“I find it so amazing when people tell me that electronic music has no soul. You can’t blame the computer. If there’s no soul in the music, it’s because nobody put it there.”
Bjork
Imagine for a second I told you I love to golf. One would expect that I owned all of the apparel and equipment needed for golf. I would have collared polo shirts, I would likely have a few hats, and I would certainly have golf shoes. I would have a golf bag, a set of irons, woods, and golf balls. I may even have a membership at a local golf course. Now, let’s imagine that despite my investment in all of these items, the farthest I ever went on the golf course was the putting green. I never played a full round, I never hit a ball with my driver nor my irons, and I never completed a single hole. Even though I had mad a considerable investment into the game and owned of all of the right equipment, would you call me a golfer? The answer is unequivocally no!
When Tyler Ewing moved into the room we shared at Wiesbaden Army airfield he brought with him a plethora of unique items but perhaps the most unique was a giant set of turntables. This was no small, part time DJ set up, this thing was the real deal. It was massive and included all of the needed extras along with a catalog of hundreds of records… yes records! Even though by 2000 we were soundly in the digital age Tyler insisted on spinning records and had amassed an impressive library that were housed in dozens of milk crates stacked like Legos in our room.
In a normal situation owning these items might not have been that big of a deal, but we were in the Army, and lived in the barracks. To say that space was at a premium was an understatement. We were packed into WWII era rooms like sardines. By the time two Joe’s, two beds, two dressers, two wall lockers, and two foot lockers were pressed into our 10X15 space, there wasn’t much room for anything else. Just in case you were tempted to say, “Hmm that is tight but cozy,” add all of your military issued gear and civilian belongings.
Most soldiers had worked to squeeze every square inch of space out of their room by any means necessary. Some had stacked furniture on top of one another like a life sized game of Jenga. Others had decided that space was better than privacy and worked a more open concept where everything went against the walls in a 50’s married-couple-sitcom sort of arrangement. Lastly, there were those who simply gave up and chose to live like the Viet Cong with little light and booby traps of personal belongings ready to end your life if you bumped into something. It was this environment to which Tyler had decided to bring a semi-truck sized party machine.
At this point some of you may be saying you yourself… “well, if he really loved to mix music I could see making the sacrifice,” and I agree. If asked Tyler would tell you that he absolutely loved mixing music. He may also tell you that it was his favorite pastime. He would even argue that he was in fact a DJ. He spoke the game, had the equipment and apparel, but never seemed to leave the putting green. My Dad always told me that if you want to know what someone loves figure out what they invest the most time in, and that is what they love.
I was Tyler’s roommate for almost two years. In that time I only heard sound come out of Tyler’s turn tables twice and neither time was it even close to a complete song. I kept waiting for the day when I would walk into the barracks and catch the unmistakable thump, thump, thump of a sick beat and follow it down the hall just in time to hear the base drop. I imagined walking into the room to see Tyler’s auburn red mane held erect by a gallon of gel shimmering like flames as he spun his records like madman. But alas, this never happened. Instead we had a two hundred pound paperweight, devouring precious square footage, like a freightliner drydocked. Instead serving as a tool for endless entertainment the alter of DJ Skinnylicious served as the most expense shelf/table in the barracks, just don’t set anything on it or you may really see the auburn maned madman.
To be completely honest with you I don’t think Tyler really knew how to use his turntables. I think that this was the case of an idea that grew to quickly and soon overtook anything that could realistically be produced. The expectation that the turntables, the record collection, and the equipment created was so enormous that, in Tyler’s head, nothing he produced could do it justice. Instead, Tyler chose to act the part yet never leave the putting green.
I often think back and wonder what if it had been different. What if Tyler hadn’t stubbornly insisted that he loved being a DJ. What if his personality wasn’t the type that had to own his decisions to the death when they were obviously ridiculous. What would a barracks room with double the space would have been like? We will never know, but if I know Tyler, he still has a turn table, and it probably hasn’t been played in years. To quote Bjork, “If there is no soul in the music it is because nobody put it there.”