Red Rack 'Em is enjoying the DJ life, just without the excess that comes with it

My good friend Alex Kenning, aka Lex Luca, posted a new profile pic on Facebook last week: the classic head in hands remorseful DJ pose. I described it as the ‘Oh no, I have to get a flight in two hours and I didn’t even use my hotel’ look. His reply: ‘You know them ones!’. Oh, but I do. I fucking do.

I’ve just finished playing at Batofar in Paris where the backstage is crazy. The promoters are young, massively up for a party and alas (once again) I get swept along with their youthful exuberance. The next day, I check out of my untouched
hotel room and then have to do an in-store DJ set at La Source Records. Air France lost my bag on the way, so I play with borrowed records, sweating and dizzy. It’s not much fun.

Friday afternoon in the studio. The phone rings. “Can you be at the airport in one hour? Lone is ill so we need you to cover for him at our biggest party of the year”. I am the last minute headliner at a huge Mutant Disco party in the Tallinn docklands area. After my set, I end up playing a super fun drunken b2b with a local DJ outside in the morning sunshine. Some girl randomly kisses me while I’m playing (and posts a photo of it on Facebook – how degrading). It’s like those US movies about EDM DJs, but with good music.

I spend the afternoon with some really rough Russians, hanging out in a car park drinking straight vodka. All sorts of naughtiness ensues. I have to fly back to Berlin via a two-hour transfer in Frankfurt to play at the Sweatlodge showcase at
://about blank. I have no memory of the journey. I arrive to Iron Curtis smashing it and then have to play 3am to 6am. I play well, but it takes all of my inner strength to hold it together.

I guess you get the picture. I have many more stories like this. Hundreds. Most of which I can barely remember. I am a DJ. It’s my job. I am not expecting any sympathy, and I know it’s all a bit ‘@DJsComplaining’, but it does start to hurt when you hit 40.

What happens when the goalposts move? When you have a wife, four remixes to deliver in one month, a top PR company to liaise with, management offers to vet, three labels to run. Things. Change. Hello allergic rhinitis, The Power Of Now and CBT.

I’ve undergone a pretty arduous transformation over the last two years. I tackled it all head-on by being completely sober, and focusing on making better records and playing the best DJ sets I could. I also began meditating, reading books on mindfulness and studying relaxation techniques. It wasn’t easy at first, as clubs are super-intense places full of intoxicated people and it felt a bit stiff without a few shots before the gig. But I began to see things in a different light. Now I feel so much more conscious when I play and as a consequence, I can remember all those precious little moments in each DJ set. I think it’s made me a much better DJ, and also a much more solid and professional person.

Unfortunately it’s often hard to get that across to people. They miss ‘the old Danny’. Truth is, I do too sometimes. There’s still an expectation that you’re gonna stay up all night and have a sweaty flight home. The sad truth is it’s totally expected that DJs will stay up for three days hoovering up most of their fee with random kids half their age. We should all know better really. We really should. But being paid a month’s wages for two hours’ work and being able to play ‘Too Shy’ by Kajagoogoo and get away with it does, unbelievably, have its drawbacks.

‘Self Portrait’ by Red Rack ’Em is out now on Bergerac