Sign In:     

Forum: General Discussion

Topic: Tell us how you landed your first gig
I thought it would be great for all of us to share how we landed our first gig. Hopefully this inspires a bedroom DJ to land their first paid gig.
 
Posted 3 days ago @ 2:11 pm
First paid gig: While Bartending at a busy sportsbar, I got to know the DJs, asked them to show me the ropes. Learned to use scratch live, which was the bar's computer. They would allow me to do 30 minute sets and the owner once heard my sets and offered me a Tuesday night 10PM to 2AM slot. At the time we had DJs on a daily basis. Back then as a beginner, I would get paid $120 for 4 hours which was great since they provided the equipment, the bar computer, and a Denon DN4500. Before that I was a bedroom DJ using VDJ 6.
 
I first spun as a young neighborhoodlum at a skating rink near my house, the dj wanted to dance with his girl and many times didnt come back to booth in any hurry,
Then early mid 80s I was a gutter punk , trying to book bands I would hit a kiddie club and help out to get in free, that became the djs asking me to help with then new at time "new wave" alternative stuff.
i had a short lived punk night and when break dance died overnight I was giving fri for alternative, the other djs had families, or wanted other things,
That blew up,
I've never been a bedroom dj, it's been my career for going on 40 years now, booked lots of big bands,
I got lucky i got a following and at 60 I am the fri sat resident dj and do 6.5 hour no break sets both nights, my reunions I known to draw over 1000,
Hope that motivates.
 
The13bats wrote :
I first spun as a young neighborhoodlum at a skating rink near my house, the dj wanted to dance with his girl and many times didnt come back to booth in any hurry,
Then early mid 80s I was a gutter punk , trying to book bands I would hit a kiddie club and help out to get in free, that became the djs asking me to help with then new at time "new wave" alternative stuff.
i had a short lived punk night and when break dance died overnight I was giving fri for alternative, the other djs had families, or wanted other things,
That blew up,
I've never been a bedroom dj, it's been my career for going on 40 years now, booked lots of big bands,
I got lucky i got a following and at 60 I am the fri sat resident dj and do 6.5 hour no break sets both nights, my reunions I known to draw over 1000,
Hope that motivates.


Thats awesome, thanks for sharing!
 
The first one - not counting house parties and such- pretty much just applied for the job. the late 80's and early 90's were a different time.
For where I am now and have been since '98: Was working at local radio station and we were doing live 2 hour broadcasts from the club and I ended up playing music while their dj was ....'doing things he shouldn't have been doing'....long before I was actually working there, they made it official after the place had been open a few weeks and then the radio station started having issues behind the scenes and then stayed there full time as a resident.
27 years later the square peg is still stuck in the round hole.