[Dirty Mic] Top 5 Mistakes DJ’s Make by DJ Zimmie

Article by DJ Zimmie (http://www.twitter.com/DJZimmie)
Photo by Laura Petrilla (www.MissLPhotography.com)

Thomas hit me up recently to drop some knowledge about the Top 5 Mistakes I see DJ’s making.  Nobody’s saying I’m an expert, but, I think there’s some truth to what I’m about to say.  I know I’ve definitely made a grip of mistakes in my career and I like to think I’ve learned a lot.  Here we go, in no particular order…

1. DJ’n For The Wrong Reasons.

You either love GOOD music or you don’t.  You either want to know everything you can about every kind of music there is, and share the good stuff with people, or you don’t.  If you’re a DJ and you’re driving down the street bumping an LMFAO CD and enjoying it, you might want to think about a new career path.  If you got into this to drink for free, be Mr. Cool Guy and get laid, you’re just in the way of a real DJ trying to spread good music in a creative way.  Step aside.

2. Not Paying Dues

You started DJ’n 3 weeks ago and you’re asking me how to get a gig in Vegas.  You have this amazing bio on your Facebook page that makes you sound like Jesus DJ and you have nothing on your resume to back it up.  Crawl, walk, run. Paying dues is a long process and if you keep branching out it never ends.  Start out by taking shitty gigs.  Do the shitty gigs well and get offered slightly less shitty gigs.  Do those well and at some point, you’ll have the good gigs and you’ll rock them properly.  There will come a point in your career when you turn down certain gigs or certain amounts of money and it’s important to know when that is, but until then, be humble and try to do the best job at the gig in front of you and be thankful you have it.  If you wanna go rock a gig in another city, be prepared to eat a plane ticket to get your name out there.  It takes money to make money.

3. Biting Off More Than You Can Chew

#2 ties directly into this one.  I know you really want that shiny gig at the biggest club in town.  The worst thing you can possibly do is play that gig before you’re ready, fuck it up and never play there again.  It happens all the time.  It’s called “blowing an opportunity”.  They say “Success is the intersection of preparation and opportunity”.  Guess what, you weren’t prepared.  I’ve done some really random gigs in my life and some of those gigs prepared me for other gigs I wouldn’t play until years later.  That random Latin set I played at a pool party saved my ass at a club 3 years later, etc.  Doing tons of gigs of all kinds will get you ready for that next gig, just take it slow.

4. Not Standing Up For Yourself

As I mentioned in #2, at some point in your career you need to know when to turn down certain gigs.  People tell me all the time, “This gig doesn’t pay well, (or at all) but it’s a good look.”  I tell them, “I can’t pay my mortgage with a good look” or “I can’t take free drinks to the grocery store and trade them in for food”.  I could go on about this forever, but a lot of new DJs are trying their hardest to make DJing a race to the bottom.  I spent a big part of my career in Pittsburgh, along with DJ Nugget, working to continually raise the pay scale for DJs.  If a club is paying shit money, and nobody takes it, they’ll raise the pay (they can afford it).  I don’t know about you, but I’d like to make as much money as possible, not the other way around.  Getting pimped by a club isn’t paying dues, it’s getting taken advantage of.

5. Not Working Hard Enough

You’re probably laughing, but answer this:  Did you put in 40 hours this week on your DJ career?  You want to make what some people make at a 9-5 job but you want think you’re going to make it in 8 hours?  Football players don’t show up for the game Friday night without practicing and working all week.  I know cats that play on Saturday, go to Sandcastle all week, then wonder why they suck again next Saturday.  Then these same cats hit me up about getting a manager.  You don’t have anything to manage, you can’t even manage yourself.  Is your manager going to step in and take a cut of the money you didn’t make this week.  Fuckouttahere.  Start small, do a little every day, stay consistent and see what happens.  I bet you’ll get better results than getting stoned and playing video games all day.

Good luck to everyone, it’s up to us!  And quit looking at my tracks…

-DJ Zimmie

www.djzimmie.com