THE MIX, CUT, BLEND, SCRATCH AND JUGGLING DJ IS DYING A SLOW DEATH

NEW TECHNOLOGY has been a boon and a bust for the dj business. Not too many dj's mix anymore, they are focused on a laptop, instead of making the crowd move and stay on the floor, and often cutting the songs in midstream just when the crowd gets into a record. I can't tell you how many clubs I've been to just to peep out what's going on, and the crowd complains all night long about the dj.

With so many legends in the game dying off, it's hard to see how the new crop of dj's will place their mark on the game as the legends who came before them have. What kind of new gimmick can someone come up on their own, waiting for a manufacture to update software or hardware. This is how scratching, blending, cutting, mixing, and juggling came about. The dj's took the little they had and use their innovative minds to come up with tricks.


There were even innovative dj's that taught themselves to mix on cassette and reel reel decks, witnessed by the videos in this article. Delia Deryshire was probably the single most important of these innovators, and she wasn't even a dj, she was an engineer.

Since the release of Serato, cd turntables, and many others, there is a crop of dj's springing up who have no clue what it is to mix, blend, cut, scratch, and juggle. Pick up a copy of that latest "MIX CD", and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about, with some dude screaming over songs, instead of actually mixing. They just put on record after record, like in the old days with mom and dad's record player that had the automatic arm, and you had to wait until it came down to play another record, lol!