Every generation seems to be convinced that the way they learned to do things was the best one – and that most methods that followed afterwards were inevitably inferior. Cue the truly wearisome debate that’s been taking place since the early 2000s and will probably continue ad nauseam – the one about whether vinyl really was better.
Now, Ears To The House has no intention whatsoever of getting involved in this debate – our purpose in life is to inform and entertain our readers, not bore you to death. But that doesn’t mean others aren’t free to do so – and this week, DJ Pierre has certainly laid out his stall on the subject.
Taking to Facebook, he appeared to hold a toast for “all of the DJ’s who got their degrees in 1200 mixology”. This is presumably a reference to the Technics SL-1200 turntables – released in 1972 and subsequently to become a favourite of DJs learning to beatmatch.
He then went on to praise “real DJs” and blamed what he presumably sees as the dumbing down of his profession on newer DJs who “could not have made it had if not been for today’s technology, the lower standards set, the visual focus placed on the DJ him/herself over the music, and social media”.
This is a curious one. Whilst we agree entirely with DJ Pierre’s assessment that things are not what they used to be, we’re not entirely convinced by his argument that it’s just because of the way music is consumed nowadays. Even back in the vinyl era, there were DJs who knew how to choose great records to play – but had almost no idea how to actually mix them together.
This is still the case to this day, and probably always will be. But for all his fondness for vinyl records, Pierre somewhat contradicts himself in the comments section, when somebody points out he hasn’t seen anyone carrying a bag full of records into a venue for over a decade.
His response? He says “I definitely can’t say that I myself want to go back to dragging those heavy bags around again” – perhaps finally noticing that there is at least one advantage to all these advances in technology…
