The Super Bowl Halftime Show – a quick history
The NFL Super Bowl halftime show is one of the biggest entertainment moments of the year, right in the middle of one of the essential sporting dates in the calendar. The greatest musicians and performers in musical history have performed there, creating some truly memorable moments along the way.
The half time show as we now know it really started to emerge in 1991, with the appearance of New Kids On The Block. The following year, Gloria Estefan performed a couple of her hits. But the real start of it all was Michael Jackson in 1993, and his mind-blowing entrance at the Pasadena Rose Bowl, before a mini-set of some of his biggest hits. This show had a considerable impact on the ratings, and from then on, huge effort was made to secure a superstar to perform in the halftime show.
Since then, everyone from the Rolling Stones to Paul McCartney to Beyonce to Bruce Springsteen has performed, cramming as many hits as possible into their tiny time-slot.
It has led to some iconic moments, although not always with the outcomes they hoped for – the scandal around Janet Jackson’s supposed “wardrobe malfunction” rumbled on for months, and had a serious impact on her career. Which seems a bit unfair, when it was Justin Timberlake that yanked her top off…
Arguably the greatest of all the halftime shows came from The Purple One, Prince. A simply sensational performance, embracing the torrential downpour perfectly, with the stunning climax of Purple Rain topping off the sort of show that made him the legendary figure he is. The story behind that show is worth listening to as well.
Occasionally you get a real curveball, such as when Lady Gaga was picked for the halftime show. But, you know what? She smashed it – maybe not an obvious fit for a Super Bowl, but what a bonkers, brilliant show she put on!
The Super Bowl halftime show is now a genuine institution, and in Miami 2020 they have Jennifer Lopez and Shakira sharing the stage – given how many hits they have to choose from, it should be a big one!
Snickers bite off more than they can chew…
The Super Bowl is just around the corner, so huge brands have their massive budgets twitching, ready to try and cash in on the incredible hype around the half-time show and one of the biggest sporting events on the planet. As a long-time Raider, I’m trying to work out how to ensure that both the 49ers and Chiefs lose horribly, but failing that I will simply focus on the entertainment in the middle of the game.
Low-quality chocolate brand Snickers have waddled into this arena, and taken a huge dump on the DJs of the world – naturally the DJs picked that dump up, and threw it right back at Snickers, in the face.
Check out their tweet
If digging a huge hole can get adult children to finally move out of their
parents’ houses, then we’ve done our part to fix the world. What would you dig for? #SnickersFixtheWorld pic.twitter.com/R2cmeUlO1t— SNICKERS (@SNICKERS) January 21, 2020
Plenty of DJs had things to say about this – and rightly so. DJing is a great job to have if you can pull it off, but also a very insecure job, with unsociable hours, volatile employers, few workers rights, and many other unglamorous realities. But it provides people with fun, with excitement, with release after a hard week at work, and so much more.
The excellent Philly DJ Cosmo Baker went in to bat for the DJ community, and provided a brilliant insight into what he calls “working class DJs”.
Here’s the first tweet, of a long thread laying out his case
Hi @SNICKERS – Cosmo here. Hope everyone on your team is doing well on this Tuesday morning. I’m doing fine, thank you. And although I don’t really have the time today I think that I’ll make the time for you. Please read along and maybe float this up the flagpole.:. https://t.co/9Nzb1j4VLW
— COSMO BAKER (@CosmoBaker) January 28, 2020
And for those who find Twitter threads tricky to read, I unrolled the thread here…
There’s some real food for thought in these words, for DJs and non-DJs alike.
And, in case you didn’t already know, Cosmo Baker is a fucking great DJ!
A DJ Bag for Mental Health
What’s up everyone? My name is Patrick and I go by DJ AndOne. I’m an editor and content manager here for Heavy Hits and recently felt the need to write about some solutions I’ve found in hopes that it could help some of you in the near future.
Fair warning – this is not going to be some stereotypical list about how you need to get sleep, stay hydrated, etc. (all important things). But rather a more itemized list of little things I keep in my DJ bag to help through any mental health struggles I may have on gig days.
1. Pack of Gum
I always keep one full pack of gum on me at all times during a gig because if you get nervous or are experiencing anxiety, you tend to easily get cottonmouth which can cause issues when you’re talking on the mic. Chewing gum allows your mouth to salivate helping to fix this problem and not cause as much distress if you need to MC anything.
2. Hand Gripper
This is something I use all the time. If you squeeze the hand gripper for one minute in each hand four times, it can serve as a physical release of tension within the body and actually slow down your heart rate. Great for pre-show nerves.
3. Rubik’s Cube
This one may sound a little nerdy. But it’s important to occupy your mind with something if you’re just sitting around waiting for the show to start. If you keep dwelling about being anxious or whatever else it is. It’s only going to distract you. You don’t need to get a Rubix Cube and break a damn world record. But just find a little something you can do to help keep you engaged nd focused on what’s in front of you.
4. Anytime Fitness Membership
The reason I put this on here is because sometimes when I travel for a gig. I set all my stuff up and am sweaty and disgusting, but have nowhere to shower and get ready. If you get an Anytime Fitness membership, you have 24/7 access to a shower and a private bathroom. This same idea applies to Planet Fitness and many other gyms. Find a gym like that in your region with multiple locations because this really comes in handy (especially if you’re doing a wedding).
5. Headspace App
This is something that has helped me tremendously. I took up meditation a few years ago and it has done wonders for me in the long run. The app is packed with different long-term programs, as well as exercises as short as 3 minutes to help you step back and take a breather. I have it on my phone and use it almost every day, but if you can’t get to yours, you can login on your laptop and do a guided meditation on there.
I hope this brief list of things I use has encouraged you to try at least one of these out. As my Dad once said, “You’ll never get anywhere by stopping, but you will by starting.” So, do yourself a favor and start to try different things to help you manage any nerves or issues you have before you get behind the decks. Hit me up on Instagram @djandonemusic if you ever want to talk about things or if you have any questions.
Peace Out!
– DJ AndOne
Happy Birthday DJ Jazzy Jeff!
There’s a LOT of DJs out there, but few have done it as long, or do it as well, as the magnificent DJ Jazzy Jeff. And today, January 22nd, is his birthday, so here’s a little Heavy Hits blog tribute to the great man!
Jeff is a great example to any DJ out there – he has a career spanning multiple decades, taking in multiple facets of the music (and indeed TV!) world. He’s perhaps most famous for his role as himself on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, as Will Smith’s friend – and of course, before that he was known as his DJ.
Interestingly, they started their career at a time where the DJ was given front billing – their early records are billed DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince – how times changed over the years! They had instant success in the mid ’80s, even winning Grammys for Parents Just Don’t Understand and Summertime, as well as a string of great hits before splitting up in 1994, so that Will Smith could pursue his acting career more fully.
Jazzy Jeff first became interested in DJing at the age of 10, from attending block parties in Philadelphia, his home town. “At summer time block parties I wouldn’t be the one dancing, I sat where the DJ was set up, watching him. Even when I would go to other block parties in other neighborhoods I was still infatuated with the DJ. He was the guy that played music that everyone in the neighborhood loved. You might not have known his face, you might not have known his name but he was the guy that made everyone move.”
Along with fellow Philadelphian DJ Cash Money, Jeff helped popularise the “transformer scratch” (originally called this as 1980s mixer faders meant that it was easier to use the phono/line “transform” switch rather than cut on the crossfader). Anyone who watches Jazzy Jeff will see what a master he is of transforming – often an overlooked scratch amid the more flashy crabs and orbit flares, but a phenomenally versatile and funky technique when mastered. His use of this can be seen plenty in his legendary Run DMC – Peter Piper routine.
In the time since Will Smith went his own way, Jazzy Jeff maintained his own excellent career, including some brilliant productions, often jazzy, headnodding hip hop or R&B, but sometimes dipping into soulful house and disco, even recording a DJ Jazzy Jeff In The House mix for Soul Heaven. In hip hop, he was worked with many of the best names from the indie hip hop scene, as well as identifying certain superstar talents very early on…
While he maintained a relationship with Will Smith (producing a few tracks, and scratching on others), his profile definitely dipped slightly in the 2000s, even though he continued touring and producing to a high standard.
Then Red Bull 3style brought him in as a key part of their competition, introducing him to a new generation of DJs as a respected elder statesman – and in fact, I actually had to follow his unbelievable 2 hour warm up set in Paris in 2010 when I was the opening contestant in the first 3style World Final! Never have I been so nervous in my life… Since striking up this relationship with 3style, Jeff has toured relentlessly (usually with legendary freestyle rapper MC Skillz alongside), and emerged as something of a godfather figure for DJs around the world.
There are many reasons for this, and I think its worth talking about them a bit. For a start – his incredible work ethic, and devotion to staying interested in new music, while still dipping into his crates for classics and rarities from the past. A lot of DJs are one or the other – a “heritage act” trading solely in nostalgia, or obsessed with only playing the latest tunes. He could easily rest on his laurels and phone it in for the rest of his career, but he chooses not to. And his openness to the new is exemplified by the fact that he is one of the earliest adopters of Serato, catching plenty of flak from purists and luddites.
Another crucial element of why Jeff is so beloved is just his mindset and demeanour. He could easily become arrogant after the career he has had. But he is famously approachable and friendly. The first time I DJ’d with him was around 2004, alongside a certain trailblazing New York DJ who is almost as famous in the industry for being a total douchebag (as well as more or less inventing DJing as we know it today). This other DJ turned up, insulted everyone, mocked and bullied a sound guy who was simply trying to help him set up, and then was a problem for everyone who had to deal with him that night (and this wasn’t a one off – he’s been the same the subsequent times I’ve been on a bill with him).
Jeff, by contrast, turned up all smiles. Him and his tour manager showed me a better way to set up my needles to avoid them skipping, then gave me props (and a pull up!) on my first track selection (DITC – Day One in case you wondered). He played a set that blew everyone in the building away, then stuck around signing autographs after the show ended. This has been the same at every other time I’ve played with him, or indeed bumped into him out and about (as happened in a sneaker store in London 6 months after the 3style final!). He’s genuinely an example to any DJ about how to behave around other DJs, promoters, sound techs and fans. Stay humble, work hard, be nice to people. As he says, “When you are blessed with a gift, it is your obligation to share it, it’s your obligation to take care of it, it’s your obligation to pay it forward.”
This wholesome attitude, and his devotion to the craft of DJing, has found a new outlet in recent years – his Playlist Retreat. In 2015 he launched an annual retreat where he invited progressive musical artists from all over the world to join him and explore inspiration and collaboration.
So for all these reasons and more, we should celebrate the life and career of one of the greatest to ever do it. Happy Birthday DJ Jazzy Jeff!
Serato Celebrates 20th Birthday, and Serato x Phase collab!
Serato has been a fixture of the DJ landscape for 2 decades, and they have marked this anniversary with a special documentary charting the birth and development of their revolutionary product. It’s a fascinating insight to how they created it, and the resistance and snobbery that early adopters like Jazzy Jeff ran into from vinyl purists! Check out part 1
Serato (and other DVS systems like it) completely changed the DJ game, and enabled a style of DJing that previously was basically impossible, especially for touring DJs. The DJs who blazed a trail and troubleshooted out in the wild for Serato deserve a lot of credit when there was so much resistance to this change.
Serato x Phase
Less revolutionary, but equally fascinating and innovative, is Phase – the remarkable gadgets that enable DJs to use Serato on decks without requiring needles, eliminating problems with badly kept decks causing signal issues, needle skips, and a million other little foibles that Serato/vinyl DJs will be familiar with. It was exciting enough, but they’ve worked out a deal and a system whereby setup is even easier, with no RCA cables required, just USB.
Phase has had a tricky first year or two out in the market – lots of DJs complaining about dropouts – but with native Serato support, that can only mean good things for the compatibility and stability of the product. Apparently it’s a few months away, and the initial version of Phase had all sorts of delays, so don’t put all your eggs in this basket – but definitely keep an eye out, as this is a really remarkable piece of kit for scratch DJs.
Cloud Mixing – what does the future hold for DJs?
DJs have a strange relationship with technology.
On one hand – without the technological innovations of pitch controls and direct drive turntables, would DJing have ever taken off in the way it did? It’s an artform entirely build around technology.
On the other, any new tech today is generally greeted with a chorus of “THAT’S NOT REAL DJing!” from crusty old veterans of the game. The snobbishness about CDJs has only recently gone away, and lots of CDJ users are sniffy about those who use a laptop to store their music. And let’s not even go near the sync debate! 
But one thing is for sure – technology will carry on moving forward at the speed of light, and one of the innovations that seems inevitable is “cloud DJing”. That is, playing music streamed directly from the internet. This opens up a whole world of opportunities, and also pitfalls (will we ever again be able to say to a requester “sorry, not got it”?). The recent Denon SC6000 and SC6000m include wifi as standard, so this is clearly seen as a key part of the future, and Serato has long had a tie-in with Tidal. Once 5G is standard around the world, with the speeds that will bring, this will make this revolution seem the obvious option, vs carrying music around physically, like some sort of caveman.
This fantastic article by Declan McGlynn in DJ Mag explores the implications of cloud DJing in real depth, and is well worth your time. It touches on the analytics side – being able to know who is playing which songs, where, for how long, where are cue points, when are they mixing out. There will be mountains of data from such a service, which should help royalties go to the correct artists, and enable DJs and artists to work out where to arrange gigs and tours more accurately.
The biggest obvious benefit for DJs is having access to such a vast library of music – basically, any tunes on whatever platforms become available to mix with. Quite how this works financially will be interesting to unpack – but it seems likely that it will be a subscription model, with royalties to artists proportionately, based on what DJs actually play. Given how many DJs only play pirated music, that’s a net win for producers getting something financially, even if the rewards of services like Spotify are notoriously low, unless they clock up vast numbers!
With AI and machine learning, there are other implications for DJs to consider though – will this create a situation where an automated DJ-bot can more accurately mix and blend, and understand how to react to different times in different venues, after analysing the sets and mixing of thousands, maybe millions, of DJs? Will it be able to sync to CCTV to work out what is needed, and switch from bar grooves to dancefloor killers? Apparently versions of this tech are already in situ in places in Las Vegas, and most likely elsewhere too.
How to respond to this? Denial is always a popular tactic – “It’ll never happen!”
And maybe that’s true… But a safer approach – make yourself indispensable.
Heavy Hits obviously provides you with lots of ways to personalise your sets vs the tunes you will find on Spotify – acapella in/out edits, transition edits, and the kind of knowledge in our playlists that gives you access to the libraries of some of the best DJs in the world!
Build your stage presence, work on mic skills, get involved with promotion – whatever it is, make yourself unique enough that a machine playing from iTunes isn’t going to have a chance in hell of replicating your value, no matter how good the AI!
Pioneer DJM-V10 Mixer Launch
We said it was that time of year because of NAMM, and here we go! Pioneer have unveiled a stunning looking new mixer, the DJM-V10
This looks like a serious unit, presumably aiming to become the installation mixer of choice for dance music clubs around the world, and with some fascinating features to cope with the modern DJing landscape. It doesn’t appear to be a direct replacement or successor to the very popular DJM900 range, but you would imagine that it will prove very popular with house, disco and techno DJs.
6 channels, each with a brand new 4 band EQ, switchable HP/LP filters for each channel (so you get the full range of the knob, rather than half HP/half LP as on the DJM900), an EQ section for the monitor, dual headphone inputs for B2Bs, 3 band isolater EQ on the master, a revamped and expanded FX section with sends on each channel (you can use FX units, guitar pedals, and even smartphone apps it seems!). There is a compressor on each channel, which will make mixing older tracks with modern, better produced tracks a LOT easier – that can only be good news for crate diggers around the world!
It’s also Serato and Traktor-ready.
It’s not exactly a budget mixer, the list price clocking in at $3199/£2799, but it looks like a serious piece of kit – I can’t wait to have a go on one!
Check out their video here
Rane Seventy mixer launch, with amazing new DJ Craze routine
It’s that time of the year that DJs love – NAMM is here, and with it, all sorts of announcements and unveilings about incredible new DJ toys to play with.
For a long time, the Pioneer DJM S9 has been the dominant scratch mixer in the market, but it wasn’t always this way – the Rane TTM57sl is a legendary piece of kit, the first mixer to include a Serato soundcard inside the mixer, and possessed a stunning fader, fantastic sounding EQs, and it was built like a tank. Their follow up mixers have been good, but never quite caught on in the same way, the DJing community seeming to prefer the DJM S9 layout and functionality.
The Rane Seventy Two went heavily in that direction, but now with the Seventy it looks like a direct challenge, and a strong one too! The EQ section has been shuffled around, they’ve cleared the clutter from around the FX paddles, and the headphone cueing is closer to the S9 style now.
The 3 faders are all brand new contactless MAG FOUR faders, with a tension adjust control for the crossfader.
For more info on the features, check out their video here
Having played on a Seventy Two quite a bit, a lot of my issues with that mixer seem to have been addressed here, and it seems that they have stayed true to their commitment to heavy duty build quality. They’ve to have adopted most of the workflow features that make people love the S9 – but it’s 2020, and you would hope that audio and build quality will have moved forward since that came out in August 2015. Rane EQs have always sounded phenomenal, and they have a well-earned reputation for making genuinely professional kit that is built to last. If you are faced with a choice between a 5 year old piece of technology, or a brand new one, you’d guess that the new one will be King – time will tell if that is the case, or indeed if Pioneer have a new mixer to reply with!
DJ Craze put together this fantastic routine for the launch, kicking off with a problem I think most DJs can relate to…
How to make your own scratch samples
One of the elements of DJing that is extremely important in order to stand out, but strangely under-used, is personalising your own scratch sentences. It’s never been simpler to do so – from TV & film dialogue, to acapellas, to even recording your own vocals, digital technology has made it really straightforward to make your own scratch sentences.
If you aren’t sure how to do this yourself, Odyssey113 has taken the time to make an easy-to-follow Youtube tutorial. Check it out!
Denon release new flagship media players – SC6000 & SC6000M
Ahead of NAMM, Denon this week launched it’s new media players, the SC6000 and SC6000M (which features a motorised, vinyl-esque platter).
Pioneer have enjoyed a vice-like grip on much of the modern DJ tech scene, but Denon are doing their best to make inroads, with some very well-respected products. These new players really look very interesting indeed.
They feature huge 10.1″, impressive touch screens, with pinch & zoom functionality. The motorised platter on the SC6000M will be of huge interest to DJs who like to cut it up, there’s something about that which normal CDJ-type platters struggle to replicate – Rane 12s are fantastic to play with, and these go for something similar, just with a smaller, 8.5″ platter.
The design is much slicker, with a far more impressive black finish than previous models, and apparently an upgrade on the buttons and pads. They also feature built in WiFi, to stream music live, and as well as the traditional USB and SD card inputs, they include an HD bay within the unit. For a full breakdown of the features, head here
Whether they can make a substantial dent in the market remains to be seen, but it’s great to see companies pushing things forward. Your move, Pioneer…