As Ears To The House has pointed out in the past, Defected’s social media strategy includes posting a lot of content which has nothing to do with the label at all. Whilst this may seem odd and counter productive, it does help Defected to remain best friends with social media algorithms.

And whilst the label’s social media pages do occasionally find some interesting material to post, they’re not terribly good at crediting their original sources. Now, over the past day or so, you might have seen Defected sharing this video of an older gentleman apparently having the time of his life listening to a DJ set by Hernan Cattaneo…

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cgb899qIkU8/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

But who is he? Ears To The House decided to take a few stills from this video and put them into a reverse image search – and we’re glad we did, because the story which came out of this very rudimentary piece of research was fascinating.

We can reveal the man in question is called Johan De Vries – and celebrated his 90th birthday back in May. Not only that, but his “dream to dance on this magical island” he refers to as Ibiza came true this month. His interest isn’t new, either – he first became interested in techno at the age of 71.

Speaking in 2020, he spoke about how life had become “monotonous” during the pandemic. Whereas he previously went out three times a week, he now stayed in watching TV. And he also reveals “I don’t use drugs and don’t drink alcohol at parties. Alcohol gives me heavy legs. I just drink soda and alternate it with water.”. Perhaps Generation Z have it right, after all?

And let’s not forget Johan De Vries is far from alone in reminding everyone that dance music is not the sole preserve of the young – Patricia Lay Dorsey, known as Grandma Techno, comes to mind as well…