Paradise Garage of Chicago. And he started playing more electronic dance music. And people started describing the music he was playing as warehouse music. And then it got shortened to house music.

Lindsay (14:08):

There it is.

Moby (14:09):

So that's where House music was born.

Lindsay (14:11):

It was Frankie Knuckles,

Moby (14:12):

Frankie Knuckles, Frankie

Lindsay (14:13):

Knuckles in Chicago.

Moby (14:15):

There was a lot of this music around. But like Kool Herk is credited with inventing hip hop. Frankie Knuckles is credited with inventing house

Lindsay (14:23):

Music. House music. Wow. That's really cool.

Moby (14:24):

Yeah. So, and then it spread like one minute. House music was, you know, being played in two clubs, one in Chicago, one in New York, barely like, this is like 85, 86. And then it got discovered by the Brits and it exploded. And all of a sudden, by the late eighties, it was everywhere, especially in Europe, less so in the United States, but in Europe it just took over. Like it was top 40. It was in every radio station, every nightclub. By the end of the eighties, house music had taken over. But for now, let's say like we're, we've, we're in the late eighties, house music and rave culture are exploding. And then into the nineties we started to have the world of like the superstar DJs. In the nineties, it was people like tto, who's still DJing, and Pete Tong and Sasha and Dig Weed and Paul Oakenfold. And they're all still active. But then by the late nineties into the early two thousands, into the mid two thousands, it got even more super starry. Uh, I mean, I remember one time I was going to abi a to perform and the airport was filled with all the private planes owned by the superstar DJs. Wow. So

Lindsay (15:38):

Wait, here's my question. Why were those DJ? Is it because like they're selling the same price tickets, but they're only one person and they have almost no overhead

Moby (15:46):

In terms of them making a lot of money? Yeah. I guess

Lindsay (15:49):

Successful musicians or successful musical acts just do,

Moby (15:53):

I mean, it's kind of, the only thing I can compare it to is maybe it's like standup comedians. Yeah. Like a standup comedian shows up, someone hands 'em a microphone, they walk on stage and they get paid as much as a band who would be touring with 30 people. Right. So this thing with DJs, it's like a DJ would show up with one person. Like they don't provide the lights, they don't provide the sound. Oftentimes they're not the ones writing the music. Yeah. So you can show up, play music for 90 minutes and get paid as much as a band.

Lindsay (16:20):

It's amazing. So

Moby (16:22):

As a result, a lot of those DJs have made just a ridiculous amounts of money. They've

Lindsay (16:28):

Done well. Yeah. Good for them.

Moby (16:29):

Yeah. And another thing started happening in the early nineties. CDJs came onto the scene

Lindsay (16:39):

CDJs like not spinning vinyl.

Moby (16:42):

Yeah. Playing CDs

Lindsay (16:43):

In CD machines and, and just going back and forth between them.

Moby (16:47):

Yeah. So basically they had the equivalent of turntables, but they had CD players designed for DJs. And at first everyone hated them. Like they were the least cool thing You could imagine, like 91, 92, like no self-respecting DJ would be caught dead using A CDJ. But then something happened, every DJ who was traveling realized records are heavy. And when you flew somewhere with your box of records, you'd be carrying this crate of vinyl that weighed as much as like a small car. Very heavy, very expensive. And if the airline lost your luggage, you can't play. And so suddenly these traveling DJs were like, well, if we put our music on CDs, it weighs nothing. We can make multiple backups. We're not carrying giant flight cases filled with vinyl. And so by the mid nineties, CDJs really started to take over. Then by the late nineties, early two thousands only like cool underground DJs were still using vinyl. For some people they liked the sound quality, but for other people it was just like an old timey cool factor. So in terms of your DJ lesson that we're going to get to at some point soon, I have a confession. What, and here's where I'm a little embarrassed. There's technology that started about 15 years ago, which was basically DJing with a laptop. And so most people who DJ now, they just DJ with a laptop. So there's no disc involved. It just, it's laptop playing music on a laptop. Well,

Lindsay (18:24):

These have little drives, right? Is that different?

Moby (18:27):

Yeah. I mean, these used to be, if you, and I know that podcasting is not visual necessarily, but the front of the CDJ still has a place where you can put,

Lindsay (18:35):

Oh, you could put a CD in

Moby (18:36):

There. You can put an old timey CD in there. Wow. But they're MP3 players. And so that's what I use them for. But a lot of people, in fact, almost the majority of people now just use laptops. So here's my confession. Lindsay and Bagel. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I don't know how to DJ with, I've never DJ'ed with a laptop. So we are gonna have

Lindsay (18:55):

A, you're keeping it old school.

Moby (18:56):

We're gonna, we're gonna, I have my turntable, my Technics 1200, my DJ mixer, my CDJ. So we're gonna have a little bit of an old school DJ lesson. I hope

Lindsay (19:05):

There's so many buttons

Moby (19:07):

If, but if you wanna learn real contemporary, modern laptop DJing. Sadly, I am not the person to teach laptop DJing. That's

Lindsay (19:16):

Okay. No, I feel like the, all the computers do is try to replicate this. Exactly. But

Moby (19:20):

They are pretty, I've seen people using them. <laugh> and I, I'm intimidated because I'm old and new things scare me. But they, I mean, it makes perfect sense that someone would show up with a laptop. That's it. You don't need any technology. You don't, you just, you just, it's like you're doing Quicken and sending emails and then DJing like one size fits all. Yeah.

Lindsay (19:40):

So one stop

Moby (19:41):

Shop. That's my embarrassing confession is I have never DJ'ed with a laptop, so I don't know how to teach laptop DJing.

Lindsay (19:48):

That's okay. This is very interesting to me. And I don't really talk about this. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But I really, really love mystery buttons.

Moby (19:56):

Okay. So

Lindsay (19:56):

This is kind of heaven for me. Oh

Moby (19:58):

Boy. We'll definitely make sure that we take a picture of you with all the mystery buttons. <laugh>, there's like so many mystery buttons. Yeah. And guess what? Once we turn on the equipment, more buttons. More buttons. But also some of the buttons have colors behind them. Ooh,

Lindsay (20:10):

That's really fun too. I love colors. Yeah. Because I'm fangirling over the buttons. Okay.

Moby (20:14):

So very self-involved. Can I tell you about my introduction to the world of DJing?

Lindsay (20:21):

I would love that.

Moby (20:22):

Okay. So I grew up when I was very young playing guitar, playing classical guitar, playing in punk rock bands and playing drums, playing traditional instruments. And in the early eighties, I became fascinated by electronic music because you could simply do more with it. You know, a guitar is great, but it sounds like a guitar. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> live drums are great. They always sound like live drums. Electronic music could be anything. You can

Lindsay (20:46):

Make the keys sound like ducks,

Moby (20:48):

Quacking. You can make the keys sound like ducks, quacking. You can do anything with it. Yeah. And so in 19 81, 82, I started to become really fascinated by electronic music. I was still in high school. And the other great thing about electronic music is you never had to wait for the other musicians to show up. You could

Lindsay (21:04):

Just go,

Moby (21:06):

You just turn on your equipment and all of a sudden you could be a one man band.

Lindsay (21:10):

So cool.

Moby (21:11):

So I became really interested in electronic music. And also some of my musical heroes were becoming interested in electronic music. Like New Order being the perfect example, or Depeche Mode. People who had kind of grown up in the world of punk rock and suddenly we're playing with synthesizers. That's

Lindsay (21:26):

Cool.

Moby (21:27):

So 1984 rolls around. I drop out of college because I'm mentally ill and I was having debilitating panic attacks. It's, it's okay to laugh, you know, fine laugh at my mental illness. Well, you're

Lindsay (21:39):

Laughing. And so we're, we're making light of the mental breakdown. I'm just

Moby (21:42):

Laughing because I wanna cry. So 1984, I drop out of college with crippling panic attacks, and I am not doing well. Sleeping on my mom's couch broke. And I started hanging out at a bar called The Beat, and it was this sort of punk rock dive bar in Portchester New York. And I hung out there so often that the owner, Tommy felt sorry for me. And he let me start DJing there on Monday nights. And I would get paid 20 or $25 a night for six hours of work. My math is not great, but that they're around $3 and 50 cents an hour playing Monday nights. On average, there would be between five and 10 people there usually just like methadone addicts sitting at the bar to stay warm while they drank cheap liquor. Wow. But that's where like, I started learning how to DJ. And as much as I loved electronic music, electronic music just became dance music. Right. And it was so exciting, you know, like this was, everything was new, you know, and in the early eighties, or like 83, 84, it was early hip hop and then what was called industrial music. Do you know industrial music? Like

Lindsay (22:55):

Banging on pipes?

Moby (22:56):

It started banging on pipes with a band called Test Department, but then it became like Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb the most famous industrial band would be Nine Inch Nails. Oh

Lindsay (23:07):

Yeah.

Moby (23:07):

So Trent came from the industrial world. Cool. And then house music started, as we talked about earlier. And I fell in love with it. And house music morphed into techno. And I fell in love with that. And it became rave culture. And I fell in love with that. So by the late eighties, I wasn't really DJing that much anymore. I was making my own records. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But it all started because I was a mentally ill college dropout, sleeping on my mom's couch, and I needed work. And nice Tom Gilio at The Beat gave me a job.

Lindsay (23:37):

I mean, what a what a fortuitous mental breakdown. Well,

Moby (23:41):

That's an interesting point that you've just made Lindsay and Bagel, uh, which is adversity. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, and I think we've talked about this before, but like, I hate adversity. You hate adversity.

Lindsay (23:54):

I think as human beings, we attempt to avoid suffering. Yeah. You know, and it, as any creature does, we

Moby (24:00):

Avoid adversity in all its forms. And when it happens, we loathe it and we do our best to make it end. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, and I don't know if you can think of times in your life where you've gone through adversity, you've hated the adversity, but then in hindsight you realize the adversity. Without the adversity, you would never would've changed, or you never would've learned what you needed to learn. So true. It's like, if, if I had stayed at UConn, if I wasn't mentally ill, that would've been fine. Maybe I would've gotten married to my college sweetheart. I'd be living in New England. We'd be just doing normal stuff, which to be fair is great. Normal stuff is great. But the bottoming out and dealing with mental illness, without that, I would never have left college.

Lindsay (24:45):

Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. I mean, obviously there's some adversity that is incredibly dangerous and like alters your life in a horrible way. But like, I do think that there are some things that, that don't kill you and they don't maim you and they send you on a path that could be so much more magical Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> than anything you had planned for.

Moby (25:03):

I mean, I don't wanna be glib and say that all adversity is good, but what I will say is in my life, and I think yours as well, there have been times where we've dealt with adversity and in hindsight been grateful for it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And clearly that's not always the case. Yeah. But it's just something I try and remind myself of when I'm going through like, some sort of struggle, something unpleasant, some sort of adversity, just reminding myself, okay, I can't judge it too harshly because time might pass and I might be so grateful for the adversity that I hate.

Lindsay (25:36):

Yeah. 'cause at the time when it was happening, you probably thought it was the worst thing ever.

Moby (25:40):

Oh. I mean like, yeah. Like

Lindsay (25:41):

There's no way you could have seen that it was sending you down a path of, you know, what your life became. How could you have

Moby (25:48):

Yeah. 19 years old sleeping on my mom's couch, broke waking up every morning crippled with panic attacks. Yeah. Like my first thought sounds awful. Was just panic. And it would, it would it, it never, it took like months and months for it to go away. It's awful. Meanwhile, all my friends were at like Ivy League schools being fancy, doing college stuff, having college relationships. And I was hanging out at a dive bar drinking cheap domestic beer with methadone addicts. Yeah. I gotta say at that time, being in college and doing college stuff just seemed so delightful.

Lindsay (26:21):

Yeah. I'm sure.

Moby (26:22):

As opposed to sleeping on my mom's couch. But

Lindsay (26:25):

You were Okay.

Moby (26:25):

Okay. So moving away from adversity, here's my questions for you. Okay. One, not to put you on the spot. Why would you like to learn how to DJ?

Lindsay (26:35):

Well, I really love music as you know. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But I think it's a fascinating skill. I have so many friends that are DJs that do DJing for fun or for work or Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> for whatever. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I want to know how it works. But also eventually I want to learn how to make my own little mixes and maybe do my own kind of mashups, you know, like put some fleet foxes with a little bit of, you know, little Uzi Vert <laugh>.

Moby (27:06):

Um, okay. So that was gonna be my second question is like, as a DJ, what do you think you would like to play?

Lindsay (27:13):

Well, I wanna play everything I, 'cause I love everything. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I wanna find ways that they all go together. But something I recently learned is my friend was DJing a party and I was asking them questions and I was looking at their playlist and they were picking through songs and they were like, well, I started out at a really low BPM and I'm slowly working my way to a much faster BPM. But then they were like, but I'm gonna skip one of the BPMs along the way. And hopefully nobody really notices. Um, and it was just so fascinating seeing how they had arranged their set because that was something that I hadn't considered. I thought you could just go, I didn't Yeah, I didn't get that. Well,

Moby (27:54):

You can, I mean, like traditionally a lot of DJs will start, let's say you're a house music DJ, you'll start at 124 beats per minute and you'll end at 128 beats per minute. You know, you try and like go a little bit faster so you like, you start high, but you get higher. Yeah.

Lindsay (28:12):

Also, the concept of beats per minute is it's so straightforward. Yeah. I love that about it.

Moby (28:18):

It beats per minute crazy. But then you can also, for whatever reason, you can completely break it up. Like you can do that. You can have like a cohesive DJ set where the energy increases and it gets faster and faster. Or for whatever weird reason you can choose to just break that up and not do that. Did I ever tell you the weird story about one time I was DJing at The Beat in Portchester New York and in the middle of a dance set I played, uh, Hank Williams. I did. People love it. No. Everyone stopped dancing, looked at me like, what are you doing? Like, we were dancing to like New Order and now you're playing a country western song from the fifties. And then afterwards this woman came up to me and said, why did you play that? And I was like, I don't know. I just felt like it. And she was like, I was at my brother's funeral today. That was his song.

Lindsay (29:04):

You psychic. Yeah. And you didn't even know you were doing it. That's special.

Moby (29:08):

But sometimes yeah. You, you can, you can do that just like increase the BPMs, go faster, go harder, end on a high, or you can do whatever you want. Yeah. You know? And I have a feeling, given that you have a very dynamic creative spirit, I can't imagine you becoming like a conservative DJ who just sticks with one genre of music on set. I imagine you playing like Patsy Klein into Beyonce Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> into the Indigo Girls.

Lindsay (29:38):

Oh, that's great. I'm gonna write that down. Yeah, no, I like to generally make people feel confused and unsettled. <laugh>

Moby (29:45):

<laugh> as a rule. So DJing is for you? Yeah, <laugh>. Okay.

Lindsay (29:49):

I gotta say it's really, really fun to hear this history because like, there's so many famous DJs and I kind of never really understood the, the path of how, how it all came to be. And it's so, it's just so cool.

Moby (30:05):

And I remember in, I guess it was 91 or 92, I was playing this amazing party at Webster Hall in New York. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, formerly the Ritz. So there was a couple other artists on this bill and it was a fundraiser for I think the Gay Men's health center. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. 'cause this was AIDS was Ravaging New York City. And so it was an AIDS fundraiser. And this one British performer who was on the bill, uh, we were talking and he was like, so what is this event? And I was like, oh, it's a fundraiser for an age charity. And he was like, he was very homophobic and he started swearing and he was like, like, what the f am I doing here? Like, I don't wanna play for those people. And I looked at him and I had this moment, I was like, you know, you play dance music, right.

Moby (30:52):

Being a homophobe playing dance music is like being a racist, playing hip hop. Yeah. Dance music started, it's gay music, it's black music, it's Latino music. And I've never forgotten that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I've always felt like, like a cautious respect. Like I have to be like, okay, I am acc claim jumper. You know, I'm stepping into a world that involves cultural persecution, gender persecution, orientation, persecution, every type of persecution that I can never understand. And so every time I play dance music or listen to dance music, I just always have to remember I am honored to be even aware of this music, let alone be a part of it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. 'cause a lot of people might think that dance music is, especially now, it's like it's white. It's a lot of white guys. It's a lot of white people, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's not where it comes from. Yeah. I know you know that. But I'm just, I always have to remind

Lindsay (31:49):

Myself. No, it's a great clarification of honoring where these things came from. Yeah. I love that.

Moby (31:54):

Lastly, I actually got to DJ with David Mancuso once. So I got to be friends with Frankie Knuckles. That was a big deal. But David Mancuso, he kept moving the loft all over the place. His club, this is the man who invented disco. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And he moved to Alphabet City and I played at a party. Wow. I was like, this is, I'm playing on his equipment, I'm playing in David Mancusos space. It did, it kind of felt like, I don't know, looking up and realizing you're playing guitar with Jimi Hendrix or something. Right.

Lindsay (32:22):

So that's a, that's so fun. Was he a nice, we didn't

Moby (32:25):

Really talk much.

Lindsay (32:26):

Oh, I see. But you got to have the experience of like, because

Moby (32:28):

There was loud music playing. Yeah. And I was like, wow, I can't believe this is happening. And

Lindsay (32:33):

You were using ear protection back then?

Moby (32:35):

I started using ear protection in 1982. Okay, good. After seeing the Misfits at Pogo's in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Um, I, I do have some tinnitus, but I imagine it would be worse if I hadn't worn.

Lindsay (32:47):

I mean, I, I probably would've been terrible. I went to a jazz club in New Orleans that was amplified and the first thing I did was get napkins and put them in my ears. Like you do sometimes when you don't have ear plugs.

Moby (32:58):

Learning the lessons. I, I swear by it. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause obviously if you can avoid hearing loss and tenderness, most basic thing I've ever said, if you can avoid hurting yourself, you should probably avoid hurting yourself. <laugh>. Okay. Ready for your DJ lesson?

Lindsay (33:10):

Um, yeah. I'm so ready.

Moby (33:12):

So all this stuff is equipment <laugh>. So basically the starting point that you'll hear in one second is the roughly the downbeat of her vocal. And then also, Ooh, we haven't talked about effects.

Lindsay (33:24):

I'm gonna try every effect.

Moby (33:25):

Okay. So let's, so first we'll play it dry. You wanna play it dry?

Lindsay (33:28):

Okay. How do I start at the beginning of the, it just

Moby (33:30):

Goes back to the beginning. So that's dry. Pretty vocal. Aren't her vocals nice? Yeah,

Lindsay (33:37):

They're beautiful.

Moby (33:38):

Um, okay, so now let's add a little delay

Moby (33:41):

Other spiral.

Moby (33:56):

Isn't that fun?

Lindsay (33:57):

So fun.

Moby (33:59):

Flanger. Ooh. Okay, so that's vocals. Now do you want to start playing? Should

Lindsay (34:10):

I keep the her playing?

Moby (34:12):

Yeah.

Lindsay (34:13):

And now I can play the, the, um,

Moby (34:15):

Let me start it. 'cause it needs to be in time. Ready?

Lindsay (34:20):

Ooh, I see what you did there.

Moby (34:22):

So we have her vocal playing on its own and we also have these drums and bass playing. We can do a little fun trick over here. Another effects thing where we take some of it to change the sound of one of them. Fun, right? So now we're in a long dark cavern. Everything's scary and strange.

Lindsay (35:01):

Is this what you think while you're DJing? Yeah. Is it coming back? Here comes, people get ready

Moby (35:17):

And you can, what I'm doing there is I'm touching the platter and slowing it down so it matches The Beat here.

Lindsay (35:27):

That slows it.

Moby (35:29):

Yeah.

Moby (35:32):

Now let's go to a different backing track, shall we?

Lindsay (35:35):

Yeah. Can I push the button?

Moby (35:38):

Yeah,

Lindsay (35:38):

I'll do it at the right time.

Moby (35:39):

I don't even know what this one is. Okay. Do you wanna push the button? Wait, hold on. Count 1, 2, 3, 4. Oh, you kinda wanna do it on the one. So we'll go like, I'll go 1, 2, 3, 4, and then you press it on the one. Okay. Okay. Ready? Mm-Hmm.

Lindsay (35:56):

<affirmative>

Moby (35:58):

One, two. Hold on. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1.

Lindsay (36:13):

I like this one.

Moby (36:23):

You wanna try out an effect on her vocal? Like reverb, just spin the little level depth.

Speaker 4 (36:30):

Ooh.

Moby (36:32):

So you're DJing. Oh, you got, you gotta push the little level depth. But her vocal has cut out. So let's go back to her. The beginning of her vocal. A nice little beat going. So every time

Lindsay (36:51):

You stop it, it goes to the begining

Moby (36:52):

End. Yeah. Ready? Yeah. 1, 2, 3, 4. So you picked this effect, which is called robot. I did pick that.

Lindsay (37:10):

Scary

Moby (37:19):

How you feeling? I feel pretty good.

Lindsay (37:21):

I think. I think I'm ready.

Moby (37:23):

Should we pick another backing track? Yeah. From

Speaker 3 (37:27):

How do you, how did you put that? You

Moby (37:29):

This knob? Yeah, that's look. So it says aca. Okay. That, that's, we have so inch one and remix one we have not used. So then you have to press that again. Now count it off with me.

Moby (37:51):

1, 1, 2, 3, 4.

Lindsay (37:52):

Did I do

Moby (37:54):

It? You did that all by yourself

Lindsay (37:56):

Kind of.

Moby (38:02):

Do we wanna do some turntable stuff? Yes. I don't even know what's there. So let me find something on this record.

Speaker 3 (38:21):

It's very

Moby (38:21):

R2D2. Wow. You're really good at playing the record. <laugh>

Speaker 3 (38:56):

Down below. So I fly, fly away from the

Moby (39:04):

Ready. You wanna do another one of your things? Yes. Ready? Let's let her go for a second. Just 'cause her voice is so pretty. Okay, now I'm gonna ready now. So this is an instrumental and right now there's no obvious beat, but it'll come in just a second. Ready? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Um, there it is. There it is. So here, do you wanna play this changes? This is like, these are all these weird effects that affect the track. Do you wanna play around with those for a second? Yeah, I do. Okay, so just you pick a button and spin a knob and see what happens. That is it Space. But that doesn't really sound like space. Here's a fun one. Oh, that's one that DJs use cars. Yeah. Did I do see how I did that? Yep. <laugh>, you're doing great. I don't know what that, that's a weird one. I don't know why I, I don't really use that. This one's called noise. Weird. It's like a storm, like some weird scary storm. Should we go back to the vocals? Yeah. Oops. Okay. But again, I changed the start point here, so gotta figure this out a little bit.

Moby (40:50):

Okay. I'm gonna try something so she could be faster. We're gonna bring down this track. Oh. And bring up another one of the tracks will go back to the very first one

Moby (41:21):

I'll try. So this filter, I'm gonna start with all the high end cutout and you'll see it'll sound like it's playing in a different room. Okay. Do you wanna hit the little button? 1, 2, 3, 4.

Lindsay (41:40):

Come on in. Come on in drums.

Moby (41:43):

Isn't that fun? It's like you can hear the kick drum and you slowly turn the knob and bring in fun, right? Yeah. So that's DJing.

Lindsay (42:02):

Wow. That's really fun. You're really doing a lot, you know.

Moby (42:11):

So while we're here, um, should I turn off music for a second or maybe just let it play in the background?

Lindsay (42:20):

Maybe turn it off. Okay. I love it, but okay. It's distracting 'cause I really like it and I can't listen to two things at the same time because my brain won't.

Moby (42:27):

Okay. So one very interesting thing about DJing that I think is very interesting that might not be very interesting is a lot of the cool stuff was invented by accident. Meaning scratching the story is in the mid seventies there was a guy named Grand Wizzard Theodore. And you know how we talked about Cue is when it lives in your headphones and no one can hear it. Yeah. So Grand Wizzard Theodore thought he was queuing up a record, but it turns out he had the fader up so the audience could hear it. And he was trying to find the start of the record. So he was going like, and, but like, let's say like the track was playing, so he thinks he's listening to it quietly. So the track's playing and he's going

Lindsay (43:25):

And the people loved it

Moby (43:26):

And he's trying to find the beginning of the next song and all he's doing is going and the audience starts cheering. They're like, and he's like, what, what, what, what did I do? Because he didn't know they could hear him doing that. And that's how Scratching was born.

Lindsay (43:44):

Wow.

Moby (43:45):

Um, and then, beat Matching happens accidentally for a lot of DJs. 'cause it seems like magic doesn't it? Like going from like one track to another track and they're, they air in tempo with

Lindsay (44:00):

Each other.

Moby (44:02):

So, um,

Moby (44:06):

So for example, imagine you're playing this track,

Moby (44:14):

Not that one.

Moby (44:27):

Okay? So you're playing this nice little track and you think you've got the next run ready to go, and you're just gonna quickly move from this one into the next one. And then lo and behold you're like, huh, I just mixed two tracks accidentally. You mashed

Lindsay (44:49):

Up,

Moby (44:49):

You're like, wow. Those were two tracks. So it happened to me in like 1984. I was playing a ministry record and I think I was mixing into dead or alive or erasure or something and all of a sudden I beat matched. Like I mixed two songs together perfectly without trying. Wow. So a lot of this just happened sort of by accident, happy

Lindsay (45:13):

Accident. Yeah, but here's my question. So this changes how fast.

Moby (45:18):

Yeah. You can also slow it down. You can slow it way down.

Lindsay (45:29):

That's chopped and screwed. That's what they do in Houston. H Town Down <laugh>.

Moby (45:35):

And then you could be like, let's, let's keep it there for a sec. Ready? Now it's all slow and

Lindsay (45:46):

Chill vibes man.

Moby (45:49):

Everything's so slow and sleepy. So maybe this will end here.

Lindsay (45:53):

Yeah. This is a nice way to say go take a nap. That was a lot of information. Your brain. Yeah. Like put your brain on ice for a minute with these cool tunes

Speaker 4 (45:54):

Moby (46:14):

Wow. Sounds nice. Slowed way down was kind of fun. Maybe we'll just let this play out and we'll say our little thank you. Yeah, I

Lindsay (46:23):

Think so. This is really nice. I'm quite enjoying it.

Moby (46:30):

Okay, well thanks Mike Formanski for filming Everything. Thanks Bagel for inspiring us and everything that we do and giving us all our good ideas. Uh, thanks Jonathan Nesvadba for editing and making everything sound good. Thank you Lindsay for letting me ramble on like an old person about the history of DJing. Thank

Lindsay (46:56):

You Moby for bringing your amazing and really fun, interesting history of DJing and discos and record life. Um, it was really, really fun actually. Um, and also thanks to human content who gets this podcast out into the world.

Moby (47:14):

Um, and thank you to everybody who listens and who writes in because we love getting your emails. Well, 99% of them and yeah, thank you. And hopefully we'll, we'll we'll talk to you real soon. Like in two weeks. Yeah,

Lindsay (47:30):

We got a good one in two weeks. It's a surprise. Okay, <laugh>.