A DISC-JOCKEY’S LIFE IS HARD AND COMPLEX

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32494, 2 January 1971, Page 12

A DISC-JOCKEY’S LIFE IS HARD AND COMPLEX

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PAUL WALLACE)

“Anyone could do that job. So long as you can keep up the chatter, and read the record labels, you can’t fail.”

That’s the average persons’s reaction to the recent news that the average top disc-jockey’s wage is now about £2OO a week. But the pop music industry doesn’t agree. If anything, they think, the best discjockeys are underpaid.

“There’s no doubt,” one leading recordplugger says, “that a playing at the right time by the right disc jockey can send 1000 people into the record shops next day. It’s been proved time after time.”

Could you succeed as a disc jockey? When an American network recently advertised for six trainee disc jockeys, 25,000 young people rushed to apply. Of these, 10 were finally put on a short list.

“Inane chat is not enough any more,” the station executive explained. “Fans want to learn something about the music from the disc jockey. And nowadays, technical expertise is important, too.”

Own master

The days when the disc Jockey sat behind a glass panel and all the technical work was done by a team of technicians are largely over. Now, most of the controls have moved from the producer’s box on to the disc jockey’s desk. “The jockey is now pretty well master of his programme,” says a producer, “and presentation is getting increasingly complex. Straightforward announcements are usually no longer enough." So the disc jockey has to know how to cut into records, talk over them, sing with them and mix into them a barrage of jokes, jingles and garbled sounds which every top record show must have to survive. Before the average show, the jockey and his producer spend the final hour before transmission, checking the sequence of records, jingles and announcements. Fifty switches Then the disc jockey is on his own. He sits with the microphone in front of him and two cassette machines on either side. Below is a fearsomelooking control panel containing anything up to 50 switches. On one side, he usually has two turntables, and on the other, banks of records, and a turning file full of jingles, time-chimes, sound effects, and all the things a listener takes for granted. And all the time he is broadcasting a disc jockey njust keep in mind the basic rules: treat the microphone as a friend, never go silent, never start a record at the absolute beginning, suit your voice to the record, He needs more than just technical skill, too. “A lot of intelligence and psychology goes into being "a disc jockey," says Dave Symonds, one of the 8.8.C.’s youngest and most popular record-spinners. Instinctive “And if you can think and feel and care deeply about young people, you can’t be overpaid. “A good disc jockey is one

who would know instinctively what record to use as a play-out when the end of the world comes,” says Dave Bemardson, producer of some of America’s most successful record shows.

“The moment a disc jockey gets flustered, he’s lost; the listeners sense it, and lose confidence in him.”

Preparation is vitally imjortant. A good disc jockey may spend an entire day sorting out records to be played and will arrive at the studio at least two hours before the broadpast.

Established record - spinners will listen to about 100 records a week, and pick a combination of what they like and what they think the public will like.

Enormous pressure

The pressure on them from the commercial record companies is enormous, but all disc jockeys say that they are able to resist all entreaties from the songpluggers. “Out of the question.” says Pete Murray, at 41 still one of the most popular disc jockeys on the British scene. “Very few of us are influenced by the pluggers. “So far as I am concerned, I don’t mind taking a lunch from a plugger, but if I don’t like his record I certainly won’t play it.” Pete Murray believes that not everyone likes disc jockeys to pour out highpressure chat every second of their shows. “There’s still plenty of room,” he says, “for the nice friendly guy with a sense of humour.

“There aren’t too many of us around,” he says. “If I make a mistake I admit it and say I’m sorry. “People like people who make mistakes because it assures them that I’m human as they are, and not a dignified voice dressed up in his vocal Sunday best, so to speak.”

The gimmicks

But gimmicks are still a disc jockey’s best friend. Emperor Rosko in real life, the son of film-producer Joseph Pasternak, and a top French and British disc jockey conducts most of his broadcasts in rhyme. And Jimmy Savile, £40,000-a-year former miner and scrap-metal hawker, dyes his hair according to his mood, appears regularly as a professional wrestler and goes even more regularly to church on Sunday. But today, whatever his gimmick, the disc jockey is everyone’s friend. The multimillion pop-music industry dances to his tune, and in a recent international poll, the disc jockey came second only to the pop singer as “the folk-hero of our time.” But it’s hard work. Recently, a trainee undergoing a disc jockey course fainted during a session. Disc jockeys go out of fashion, too. Apart from the perennial stalwarts, few young disc jockeys last more than three years.

“Any disc jockey who doesn’t feel a moment of panic when the red light goes on,” says Dave Bernardson, “is either a liar, or too thick to last in the business very long!”