by RAF KATIGBAK

Hey, guys. It's me again, your friendly neighbourhood international DJ superstar. I know it's actually been over a month since my last newsletter but this month's been killer (Moscow, London, Berlin and some 20,000-person festival in some buttfuck nowhere town where nobody even spoke English.) I know what you're thinking - he's really got it good. Right now he's writing this newsletter in the back of a stretch Escalade with his laptop propped up on the back of a stripper and his biggest worry is that if he types too hard, all the cocaine will fall off her ass. Well, you're wrong. First of all, it's a stretch Hummer and second, being an international DJ superstar isn't all it's cracked up to be.

First of all, the physical strain. Everyone knows that an average record weighs 115 grams, right? Well, imagine carrying 200 of those records. That's a whopping 23,000 grams (to put it in perspective, imagine one gram and multiply that by 23,000)! Then imagine hiring someone else full-time who's big enough to carry that kind of weight back and forth from your Hummer to the DJ booth and you can understand the kind of stress I'm under!

Also, you probably don't realize it, but international DJ superstars are under the same kind of daily decision pressure as doctors and heads of state. For example, that recent DJ magazine photo shoot - you know, the one where I was staring off into the distance as the sun set on a non-descript major metropolis behind me. That was a particularly hard one to do because the sun was just so all up in my face. Okay, so just wear sunglasses, right? Well, which shades do I wear? The silver wrap-around Oakleys or the metallic blue wrap-around Oakleys?

Being an international DJ superstar also takes superhuman patience. I don't know many people who would be able to keep their cool when they find out that their rider requests were not followed to the letter. What's really important is to keep in mind that yelling at the promoter won't make the two Sri Lankan prostitutes suddenly materialize, or all the green M&Ms disappear from the bowl. All this to say that instead of envying the fact that I get paid more for one night of playing records than most people make in their entire lives, why not stop, take a second and think about this: 23,000 grams, there and back!

P.S. If you're in Montreal, make sure you drop by the new Thursday-night weekly upstairs at Saphir, where DJs from a cross-section of crews have formed a sort of "coalition of the chillin'." Combining talent from the IDJ, Kops, Broken, MontrealElectro, Level 4 and Musique Risquée camps, among others, Mix Thursdays promises to be a solid smorgasbord of sounds. With so much local talent under one banner, my only question is: why haven't the international DJ superstars been invited?

UNTIL NEXT MONTH, DEAR READERS, REMEMBER: SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL (AND INTERNATIONAL SUPERSTAR) DISC JOCKEY! Diskoakimbo@sympatico.ca

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