As Ears To The House has commented on before, DJs don’t quite follow the same rules as the rest of us. When the rest of us say we’re leaving a job, it usually means there will be a final date of work – and then we’re officially out of there. Some lucky individuals might even get a party thrown by those people who aren’t leaving in their honour.
But DJs don’t operate in this way. Instead, they make mysterious announcements via either the dance music press or social media announcing they’re “retiring”, or “resigning” from the job. Which means they’ve written out a resignation letter in their own heads and handed it to themselves – at least it saves on paper, if nothing else.
Once they’ve done this, however, the Hotel California effect soon starts to strike – which means they can check out, but they can never leave. It happened with Marshall Jefferson, it happened with Danny Tenaglia – and could the same now happen with Claude Young?
Over the weekend, the Detroit techno DJ and producer announced on social media that he’d had enough of DJing – and was getting out of the game. Speaking on his Instagram page, he condemns what he calls the “inauthentic” and “minstrelsy” culture of the DJ world.
He also speaks about how things just “don’t look underground” anymore – to which he is, of course, absolutely right. Anyone looking at our DJs Playing Badly column on Sundays can see far, far too many examples of how theatre and nonsense seem to take priority over playing decent music nowadays. None of us would be here now if the music had been no good all those years ago, remember that.
Young also took a shot at Resident Advisor’s report from over the weekend, saying “This right here is why I’m leaving. All up in the RA news feed lying about s***. My social accounts are always private, not set to public. And I have not deleted any accounts. I made a kind of joyous announcement, but if you read the article it sounds like I’m bitter or something. I f***ing hate the dance music press.”.
Our spidey-senses at Ears To The House suggest we might have finally found someone with potential immunity to the Hotel California effect – what a terrible shame we’re losing one of the better guys as a result. This industry has a lot to answer for…
