March 5, 2003

BACCHANAL/BEATMIX

Ahh, drunken revelry. A way of life when I was 21. Every night spent at Gord's Place, the place to be in St. Catharines if not all of Ontario, for new wave music and dancing. Who needed work when there were 2 for 1 pitchers of watered down draft beer to be drunk, cigarettes to be smoked, an overcrowded parquet dance floor demanding your attention, and all the leading edge dance tracks freshly imported from the U.K.? Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays were the busiest nights, when all the university students would flow down from the residences up on the escarpment and invade what we nightly regulars felt was 'our space'.

My favourite spot to hang out was next to the DJ booth door, watching Joffre spin his magic and learning all about what makes a good club DJ. I learned to read the crowd - gauge the reaction to certain songs, sense the mood of the group, pick up on the groove the masses on the dance floor were bopping up and down to. Watching Joffre in his craft, I soon picked up on how to 'beat-mix' - adjusting the speed of the turntable slightly so that the next song was in perfect rhythm with the current one come time to change tracks, then subtly bringing the new song back to its normal speed. Joffre was great at manually tossing in samples of songs he was planning on playing later into songs currently playing. When he did it right, and a sample got tossed to the crowd, you could feel the anticipation level rise as they knew a song they loved to bop to was coming up soon.

One Sunday afternoon, I had taken my turntable, my records and all my tapes to a friends house. Along with his existing turntable, I set up a pseudo DJ booth using his stereo equipment and provided the music for the afternoon party. One of the folks who showed up was Joffre. After a couple of hours of music, he came over to me and said "You're pretty dedicated to that, aren't you?" I replied that I enjoyed playing the music, to which he said "How'd you like to come into the booth with me at Gord's to learn more?"

...When I came to, I said Yes! He said "Great! Come into the booth tomorrow night, and I show you the ropes." Thus began my apprenticeship as a club DJ. Instead of hanging out outside the booth door at nights, I was right there inside! Stacks and stacks of vinyl surrounded me. Mixing board, light board, turntables and tape decks - all the tools of the trade were at my fingertips. I watched. I learned. I saw what songs worked best with other songs. I discovered how song sets of certain genres kept the different cliques of club goers happy. I grew anxious.

One busy Friday night, the dance floor packed, Joffre turned to me in the booth and said "It's yours. Show me what you've got." He stepped back from the turntables, sipped his Bloody Caesar, and watched. At once, I was both nervous and excited. I picked out a few 12" singles from the stacks, placed the first onto the turntable and queued it up. When the time and timing was right, I moved the mixer slider from a to b, merging one song into the next without a moment of silence. The crowd kept hopping. I was a DJ. Joffre let me play for about a half hour that first night before he reassumed command. When I was finished, he smiled, shook my hand, and said "Not bad at all for the first time!"

Over the next few months, I would spin records once a week for an hour at a time, whenever Joffre needed a break. Each time, my technique improved. I loved it. But, I had to make a choice. I had met a great gal, and determined that if I wanted to hang onto her for the long haul I had to do more with my life than be a club DJ. So, I reluctantly gave it up and went to school in Toronto. On weekends home to St. Catharines, I'd hit Gord's as often as I could. For a short time, Joffre had me scouring the record stores in Toronto, looking for rare music he couldn't source back home.

My favourite memory of this experience was the last time I spun the records. It was after I had moved to Toronto. I was home visiting, and went to Gord's one Saturday night. I arrived early, just like in the old times, bade my greetings to all the folks still there who I recognized and took up my familiar post by the booth. Not long into the night, Joffre came over to me and said "Ron, I'm not feeling well at all. Can you take over tonight?" I agreed readily, and took my place in the booth. All cliches aside, I was in the zone that night. For three and a half hours I played; beat-mixing with ease, hitting the lights for full effect, stirring up the tracks to keep everyone bopping on the floor the whole time. It was glorious. At one point, a couple of familiar faces peered through the dj booth glass. They were a couple of chums from high school who had drifted out of my life a few years earlier. The looks on their faces when they saw me in my element was priceless. Towards closing, Joffre was well enough to come back into the booth. "Great job," he said. "You would have made an excellent DJ."

Gord's Place is no more, replaced by a restaurant that has a bowling lane down the one wall where the the tables used to line the dance floor. The dj booth is gone, demolished to make more room for seating. I've enquired about the equipment, and more importantly, the music. To date, no one from the restaurant has replied. As for Joffre, he went on to work at other clubs around the province and then disappeared from the world I knew. I googled his name recently. I found this. More proof to the old adage "you can't go home again."

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