"Clubs suck ass": Former Albertan says Vancouver DJs don't take song requests (VIDEO)
Want to listen to the new Barbie soundtrack at the club this weekend? According to a new online debate, you have a better chance of getting your request played if you live in Calgary or Edmonton versus Vancouver.
This stems from a recent social media post that is getting a lot of attention over the claims that Vancouver DJs “suck ass” because they don’t take song requests.
TikTok user @inquarantine69 posted a video, which has gotten more than 24,000 views, in which she drags Vancouver’s DJs through the mud.
“You want to know what my beef with Vancouver nightlife is? It’s not like that there’s a lack of places to go out to, it’s just that every place that you can go out to has a DJ who is a ‘Vancouver DJ’ which means they made a pretentious little premade set that they are deadset on playing for the entire night so you can’t go up and request songs at all,” she said.
@inquarantine69trying to find a place to go out dancing for my birthday is a nightmare in vancouver♬ original sound – syd…… maybe…..
“So they play their shitty little house music that no one f**king knows all night and the clubs suck ass,” she added.
“I started going to go to clubs when I lived in Alberta and say what you will about that janky ass province but… you can go up and request a song every 30 seconds and they will play it — they will play it every single time,” she said.
Some people agreed with her.
“Yeah going out in [Van] is such a disaster. I’m thinking of doing house parties soon could keep you posted,” they said.
“[Would] it kill them to play Rihanna just 1 time,” a person asked.
“I literally call them elevator music djs. I do not miss,” another said.
Do Vancouver clubs suck because the DJs don’t take requests? We turned to DJ Flipout, co-host of the 5 O’Clock Traffic Jam on 94.5 Virgin Radio, to give us some insight.
“I thought it was funny,” the longtime DJ said about the video.
Vancouver’s longest-running live mix show on the radio, The 5 O’Clock Traffic Jam featuring Amy Spencer and DJ Flipout. (iheartradio.ca)
“Somebody may have dismissed her and she made up a whole scenario,” he said.
He says in all of his three decades in the nightclub scene, he’s never heard of a DJ who doesn’t take requests.
“She assumes that the DJ has a premade set that they’re trying to stick to really hard. I don’t know where she got this idea from,” he said.
“I don’t think there’s a DJ who’s playing in a pub or in a club…Â that has a set that they have predetermined, like the exact order they’re going to play in and they can’t deviate from that because they’re not skilled enough to to take any on-the-spot requests,” he said, adding he still takes requests and it depends on the song.
Whereas her argument that DJs in Alberta are endlessly taking requests, Flipout says that takes all the creativity and artistry out of it.
“I think that feeling entitled to go up to a person who’s playing the music and demand that they listen to what you want to hear in a club in a venue full of other people is, is the entitlement is through the roof,” he said.
“You’re literally telling someone how to do their job,” he said.
Flipout in 2017. @paulwijsen/Facebook
The idea that everyone is using a premade set isn’t just unique to Vancouver. DJ Flipout says there are misconceptions about the industry and even a division among those within it. The emergence of so-called “plug and play” DJs has arrived on a massive scale, and raves, which used to be illegally held off Industrial Ave, are now big-ticket shows in legitimate venues.
Many of them perform with minimal gear on stage, maybe even just a laptop and no turn tables, and dance or wear costumes in front of thousands of people in stadiums.
“When huge name DJs — Swedish House Mafia, David Guetta, whoever you want to name — they have a whole production that’s involved with them. So yeah, sometimes they will have their set mapped out because they have visuals, they have fireworks, they have pyro techniques, like they have things mapped out that needs to go exactly as planned.”
David Guetta live concert in 2015. Melinda Nagy/Shutterstock
“It’s [a] completely different thing than going to a club and you don’t know who the DJ is. You’re not paying for the DJ, you’re paying to go to the club,” he said, adding that it isn’t just about one person’s experience.
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“If you want to hear a song that you know, that you love, then that’s fine. Requests are fine but demanding something from someone is crazy,” he said.
“What if the song you’re telling them [to play] isn’t a good one?”
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