Jam-Master Raoul

This is a photo of me in what may be the job I'm most proud of from all jobs I've ever had in my life (except casino-greeter at this place...).

First, I helped liberate the Sacred Sound System at the Shamrock.
Before, if you wanted to bring music to the bar you had to either get it on CD or have one of those demonic pinko iPod thingies.

No more. I helped engineer what amounts to a computer jukebox, and installed iTunes on it. Now, any idiot with a USB cell phone or flash drive can bring in tunes.

As it happens, that idiot with a flash drive would be me. I mined the more energetic of the songs in Radio Free Raoul (a dream the remains alive...) and have been Limewiring like crazy to get more.

I've gotten good help. It happened by happy coincidence that some of my friends here turned out to be DJs at other local clubs...so I asked them who they  like to listen to. Loops, and especially Con, have added vast masses of incredibly cool stuff to my repertoire. (To DJ well, you can't just have amazing taste in music...you also have to have amazing taste in friends...) I've turned on to more new (to me) music in the last 3 weeks then I've ventured in the last 10 years. I've discovered something very important: Somewhere in the last couple of years, new music seems to have suddenly stopped sucking!
(Or maybe I just get away from the wife and re-learn how to have fun again?)

I got yer Nine Inch Nails, baby. I got yer Pharcyde and yer Ol' Dirty Bastard and yer Liz Phair and yer Tool and yer Juke Kartel and yer Offspring and yer Method Man and yer Arctic Monkeys. I got classic rock for miles. I got jazz and soul and blues and a bit of country. I got Cuban, Mexican, Cajun Zydeco, Arabic, Dixieland, Big Band, all kinds of Celtic ...stuff from everywhere.
Amazingly, maybe the most popular tunes I got are...yes...Bollywood remixes. Forget what you think of Bollywood music...it's not all silly overproduced weirdness featuring Indian women screeching through their noses. The best of it rocks...and rocks hard.

So now, one or two nights a week, I'm the new DJ at the Shamrock Bar.

I can't tell you what a rush this job is.
You're in a great bar. You're dodging the goddamn bats. A lot of your friends are hanging around, plus a lot of other cool folks spanning a huge range of ages and countries...and EVERY SINGLE SONG that plays is one of your favorites, all played over a kickass professional-grade industrial-strength sound system you couldn't dream of having at home. When a song starts you hear applause and people saying 'Yeah!'. Heads be bobbin' all around you. This song has all the little sweet thangs up and shakin' what their Mamas gave 'em; the last song had the table with a few grey hairs up reminding us how cool the Jitterbug could be.
I should be paying them to let me do this.

So, here I'm is at my station, tending the Sacred Sound System...the place where maybe right now I feel the happiest I've felt in a very long time.

The drink is non-alcoholic.
But some of you might want to try reading a few Chinese cough syrup labels.

Sacred Sound System...??
Looks like a computer to me!!

I keep forgetting about music. I must get some.

Looks like a computer to me!!

It IS a computer...plugged into a mixing board and and a bunch of big amps and a roomful of enormous speakers.

Yeah, well I knew that.

Cool. Though I thought the topic referred more of Raoul's new shiny motorcycle causing the traffic jam due to public mass-jealousy 

DJing is soooo cool Raoul. It's god-like.  If you havent' already seen God is a DJ on YouTube check it out: http://youtube.com/watch?v=BfX-s4dcYBg

Sounds like fun man, that bar was always fun, but the music was lacking; sounds like you've fixed that problem

Funny, you know, but my English cousin said something similar about being a DJ.

He has an advanced degree from London college of arts or some such fine institution.

He worked as an artist, clothes designer, other things. He said the job making the most money was traveling shoe salesmen, the most fun was traveling DJ, although in good times it made as much. He did it for about ten years I think. I don't recall why he stopped - he was out of work and enjoying spending his savings when I was in the UK. Maybe his liver was giving way, or all the new venereal diseases were becoming a worry.

Sounded like fun.

But then, I have terribly noncommercial and unpopular taste in music. I only like listening to stuff I like. I hate the other stuff. I would have an audience of me.

I kinda have the same thing, really...I listen to a lot of obscure stuff that a lot of other folks can't stand. And my rule is: If I don't like it myself, I ain't playin' it.

But I guess I'm lucky in that I can spot good stuff in almost any genre of music, and my combination of advanced age and goofy refusal to face reality and grow up, may be kind of an advantage in that I seem to span the generations pretty well. My club mix ranges from Duke Ellington and Glenn Miller to Ludacris and Tool and Lords of Acid, with a bit of everything in between. Good friends, especially Con, are helping me broaden my knowledge and library quickly.
I also get some kickass requests: Check out the Dropkick Murphys some time.

I doubt this will go on forever or even for long, but I'm having a ripping good time right now. I seem to have some ability to convert a bar into a party, and it's really a rush...

I'm 50 years old and a father of 3. I have 3 uni degrees. I wore a tie for many years. I live in China...home of the dowdiest, unhippest people on the planet.
And I'm a semi-professional club DJ, playing lots of punk and hip-hop and metal.

No one could possibly  be more surprised to find me here than I am.

Dropkick Murphys... almost got my nose broken at their last Montreal show. Awesome night.

Last night was my last night as DJ at the Shamrock...at least for a little while.

It was hard to let go. The job had become less fun over time- one quickly learns that drunk people really suck, especially if you aren't one of them yourself- but I still loved it...and it was hard to let go.

But it was time. I'll be spending my remaining days here getting ready for the trip to the States. And even if I don't go, it was time to get out of the rut for a while.

Some special thanks are due here. From the Saloon, Con and his Sweet Thang (and she knows who she is), ChrisS, and other local folks were there to help see me off...and I appreciate it.
But Wags (and his lovely wife) came all the way from the extreme far other end of the province just to take in my last night. It really meant a lot to me to have you there, dude. Thank you.

What was the last track you played?

My guess is The Angels - Am I Ever Going To See Your Face Again 

I believe the last track of the night was some Dixieland 

We had a great time and the whirlwind trip was worth it to blow off the dust of this one horse town anyways. 

It was indeed...The Dukes of Dixieland's St. James Infirmary  and Tromboneum. I think Dixieland, Blues, and Hip-Hop, and maybe a tad of the right Country are late-night bar music par excellence.