In 1991, Jim Carroll wrote a piece called "Dublin Is Dead" for the Dublin Event Guide saying "come in bad Dublin indie rock, your time is up". Maybe it's time now for a similar update, a calling of time on Dublin's increasingly irrelevant, self-congratulatory, self-obsessed DJ scene. Everybody wants to be a DJ now - and because you don't have to make much effort to be one, there are countless wannabes pounding Dublin's pavements, record bags slung casually over their shoulders, talking up their next big gig. Being a DJ doesn't even involve purchasing any equipment: a limited vinyl collection and a thick neck is a great start. At least being in a band meant having to meet up in freezing garages and rehearse; and if you were the singer you normally had to come up with some songs.
I still believe in some DJs, but I think the majority are killing the goose slowly. The more pathetic DJs who stumble on to the scene and set themselves up as such, the more the public lose interest. DJs have to get it into their skulls that being a DJ in itself is no longer special and the public react accordingly. I've been gobbling up live gigs of late, with the result that I've been taunting the DJs I know with the phrase "Gigs are the new clubs". Dance music isn't dead; there are just too many dodgy DJs out there and it's just not that exciting any more.
The dance scene started very differently. When I started promoting clubs and DJ-ing in 1991 it was to pay for a free music magazine a few of us had started called Dropout, which primarily carried articles about the bands we felt weren't being covered elsewhere in Ireland - most of whom were in the business of lugging guitars around. This club we started in the then Rock Garden (now Eamon Dorans) was also called Dropout and played literally everything from Therapy? to Public Enemy to Bjork to slamming techno remixes by Ritchie Hawtin and David Holmes. For me, 1991 belonged musically to Andy Weatherall. He was everywhere - producing Primal Scream and One Dove, remixing That Petrol Emotion, My Bloody Valentine and others and coming to Dublin to play in the Temple of Sound.
I had grown up on a diet dictated by the holy indie guitar rock trinity of Hot Press, Dave Fanning and the record collections of my mates' big brothers. Public Enemy shattered all that. Their sound came from nowhere and made rubbish of supposedly important records by groups like The Replacements or whoever was getting 11 on the dice that fortnight in Hot Press. Weatherall took that further, and before we knew it we were getting far more excited playing house music than Rage Against The Machine. It was logical to us, but most of the guitar slingers we had been writing about got the hump for a while - the usual "this isn't music" line got trotted out - but we did our own thing and eventually all the rockers ended up dancing at our clubs.
That energy has been dispersed by lazy DJs. I haven't given up on DJs entirely, but now I'm far more selective and far less tolerant. The Red Settaz are a case in point of what good DJs should be doing. They are a duo, playing on three record decks instead of two. Barry specialises in deep, funky and pumping dance tunes while Dave scratches in his own layers of sound on top. Stylistically they play right across dance music's different shades; but what makes them special is the effort they put in. They rehearse, they debate, they argue, they sweat - and all this is before leaving the house for their gigs.
The Red Settaz are not alone. There are a lot of talented, hard-working, intelligent DJs out there. But time should be called on the chancers.
Brian Boyd is back next week.
