The Secret DJ: Car trouble

Our driver then proposed to go wash the car and come back. There was much in the way of heated negotiations. I use the word ‘negotiations’ carefully. By it, I mean phone calls back and forth with agents in the US who were asleep. No way were these guys going to talk to the driver in person, despite the fact that he was standing right in front of them. They would talk to their representatives, and then hand the phone over to him. Then the reps would repeat what their clients had just said. It was decided that a new car should be rented at the airport there and then. The old one abandoned, a new one procured. At some expense. We were finally away! Not long later we pulled into one of Ibiza’s better hotels. Not the one I was at, of course. No, we’d passed that inferior option miles back. In went our duo and what a surprise – another hour passed. Just as I was about to gnaw my own foot off just for something to do, their many, many bags started to appear and be loaded back into our new car. At last, the poor old driver appeared. He got in, sat heavily at the wheel a sweaty mess, and in his rear-view mirror I saw a pair of eyes I have seen all too often. Not just in my own mirror, but throughout our industry. It is a look of desperation, fear and madness. Not resting on anything. The flicker is slight, you have to be a pro to see it, but it’s there. It’s the animal heart at the centre of the human brain looking for an exit, the amygdala ejector seat. He turned to me as at last the US duo approached the car…

“THE SUITE WAS TOO COLD, AHAHAHA!”

I was pretty annoyed by now, so once they were on board and we were on our way to a new hotel (yes, to be paid for again on top of the unused one) I turned to them and asked, “Room a bit chilly?” I received an appropriately cold stare.

“You can adjust the air-con, you know?” I continued. “Never known an air-con where you couldn’t”. To this, I received the immortal reply: “Not our problem.”

Let me put it like this; exposure to bigger DJs behaving terribly should be a warning, not an invitation. It helps if you constantly remind yourself you just play records. Other people’s records.