Interview: Cut Chemist For L.A. Weekly

Few cats will ever reach the plateau's that this spin master has...

Joining him in his eclectic home in Glendale, Gustavo Turner of L.A. Weekly talks to Cut Chemist about a range of subjects, most importantly though, DJ's...in the modern era...yeah, sometimes technology can be a bad thing when it dilutes the market....far too many cats out there callin' themselves "DJ's"...screwing real DJ's and turntablist's like Cut outta gigs...

-BIG D O

L.A. Weekly: But as a key member of the worldwide DJ community, don't you feel some pride that everyone's got two turntables now? Isn't this like your whole movement growing?

Cut Chemist: I do. It makes me happy that everybody appreciates DJs enough to wanna be one. Absolutely, that makes me happy. What doesn't make me happy is my perception that people seem to appreciate specific DJs less or are willing to support DJs less because they are themselves one.

Like, "Oh, I don't need to go check him out, or maybe I don't need to hire him because I hired this person to be the DJ." Or, "I can do it: I'm a DJ." So, the more DJs there are, the less demand there is. That's just basic supply and demand: The jobs have become less for me now that there are more DJs.

I don't think that's an accident, and it's harder for me to get people to listen to what my niche is because it's very different from what all these other DJs have been doing. You know, I'm not a Top 40 DJ. I consider myself more like a performance artist, and in an age when there are so many DJs, it's harder to recognize a DJ as a performance artist.

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