If you follow dance music on Al Gore's Internets, you've no doubt seen the above DJ Rules, which are posted in the DJ booth of a new after-hours spot in Las Vegas, AFTER. We even spoke with Thom Svast earlier this week regarding his inspiration behind writing these up. Earlier today, Deanna Rilling, who pens about dance musics over at DJOYbeat (a site that sponsors the party), broke down the full story behind these rules and how they went viral.
First off, the intent was to go viral.
From what Deanna says, Thom hit her up via text with the screencap that you see up above, saying it'd be posted in the DJ booth. When she asked if it was OK to post it on Twitter, Svast said "I want it to go viral." Oddly enough, Deanna wasn't really thinking this tweet would spread like it did. How, we're not sure - this thing is GOLD for dance music fans who are tiring of the stereotypes and sameness of the EDM scene.
Secondly, a DAD article helped inspire one of the points in the rules.
Deanna told Thom that she thinks that "Martin Garrix got his feelings hurt," possibly due to a) his inclusion of producers whose music you can't play and b) Garrix being called a "douche." Peep Thom's response:
"The one thing in hindsight is maybe not calling Martin a douche. He’s a kid and what it was was a knee-jerk reaction. The previous day I read the DoAndrioidsDance article with him about copycatism. When I was typing it up, there were some other articles that popped up about his attitude. I wasn’t thinking about that he’s still a teenager; I reacted as if he were an adult. So that’s where the “douche” came from. But actually, it was supposed to say “Dutch” since that’s where he’s from, but autocorrect changed it to “douche!”"
Sorry (not sorry). You have to love how things go full circle, though. Thom did say that he has nothing against the producers personally, he just doesn't fuck with their music.
He also goes on to explain certain points that got debated in the comments section of our interview with him, namely technology and the style of music that's played in an after-hours setting, but it's awesome to see that Thom's definitely thinking about things correctly - the EDM Internets will respond to things like this, especially when the person writing them isn't apologizing for their views. Shouts to Deanna for sparking the forest fire, then getting on the ground and giving people the full story.
