A few weeks back I was playing a gig. I've been doing that almost every week for nearly three years straight now. For the most part it is a pretty routine thing for me.

So I was quite shocked when I couldn't hear anything out of my left ear while mixing a record. At first, I thought it was the mixer at the subpar bar I was playing at. But after looking down and seeing that everything on the mixer was fine, I turned and saw my left headphone cup dangling near my chest. Just to clarify, headphones are best used over your ears, not dangling around your chest.

I thought I should write something about these busted pieces of junk, the Sony MDRV700 DJ headphones. I hope that maybe a Google search would yield a link to this post. See, this is not my first pair of headphones that has broken at the left cup (as you can see above). This is my second pair. I have some DJ friends that have gone through up to five pairs of these things. They all have broken at the left cup. Almost every DJ that buys these headphones, has them break at the left swivel point.

For me, this second pair, just breaking on my head (not even turning the headphones or anything) was enough. I'm done buying the Sony MDRV700 headphones. Obviously, Sony has to be aware of this problem, but does nothing to fix these headphones. And why should they? If people keep buying the headphones, it makes sense to have them constantly breaking.

Instead of falling for Sony's corproate chicanery for a third time, I ordered a pair of Pioneer HDJ 1000 headphones. They feel great, they sound great, and it's already obvious that they are more sturdy than those piece of crap Sony's. My advice to everyone thinking of buying DJ headphones is to ask any DJ that has been DJing for a while and using Sony headphones what pair they're on. If it's more than 2, that should be a sign that it's not worth buying two pairs of headphones when you can get a better pair for the price of one.

Blowing Up The Crowds


This weekend I logged 14.5 hours playing music for people. On Friday I played 4 hours at my usual Friday night residency at Boltini. On Sunday I did a half hour bootleg set on the Sunday Night Sound System show and the usual two hours of deliciously laid back music on my radio show Chilled Beats on WRFU. And while all of those things were nice, none of them matched what went down Saturday. Actually, no gig in Champaign in my four years of playing out has matched this Saturday.

On the 28th of April, J Phlip and I reunited for three gigs. The first was providing the music for an art show that featured works from our good friend and our personal photographer, Elise McAuley. We played a ton of stuff, including Herbert, Bjork, The El Michaels Affair, Lily Allen, Coco Rosie, Mr. Scruff, DJ Krush, Mum, and Spankrock. I probably should have recorded it, but oh well. It was a good time, and a good way to ease into what would be one of the most memorable nights in Champaign.

Next up was a gig at Boltini on the full dancefloor. After a slow start on the floor (caused largely by people wanting to either enjoy the gorgeous weather outside, or oggle at the GoGo dancers up on the bar), and then after overcoming some sound difficulties, Jess and I ripped through one of the craziest sets we've ever played together. The crowd response (pictured above) was amazing, intense, inspirational, and an enormous shot of adrenaline. We ripped that dancefloor for over about an hour and a half. It seemed like it was over in a heartbeat. I can't remember exactly every tune that we played, but it was huge.

After that, we picked up at an afterhours where we left off at Boltini... decimating a grimey basement dancefloor for an hour. I haven't seen Champaign act like this ever. It was so inspirational, and the shot of happiness and hope that I really needed (things had been slow as of late).

And for the record, all 14.5 hours of DJing were done using my new Pioneer headphones. There were no problems. Take that Sony!

For the tune for this post, I'm going to post up something that has been on blogs a bunch already, but it was one of the huge tunes of our Boltini set. People freakin went crazy on every drop in this song:

P Diddy ft. Christina Aguilera - Tell Me (Switch Remix)