A Brief History of DJs Being Kicked Off the Decks

With the different pitfalls and problems that DJs face, one of the biggest problems a DJ has to face is being told to stop DJing. Over the years, we'v

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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With the different pitfalls and problems that DJs face, one of the biggest problems a DJ has to face is being told to stop DJing. Over the years, we've seen a rise in venues asking DJs to leave the turntables, primarily because of what they're playing. Why some of these clubs would book an artist without knowing if their regulars will be into their music is a confusing ordeal, but with EDM meaning big dollars for these huge megaclubs, bookers are either solely looking at Facebook likes or are just gambling with their slots. In light of recent events, with the hope that the increased mainstream eyes on dance music doesn't intensify these incidents, we wanted to bring you a brief look of DJs getting kicked off of the decks.

Chemical Brothers

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Dennis Ferrer

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Mark Farina

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Calvin Harris

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Tommie Sunshine

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DJ Shadow

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Club: Mansion (Miami, FL)

When: December 2012

Reason: Not playing mainstream music.

In hindsight, this is one of those situations where the booker at the club should have realized who they were booking. If you have a "trendy" club like Miami's Mansion, you don't book someone like DJ Shadow, who has been known for ducking the mainstream trends since as far back as 1996. In any case, December 2012 saw his "All Bases Covered" tour hitting Mansion. All was good until about 30 minutes (or so) into his set, where someone representing the club came up to DJ Shadow and asked him to stop playing, due to what Shadow described as the music he was playing being "too future" for the crowd. A huge anti-Mansion push hit the Internet, with Facebook pages calling for a boycott being created, among the bad press that generated on a number of websites. Ultimately, Mansion ended up apologizing for the ordeal, and Shadow gave away what should have been the set he'd drop on Mansion that night. In the end, we hope this is a message to those booking acts at these clubs: know who you're booking. If you have clientele that wants more "Top 40" material being played, be sure to book DJs who are playing that style rather than DJs who are looking to take things a bit deeper.

Dyro

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Skream

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Club: Boiler Room (Austin, TX)

When: March 2013

Reason: Not wanting to end his set

To his credit, Skream did this Boiler Room x Ray Ban SXSW warehouse set while he was pretty drunk; he even tweeted about not remembering playing a single track during this set. While some Internets say that his set was "terrible" for a number of reasons, the fact of the matter was that at 3AM, Skream was scheduled to be done. An MC came on at the five-minute mark to announce that Skream's set was going to be coming to an end. For whatever reason, Skream didn't take too kindly to this news, and after realizing that the folks at Boiler Room had cut all sound from his decks, he did the next best thing: disconnected one of the CDJs and gave it away to an eager attendee.

Porter Robinson

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Erick Morillo

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Kill Paris

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Club: M Nightclub (Honolulu, HI)

When: September 2013

Reason: Not playing "mainstream shit."

While the details on this situation are still coming in, Kill Paris immediately took to Twitter to let the world know the following:

He was booked at some "back to school" party, so we can only imagine what he would've been playing that didn't get the school crowd jumping.

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