Over the past week or so, Ears To The House has been keeping an eye on the latest drama to unfold over on the soap opera that is Twitter. And no, we’re not talking about Elon Musk putting in and taking out changes at a whim whilst apparently trying to run the whole social network on a remaining staff of around three.

We’re talking about Michael Gracioppo, a former DJ who now spends his time teaching other DJs how to improve their own game. Gracioppo himself was a DJ and producer, even providing Resident Advisor with a podcast in August 2015. These days, he styles himself on Twitter as someone who helps “House and Techno DJs Get Bigger” whilst very much attempting not to smile in any of his pictures.

Inevitably, this has riled some people up. And Gracioppo isn’t helping his own case much either. Last week, he told Terry Farley that “he may have some work to do in the studio first” – apparently being unaware that Farley was one of the first house DJs to come out of the UK. This was the exchange…

And now sticking her beak into the situation is dance music press darling Annabel Ross. She sent him a tweet and he responded offering an interview where she could put all her questions to him. Being a journalist, one would imagine Ross would happily accept the offer and make the arrangements for an interview to happen, right?

Erm, that would be a no. For reasons best known to herself, Ross wishes to do the interview on the telephone – recording the conversation so as to have a transcript to work from. But Gracioppo appears to prefer the idea of doing it on a live stream – and Ross now appears to be under the impression he only wants to do an interview to promote himself.

Now, she is absolutely correct in one aspect – Gracioppo is clearly after attention and promotion here. But he’s far from the only one – most interviews in this scene are done solely for this purpose, hence why Ears To The House simply doesn’t do them. Are those DJs and producers who get interviewed for the likes of Mixmag doing it just for the love? We all know they’re not – there’s usually a release or a tour or something to be plugged.

Yet we don’t see journalists in the dance music press getting angry about this. They’re usually more than happy to play along with this mostly PR company led charade – but when someone particularly shameless about self-promotion comes along, they suddenly refuse to do it anymore. Dance music press hacks still like to think of themselves as the gatekeepers to information about this scene, despite it not being 1998 anymore.

It remains to be seen whether Resident Advisor will take up his public offer of an interview. A source at the publication told Ears To The House simply that “There were a few laughs at the idea”…