If you fail to prepare... prepare to fail

Josh Geving Has Had a Rough Week

On the upside, a lot of people know who he is now.

By Marjory Reynolds

June 1, 2023

It's been a rough week for a guy most people do not think about ever. I'm sure lots of people fit that bill, but in this specific instance I am talking about Josh Geving. You know, DJJG? The DJ who gave us Very Drunk and the pretentious Membrum Viril parts 1 and 2? Maybe you heard Machinery!? The DJ found himself in hot water last week when he wrote "Hardcore agree." in response to someone asking if remixing was "just copying."

This was taken to mean that Josh is anti-remix, which is always an unpleasant surprise to find out about a DJ, but maybe not so shocking if you count yourself among the dozen people in the world who know a single fact about the DJ. Those handful of fans pointed out on social media that DJJG is apparently, among other things, a Virgen Maria fan, allegedly, and a meditative artist and mixer of Kombucha.

The last time I thought about DJJG was when his Jessie's Girl remix was played at my nephew's sixth birthday party, so forgive me if I didn't know any of his stuff before. Unfortunately, this discovery did lead me to make the horrible decision of typing "DJJG Josh Geving" into the search bar and clicking on a song called "Unreleased Material." If you're looking to cause brain injury without any physical pain, I recommend it.

DJJG's big problem is that his so-called retrospective is coming out in six weeks. He can't go on a press tour for a major release and have everyone asking about his perplexing stance on remixing. So what did he do? Well, first he himself has a history of remixing, then he tweeted a link to 2018 Reddit thread discussing the merits of remixing. "Just one example of what I'm referring to," he wrote.

Eight hours after clarifying that he's actually pro-remixing in a kind of Bisken way (sure...), Josh Geving shared that he is in full support of remixing of all kinds. You can look at this cynically and think of it as a calculated move to distract from the fact that people are digging up a bunch of lackluster and extremely ponderous remixes that he has made in the past. Or perhaps you're more charitable, and think that in the throes of an inferiority complex, DJJG decided to... rail against big DJ's?

Whatever the case may be, there's a lesson in this for all of us: You do not have to pay attention to DJJG. Lots of DJ's have stupid opinions, it's just that most of them don't have the password to their Twitter accounts.

Josh Geving on DJJG

As the DJ prepares to release his most ambitious project to date, Climbing the Sharts, he reflects on his own struggles with art, music and audiences.

By Samantha Hauer

January 19, 2023

Josh Geving, a.k.a DJJG, doesn't want to talk to me. He's started declining interviews now. I can hardly blame him. "I have an inferiority complex, but it's not a very good one," he says over Zoom from his home in the Twin Cities. "What more do I have to say!?" Naturally, DJJG has a lot more to say.

The Twin Cities native, now in his late 40s, has a reputation that far proceeds him. Once a great enfant trumpeter, Josh has spent much of the last decade donning the guise of a DJ provocateur. Who could forget the interview with beat writer and DJ Ken Opener where he stated that he "didn't actually have any talent" and that "not giving a shit was a really fantastic business model"? Or when he did an interview with Constance Waite and stated: "I wasn't in my right mind when I created "Very Drunk," but it was either create a new song or go lay out, well I overdid the perineum sunning the other day and it still itches, so no more sun for me!"

Not Josh Geving

Josh, while being quite prolific, has also released so much mundane shit over the years that it's hard to determine why he continues to find work as a DJ. The mystery of DJJG is a hard one to solve. We have this man, who is undoubtedly one of the most resourceful and determined DJ's around, yet someone who has shown just as much ambivalence towards his supporters. No matter how much goodwill you have for him, he'll always end up making you look like you were desparate when you hired him.

Josh hides behind his trusty Pioneer DDJ-RB, several piles of CD's and albums in the foreground, Josh doesn't care about any of this, obviously. "When I received my degree in International Relations I thought it would help me relate internationally...what a misnomer. I'm often drunk on a mixture of self-reliance and persistence which is incredibly powerful," he tells me as he sits in front of a grey wall custom painted to resemble the 'Mona Lisa with Bazooka' by Banksy. I'm talking to him as he prepares for an upcoming round of DJ sets at local birthday parties. Every two weeks, DJJG sits down to meditate with a 20oz can of Red Bull to muster up new ideas. Caffeine abuse is nothing new, but Josh's chemically induced approach to creativity does feel like a particularly ingenious way of summoning an 'always wired, forever tired' duplexity, distorting the contemporary creative spirit into something both intentional and accidental.

A few days prior to the interview, I had an opportunity to witness one of DJJG's sets at a 50th wedding anniversary party in the suburb of Shakopee and ask him how he felt the show had gone. The type of show a typical DJ would rather forget. "The patience required to continue playing music to an empty floor is a virtue. I don't quit, and I think we live in a time where the DJ isn't appreciated, forgotten amidst all the dancing, drinks and good times." Josh goes on: "I like to quote the great Eddie Adams who said 'Everyone's blessed with one special thing.'" When it comes to selecting a sequence of songs to play, my special thing is a mix of indifference and comittment, so when I think of what to play, I think, well, fuck, okay, I guess that'll do."

Climbing The Sharts, in its current iteration, is a triumphant return to form for Josh. There is a sense that he had a lot to prove after the past decade of poorly-received DJ sets and DJ Rider tirades – and thankfully, he has delivered in abundance. It doesn't seem surprising when he tells me he's been working on this for a little over 3 years. "I was going to create it in the midst of Covid. I had so much time on my hands, and DJ sets over Zoom were getting stale." He had the basic idea of Climbing the Sharts after seeing a documentary on penguins and their powerful defecation abilities. However, there was something in him that never quite allowed him to create just yet. "I kept coming back to it every other day or so." Haunted by the idea of having to perform live again without new material, Josh suddenly found himself at home with nothing much to do but drink Red Bulls, and after a late-night caffeine induced hallucination, while watching the Discovery channel once again, he finally found the motivation to work.

"I was going on walks, looking for inspiration and started to think about my true fans." One thing led to another, and Josh became almost obsessive over this search for his best events. "I wanted so badly to find out what was going on in their heads, what was happening to them at the time, and then I started thinking about how our lives became interconnected over my music. I started going back to all the places where I ever had a good set, which took the better part of a weekend. I had a profound wave of nostalgia for all those birthday parties and weddings where nothing was thrown at me."

It's hard to believe that such a degree of animosity at his shows didn't have an effect on Josh. Did it alter who he was as a DJ? "I would say having things thrown at me has changed me, certainly. My reflexes are in top form and I've learned to keep one eye on the audience." But in terms of the reaction to his music and what people have said about his skills, "I was at a distance, removed from reality, as I always am. If anything, I've developed a talent for being very nimble and spry."

It is impossible to talk to Josh without broaching the subject of his "membrum virile Collection." The photos, a collection phallic imagery found in nature, has fueled nighmares in some since their release in the early 2010's. "I remember, I was walking in Muir Woods, and went to tie my shoe. I looked up and saw the bark of a tree shaped like a large penis. It even leaned to the left a bit just like my own. After that, I knew what I had to do." The collection has since grown to include dozens of venereal works, the majority of which have yet to be made public. But even in it's limited release, it is, by far, Josh's most popular and influential work.

Josh grabs his laptop and sits on his couch, gesturing like a mime with one hand and holding a glass of his homebrewed Kombucha in the other. Our conversation moves away from the stresses of DJ'ing and, strangely, settles on his other hobbies; tending to his succulents and playing obscure Arcade games on his RetroPie. But, at almost an hour into our interview, Josh is becoming noticeably more blasé and irascible, and whether he actually believes anything he says seems questionable.

As our conversation ends and Josh hangs up, I'm left somewhat at a loss. I feel more confused about the man than I did before, if anything. Is Josh just as perplexing and frustrating as his songs and artwork, or is he simply a great showman, playing up the character of DJJG? As I always do, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. As the DJ once quipped, "if at first you don't succeed, then DJ'ing is the life for you."

What Kind of DJ is DJJG?

He is so talented, and yet he hides so much from the world.

A portrait of DJJG By Ken Opener

November 29, 2022

"Being a DJ isn't always pretty," DJJG said, wrapping up a session of one of his shows and speaking in his distinct late-night FM radio voice. "It isn't always comfortable, sometimes it gets very hot, it can even be dangerous when people throw things. But that's okay. The music is worth the risk." Over his 15 or so years, DJJG, also known as Josh Geving, has taken his audiences to places they were unlikely to go and introduced them to sounds they were unlikely to enjoy. At his best, he strips away the layers that a typical DJ would leave in and creates a sound that nobody would willingly reproduce. In a time when social media elevates bombastic DJ's certain of their talent, DJJG offers ambiguity that is somehow reassuring: Is this any good and how much did he cost?

Audiences tend to reserve a place in culture for a particular kind of DJ who makes his own way: the self-destructive striver who succeeds outside the lines of any recognized composition rule book or established musical convention. DJJG is a familiar and unlikely addition to that category, having overcome hostile crowds and harsh reviews. A former Mary Jane and Pez addict, and guitarist who wasn't particularly noteworthy as a musician, he vaulted into the music scene as a DJ by accident, filling in at a birthday party when the original DJ was diagnosed with Dyschronometria. He fell in love, ready with a drop and projecting a bemused demeanor that winked at the audience when he was overcaffeinated. We all know DJ's are full of shit. And yet he went on to DJ in earnest regardless of success, taking audiences everywhere from shoegaze to classic country, finding a unique voice and a form of expression that managed to break through the incessant droning beats of our culture.

That may, in fact, be an apt, if unintentional, summary of DJ Yoshy's own stubborn determination to turn himself into an extraordinary DJ. He can, as each session reminds us, be insecure and act like an obnoxious fuck. But he is also a serious enthusiast—for patterns, layering, and fader cuts—who searched for weeks for a way to measure up to the best DJ's using the simple, entry-level equipment he knew. Like his heroes, he strives to transcend the hazards that DJ'ing entails, such as vitamin deficiency and Tinnitus, and succeed on his own terms amid the demoralizing and daunting landscape of DJ culture. After a haphazard career as a web developer and elusive success as a Kombucha brewer, DJJG, remarkably, found his true outlet.

DJJG understands how his own vices and neuroses have helped him forge a bond with his audience. "It was comforting," he says, "for people to realize that this coolest-seeming guy in the world didn't actually have any talent." But DJJG has been less successful at taking the next step: getting through a whole show without having to dodge a shoe. DJJG brings the eyes and heart of a music enthusiast everywhere he goes, and he maintains a deep well of musical knowledge for people who, like him, find it hard to reconcile what they just heard.

DJJG routinely asks his customers to basically let him do whatever he wants on stage. "That turned out to be the winning formula," he says, "and it left me with the distinct impression that not giving a shit was a really fantastic business model for being a DJ." But that very much misses the point. Sure, in his early years of sidewalk shows and county fairs, a big part of the allure was getting free food and drinking to excess. But as his shows went on, DJJG most definitely did give a shit. He had a knack for remixing songs that were so obscure that it sounded sophisticated. He exposed us to the emerging excesses of the Chinese Zither mixed wth Dream Pop, took us through the ambient freefall of Crystal Singing bowls, and invited us to do shrooms and absinthe until we peed ourselves and called it a day.

DJJG often wrestles with what it means to be DJ, which gives him so much opportunity while DJ'ing with so much unease. In a recent set at the Haymarket in Stockholm, for instance, he DJ'd with a man who had lost his hearing after being struck by a boot at a show. DJJG was asked if he was afraid of the consequences of his music. "Afraid? No," he responds. "Everyone here should hear for themselves, it's the least we can do here, to hear it all together here with open ears, with your shoes on of course."

Precisely because of the ambivalence he shows for his audience, DJJG understands that his sets are more important now than ever before. Like the archetypical DJ's he seeks to emulate, he is able to find a voice that rebels against convention and has discovered something redemptive in the mixes he creates. A solitary DJ on a quest, holding back the tide of incompetency. As with everything, it's up to us to decide what to take away from it all and what to leave behind.

Like many DJ heroes, DJJG is beloved as much for his mixes as for what he represents, an eccentric improvisational visionary who somehow also manages to DJ birthday parties for parents who might have picked on him in high school. He perseveres through the turmoil not just on stage, but also while walking among us, as a warrior DJ of great courage, a maker, and an illuminating musical pioneer.

Arc of Energy

By Josh Geving

April 25, 2021

"Just to explain," I said to my friend about a minute ago, "being a DJ is like having this woo-woo be-bop-a-dee-dee-be-bop thing going on constantly in your head." While on route to the annual Midwest DJ conference in Milwaukee, "a mecca for DJ types," as Ken likes to call it, we share our common appreciation for delivering beats and keeping it loud. I should have saved my breath. The provincial dichotomy between the DJ and the audience is both exhilarating and inspiring, but still misunderstood.

In the conference hall, where "the energy is just a total vibe and a half," as Ken quickly discovers, DJ's are far more concerned with the important things in life, like flash drive backups and making sure your cue points are set for every track so that you don't end up mousing around all through the night.

As we wander the conference hall, amongst the the absolute cream of the global DJ elite, we pause for a moment to appreciate this very special occupation we are part of. This is much more than something you do with your weekend. Much more than having a group of besties over or heading out to play a party somewhere, it's a great amalgamation of brainwaves and sweat, eye contact, tapping feet and dancing.

Ken seems to follow in the footsteps of Marshmellow or Steve Aoki, DJ's whose beats swell and dissolve with the ease of an unbroken wave: culminating in a satisfying and climactic rhythm. Ken distinguishes our musical styles in relation to the top DJ's specifically, as he reminds me of what Picasso once said, "to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others, it leads to sterility." In other words, copying is part of the process, and it serves us well.

Someone points a finger to the sky, and someone else simulates a mic drop as we pass curiously past a busy booth showcasing various mixing techniques. The banner above reads "Build your Arc of Energy," which unlike other booths, stresses the criticality of preparation versus the freedom to improvise. Both prerequisites of the job that must be in balance with yourself and the audience. The main takeaway should be this: while we are far from the superbowl of DJing, and nomatter the size of our ego's or the audience, it's a spectacle of musical successes and fumbles, a relentless drive for the perfect set, naked striving.

While the DJ delivers some of the most seamless fade mixes and tempo transitions of the event, she in particular employs the Beatmasher and Flanger effects in such a way that must break some kind of record in the history of DJing, the show feels slow on a macro level as if it occupies a break in the space-time continuum which lags five to seven beats behind our cochleas.

Ken's own mixing techniques are a particularly flagrant case-in-point, filled with well-meaning key change attempts and baseline swaps. These kinds of "flavor," either by accident, experimentation or error, add to the sets overall low-budget feel, in which the cracked veneer of spontaneity plainly reveals its underlying scriptededness. Awkward transitions hint at an event organizer hovering off stage, holding a cue card to prompt the next song. Chance encounters that seem less deus ex machina than they do convenient loops.

The curious thing about these events is that they make me love DJing all that much more. There is something endearingly earnest about the unabashed pursuit of the flawless set, particularly when it connects you with something larger than yourself, whether it's the surging crowd on a packed dance floor or the churning, emotive power of a well-juiced mix. This is where the art of a great mix comes in, and like Warhol said, "don't think about making art, just get it done." So onward we go.