BEATS OF LOVE
178. Halucifuge (Freaky Chicken Peck) by Freaky Chakra
MEMORY CAN be cruel. I still wince, reflecting on my first failed attempt at DJing in February 1994.
It mattered to me coz I still recall the tunes I played to my imagined audience that sounded groundbreaking and brilliant. Then the same tunes played in reality a week later, with Jeff and Tim, which were met with the kind of polite blankness that is worse than hostility. Real DJs sound like their home cities. I sounded like nowhere at all, and the faces in that Oldham boozer knew it.
Freaky Chakra's tremendous Halucifuge (Freaky Chicken Peck) should not have followed the mighty Augustus Pablo. It didn't, because I was too dumbstruck with nerves to cue it up myself, and had to tap Jeff on the head to do it for me. I had spun Keith Richards, reasoning that a boozer deserved at least one rock moment, snobbery be damned. I also had a mad desire to share Plank's futuristic acid track Cosmic Reflections, optimistic, given the PA sounded like it had been rescued from a school disco. Real DJs aren't incoherent. They tell stories and check the sound.
I ended on a sort of high with U-N-I (You And I) awe-inspiring Don't Hold Back The Feeling (Key Trip Dub) and got some feet tapping. Even so, Jeff and Tim did not ask me again. They rightly left me behind and played the Wigan Pier. Jeff arrived with a crate of record-company freebies, first dibs earned simply by being the one who drove. Despite Tim having next to no records of his own, he staked his superiority on keeping more heads on the dancefloor than Jeff. Real DJs don't compete with each other; they build a relationship with the room.
I'd like to say I learned all these lessons in 1994 but it was nearer to 2024, sadly.
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