DJs: The Scourge of Mankind

I was at a wedding the other day, and there on the dance floor I met the scourge of mankind.

By scourge of mankind I mean DJs.

I come from a time when weddings used to hire live bands to play. Live bands were great. They infused the dance floor with an energy that can't be matched by recordings. Unfortunately, the live bands couldn't learn every song, and they took a lot of breaks, so they went the way of the dinosaur and evolved into discos, which were cheaper and could play any hit from the past and present as long as it was available on vinyl.

Now we have DJs.

DJs have developed the talent , for lack of a better word, of taking perfectly good songs and making them undanceable. You haven't heard anything until you've heard a n EDM version of Dolly Parton's 9 To 5. EDM , for those who don't know, stands for Electronic Dance Music not Ear Damaging M enace , like you might think.

They 'll play a song and , just as you start to get your groove on , they switch to a different song. Maybe you'll recognize the song, maybe you won't. They' re job is to fool you onto the dance floor , so they'll play something familiar but just as you're having a good time they'll switch to something even Yoko Ono calls noise.

For example, they'll play, say, The Average White Band's Pick Up The Pieces but then will add some EDM under the surface so that you're trying to dance to two separate beats at the same time, which is impossible unless you're a Chinese acrobat. And if you didn't think anyone could ruin the experience of dancing to The Village People's YMCA, guess again.

I don't know how he did it, but the DJ even EDMified Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline, a poignant yet uptempo love song Neil Diamond wrote for Caroline Kennedy after her father, President John F. Kennedy, was assasinated. One of the best concerts I've ever been to was a Neil Diamond cover band in Las Vegas. Neil Diamond's music is so good not even an impersonator could ruin it.

But the DJ was able to.

The kids, and by kids I mean everybody younger than me, all gathered in the middle of the dance floor jumping up and down like idiots yelling, "So good! So good! So good!", and you know what?

I wish I was one of them.

  

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