interesting read. I keep hearing about that guy but never actually listen to any of his music, its interesting to note he called this out years ago.
But yeah if that's all DJing is these days well i can assume there's not much fun to it today. Sort of speculated so with all the movement and lack of scratching and knobs. In hindsight that flipping out on the stage makes a whole lot more sense now. Still fucking hilarious though
I admit that I'm not a fan of DJ performances, but I sort of think that if the audience feels like they've had a good time, I'm not sure it matters if someone has just pressed play and waved their arms around.
People might well feel that the illusion of a performance is enough to make for compelling entertainment. The lines get a bit blurry when you look at ABBA who are "touring" CGI versions of themselves performing pre recorded moves to prerecorded songs. Is that any different? Arguably at least a DJ pretending to be crafting an experience for their audience is able to react to fans, make eye contact (well, not Deadmau5), etc. But you might argue that neither has anything to do with performing music.
If you went and saw a pop singer who danced but was lip synching, there'd be a bad reaction if people found out there would be (and has been) - people would likely feel cheated. With ABBA, people know what they're getting and that all works fine. I'd say that DJ's are doing something that's got more in common with a miming pop star - they're pretending to be doing something they're not. Maybe they ought to just make their live shows more an "experience" where the focus isn't on them performing music so much as creating an audio visual experience. Maybe they could actually work out a way to do some musical performance - as in the first post.
