MP3J's? What Other Stupid Slang Words Will These Ducks Come Up With Next?

Last month, I wrote this angry piece about the artform of DJing dying at the hands of hipsters and iPods. Recently, Martha Irvine gave her two cents on the same idea. Irvine's brief look is far less subjective and a tad bit more well rounded, but I never said I was writing an article as much as it was an editorial.

Here are some quotes taken from the article and some more of my radical thoughts on them:

"Everybody wants to be a DJ," says Toro, a 29-year-old Californian who recently moved to Chicago and now manages Bar Louie in the city's Gold Coast neighborhood. "People enjoy having a little control in their lives."

*No shit, Sherlock. Of course people enjoy having control of their lives, but when you go to a bar/club, you should not expect the DJ to have every song at their disposal, let alone bow to your request if there are hundreds of other people to attend to. This cat needs to read my guide for bar patrons.

Numark Industries, for instance, is out with a mixing device that allows users with two iPods to segue one song into the next. It's fairly basic stuff - and not something necessarily aimed at professional DJs.

*You can do this with a Realistic mixer from Radio Shack and those will cost you about $50.

Some professional DJs say they're waiting for technology that would enable them to perform on a single portable player all the creative mixing and "scratching" they do with vinyl albums.

*Unless there's a machine that will slow or raise your BPM on an MP3, then attempting to mix using an iPod is useless. Who the hell wants to spend money buying two iPods for "mixing" anyway? Also, the way I see it, scratching is something that should only be done with wax. If you try it with CDs, MP3s, or those old keyboards that had a "scratch pad," that's just lame.

"I've been here some nights when people dance. It's always something different," says Bullard, who also heard the crowd groan one night when someone played a cheesy remake of a popular tune by The Smiths.

*See my Eurythmics Review.

"It's the same thing as sharing a hot new 45 or tape or CD," says Susan Barnes, associate director of the Lab for Social Computing at Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York.

*It's NOT the same thing as sharing a new single or whatever. Part of being called a DJ has been built on getting rare cuts, bootlegs, etc., playing them and gaining notoriety because YOU'RE the person who spent all day looking through dirty bins and going into shady record stores where the owners are trigger-happy and not customer friendly. Besides, if everybody had the same remixes, playlists and whatnot, that wouldn't make your selection unique now, would it?

"It becomes more and more of an art form to select out what is good - because a lot of what's out there is not good," says von Seggern, author of the book "Laptop Music Power: The Comprehensive Guide."

*Thanks for letting me know that, Mr. Hipster. I would never be able to discern that there's bad music out there on my own. Ass.

"You can have the fanciest gadgets and gizmos, but if you don't get your crowd, there will still be nobody on the dance floor," says Patrick Kowalczyk, a 37-year-old New Yorker who works in public relations and DJs during his off hours

*That's what I said!

She's also gotten a kick out of impressing friends by using an adapter with a built-in FM transmitter to play tunes from her personal library on cab radios as they ride through the city.

*I'm certain that a cabbie who has to haul a bunch of drunken idiots around for a living is just going to enjoy listening to "Flap Your Wings" or The Bravery. In this case, vehicular homicide is justifiable.

In that regard, he calls his portable music player "a savior."

*Yes, it's indeed a savior until it runs out of battery power and Apple makes you buy a new one. Or until some hoodlum steals your stupid iPod and smashes it to pieces when they learn that's loaded with five collections of REO Speedwagon and Air Supply songs.