hi i am writing this on my blackberry

it is 12:40 and i am currently DJing at a secret bar that has no name or sign on the door and is under a fancy restaurant in the west village, like the kind of restaurant where the prices don’t have decimals. the cocktails here cost $12 (which is actually more than i’m getting paid for doing this. because the people who throw this party can only pay me in “unlimited columbian bam bam” but i think i gotta pick it up in the bathroom, i swear i am not making this up). places like this are what people are talking about when they say manhattan has been taken over by beautiful morons awash in $$$$$, bereft of class and perspective. but really what it is is that manhattan is just not indie anymore and the vibrant youth culture of the city i spent my life romanticizing was gone long before i got here, now that i am leaving manhattan for cheaper pastures i can finally admit that to myself after years of arguing with friends who moved to brooklyn that manhattan was where it was fucking at

so anyway i am playing the Pilooski re-edit of Beggin’ by Frankie Valli, a song that conveys the downtown cool attitude that feels appropriate to the venue. download it and listen to it while you read the rest of this if you really wanna set the mood. also note that the room is bathed in red light and all the walls are painted black and there is a display of crystals in a glass case near the bathroom, looks awesome

so i took this gig as a favor to a friend who got me a gig like two weeks ago that paid a lot, everyone here is about ten years older than me, and the other two DJs got here like twenty minutes ago (two hours late, 12:30 a.m.) but they’re upstairs looking for needles for the turntables because they brought records, and after they got here i took a half an anti-anxiety pill i found in my pocket because they look really cool (“cool”) and intimidating, new york nightlife vets who i will be spending the rest of the night with and i suspect they already don’t take me seriously cuz i play off DJ software. also my skin is bad because it’s been humid and i haven’t been drinking much water so the anti-anxiety pill will be especially useful

now i am playing No Comply by Studio. someone just came over to the DJ booth to ask what song it is, which generally means the song is so good that this dude has gotten over the embarassment of not knowing what song it is and asking the DJ

in nick sylvester’s piece about hipster runoff he writes about how all the pitchfork head honchos were in a car on their way to a weekend retreat, and like ryan schreiber i think put a song on and nobody knew what song it was and mark richardson was the only person who dared to ask ryan what song it was, and when ryan answered him was there was a palpable sense of relief in the car

if you like a song you are hearing somewhere, you should never be ashamed to ask whoever’s playing it what song it is, nobody knows everything, that’s how you learn — the people who know the most about music are the people who ask the most questions right?

not to toot my own horn but i think i am doing okay with this crowd right now

but one of the other DJ’s friends came over to the dj booth and the girl DJ said “how’s it sound out there?” and then her friend said “digital, like compressed” because i am playing shit off my computer instead of vinyl, these older DJs are real coolguys, just found out they are career bartenders at a legendarily hip establishment off Bowery, they seem to display little regard for my enjoyment of this night, little do they know i am standing two feet from each of them right now writing about them!!!!! the ultimate geeky blogger’s revenge

so doing the press for This Is Happening james murphy said he came to the realization that “cool” did not exist in the way he once thought. every day in new york i realize that too, like that “cool” is a label you apply to someone who you don’t know but is well-dressed or has a cool job or something. once you know someone well you stop describing them as cool and start describing like who they actually are. “cool” is one of the worst words in the english language, up there with “weird” and “nice”

now i’m playing Still Fly by Big Tymers

fuck yeah

the promoter just came up to me to request australian music (there are apparently many australian people here?) and i was like “cut copy?” and one of the other DJs said “they’re australian?” and i said “yeah they’re on modular” (then i realized i sounded like an asshole and he didn’t know what i was talking about) and then the promotor was like “no, like AC/DC” and i was like “wolfmother?” and he was like “no”

now i’m playing “5 minutes with jj” that amazing medley thing they did for the BBC, but i cut it off before the third song in the medley where she sings over the instrumental intro to The xx record

the two other DJs seem resigned to having to DJ off their iPhones — they couldn’t find needles. the bartender just handed me a tecate! the boy DJ just asked the girl DJ if she had any electro on her ipod and she said “i got electro out the ass!” these people are definitely older than me. i don’t even know what electro is. is it like crystal castles or justice or something? like aggressive electronic guitars?

just put on Most Wanted off the cults 7”, it’s still early enough in the night to get away with playing shit like this

i feel like i am filing a field report as a foreign correspondent for a newspaper except i’m a fifteen minute walk from where i live

putting on Faith by george michael, this one slays new york 28-year-olds like they just found out they just won free brunches

i am not a “real DJ” who beatmatches and remixes and “mines crates” for “obscure minimal techno gems”, i just wanna play songs that people know the words to and dance and go crazy to — not current top 40 though, it would be a faux-pas to play like taylor swift at the “hip downtown” clubs i play at. just reread that sentence and it sounds retarded. the best songs i can play are the ones you know every word to but don’t know the song title or artist, or songs you never thought you’d hear in a club or thought you could dance to but here you are, the gain is all the way fucking up so the snare is cracking your eardrums and you can feel the bass in your stomach, you’re dancin and fallin in love and you’re thinkin like “damn never thought i’d be hearing Never Let You Go by third eye blind like this”

now i am playing the vampire weekend cover of everywhere by fleetwood mac, gotta start the song 13 seconds in and turn the treble down a little bit because the song already cracks so much. what a fucking jam this is, i see group of people singing along to it!!! a song they’ve never heard before (maybe i’m wrong and they are into indie band obscure covers that never saw proper release but doubt it)!! seeing those people singing is a moment of joy and victory for me, a DJ who writes a blog about pitchfork

so anyway i should mention that i am basically unable to function normally in the new york nightlife scene. i’ve gotten frequent lucrative DJ gigs through a bunch of random fortunate circumstances from friends who know i’m into music, not the way that people usually get them, like by frequenting clubs and knowing the owners and getting gigs through that. like when people talk to me in clubs i can barely hear them so when i look at them i laugh when they haven’t told a joke or stare blankly and nod when they have told a joke or something. i go from faux-pas to faux-pas until everyone i know in the room has found better conversations, which is why i am filing this report from my blackberry right now

now i am playing jeepster by t. rex

i just took the bag of columbian bam bam the promoter slipped into my pocket into the bathroom and pretended i was insufflating some, because that’s what people who are having a good time do i think and they really want me to have a good time because i’m working for free, i sniffed mightily and smiled widely when i came out of the bathroom and handed the bag back to him, but i didn’t want any columbian bam bam because:

a) if most people who did cocaine knew how much raw human suffering was necessary to get it to them, how many women were kept in slavery and forced to work naked in the jungle in columbia, how many kids younger than me were fucking murdered on the streets of juarez today over drugs, or had upside down crosses slashed into their backs or were murdered because they refused to cooperate with drug cartels, they would never buy it again. purchasing cocaine in america is an endorsement of human slavery

b) i have work tomorrow at ten, it’s already 2:03

c) the economy has rendered cocaine tacky, it’s so expensive it’s like walking around with shopping bags from expensive stores when everyone’s unemployed

putting on Your Love by The Outfield, then gonna look for something to segue into soul with, perhaps Cecilia by Simon and Garfunkel?

NO!! RILL RILL BY SLEIGH BELLS!!! one time i heard Let The Beat Build at Lit on the day Carter III came out and i was like “damn can they play this so soon after the record drops?” but everyone went bananas for it

bartender just handed me a Cerveza Pacifico

people don’t seem to recognize Rill Rill. frowney face

today i was thinking about how all of the biggest indie bands have huge MISFITS like me in them. the king of the indie dancefloor is chubby and forty (james murphy). our world’s waspy new england golden boy is a jew with a big nose (ezra koenig). our biggest sports fan is a scholar of american literature and indie festivals and unconventional drugs (craig finn). animal collective is so awkward they can’t even manage to look comfortable in press photos where they get to pose. our world is made up of people who have been driven to defy convention because we can’t really operate within it. just a thought

fuck this woman is persistently requesting Rude Boy by Rihanna, yo i am not gonna play that song right now, i wanna be like “yo go listen to that shit on your ipod” but the woman is actually really beautiful so what i say is “okay gimme a couple minutes” which is a trick cuz i’m off in a couple minutes anyway! i’m a nonconfrontational kid. also my skin is bad right now so beautiful women intimidate me even more than usual

now i am a little drunk and feeling sentimental. unrelated to anything else i’ve written here, almost all my friends, the people who have become sort of my family since i came here four years ago wet behind the ears, just graduated college last week and now so many of them are leaving, moving to san francisco to start life anew, teaching all over america, going to south america or middle america to try to make the world a little better, you know? they are squeezing out the last drops of youthful idealism they have and hopefully they will parlay those drops into lives of righteousness and good. i am better for having known all of them, and if any of you are reading this know that my last song tonight before the other DJs take over is for you