Are you DJing tonight? Feeling a bit more nervous than usual? It’s Friday 13th, and we all know that means bad luck (if you’re superstitious, anyway). Indeed, some say the Devil himself invented this day…
So for a bit of dark humour, we thought we’d compile our favourite DJ fail videos, all in one place. Some are classic, some newer, and you’ll see a similar thread (keep the music playing, fool!), but all are amusing. Enjoy them, and have a great (and lucky) night’s DJing!
10. Definitely the wrong button…
You’ve got to feel sorry for Calvin Harris on this one, as we’ve all done it… at least he’s got a sense of humour about a pretty common but still funny fail.
9. “It’s your CD, not the CDJ…”
Here David Guetta really royally blows it, not once but twice! Truly cringeworthy stuff. He signals it’s the CD player, but it’s clearly pilot error from a dodgy CD, something he finally admits…
8. When you go into a loop, know how to get out again…
Oh, the excitement. Oh, the build-up! Oh, the anticipation of the drop. Oh, the fail. Gotta laugh at this one, simply because of how over the top the MC is before… well, watch and find out.
7. Keep on your feet when behind the decks…
Awesome unforced error. The harder the music, the harder they fail… or should that be fall? Watch and cringe…
6. Vinyl and wonky tables have never mixed…
Well, if only for one of the most bizarre lyrics in history from Notorious B.I.G., this is one of my favourites – but seriously though, here you see the perils of wonky tables and vinyl records. Jumptastic!
5. The old Apple Remote trick…
Steve Aoki leaves the decks for some theatrics, apparently just as someone whips an Apple Remote out for some fun…
4. It’s not what happens, it’s how you deal with it…
This is a kind of “post-fail” video. Apparently, “video was taken side of stage at Vector Arena Auckland NZ, Skrillex spilled his drink on his laptop which killed it, then he killed it some more, then fell over…”
3. Blaming the tools? Hmmmm….
Not even sure what’s happened here to Tiesto, but the result is clear enough: No music. Again, we see some blaming of tools going on…
2. Can’t blame Friday 13th for this one…
Paris Hilton. Where do we start? The bloke who comes in and, well, DJs for her at 0:56? The inappropriate segueing from her own Afrojack-produced song into Rihanna? Or just the whole thing?
1. DJs, choose your friends very wisely…
I think this is still my favourite DJ fail of all time, I love the way it’s his mate that does it, and that it is true totalling of the gear – no getting back from this fail!
• We offer these clips not to poke fun at the DJs concerned (well, not at most of them, anyway) but rather to highlight that what can go wrong at some point will. I’m prepared to admit I’ve done most of these things. Including falling over…
Anything we’ve missed? Feel free to link to your favourite DJ fails in the comments, or share fails you’ve seen or done. And are you DJing tonight? Let us know if you’re more worried than normal…
Now go to:
7 Big Mistakes I Made At My First DJ Gig (And Why It Was Still Great Fun)
Lessons For DJs From Risk Management Science
Why You Need To Hustle To Get DJing Success
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Tags: dj fail videos, dj fails, friday 13th
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Brilliant! I’m playing a gig tomorrow and definitely pre-recording a fail-safe recovery track
[ link ]Oh what a great thread Phil!
[ link ]And yes, number 1 is the one!
Just goes to show though, it’s not the fail, it’s how you deal with it that really matters. Happened to me about 3 weeks ago. My computer crashed mid-song. Luckily I had a turntable with a record cued which I instantly crossed to. I find the quicker you get out of the fail (and the less of a deal you make out of it), the less chance they’ll remember it.
By the way, not playing tonight. But tomorrow night. Hope you havn’t cursed me!
I’m DJ’ing tonight and after watching these video’s I might just turn up after midnight
[ link ]My biggest failiur was I played at a club lucky for me was a realy slow night with only about 20 people and it happen just before the last song. I went for a beer so I had something to drink while packing my gear. On my way back up to the booth I fell over some cables and hit my laptop that went flying down on the dance floor and booom no music so the music ended 5 min before it should that night.
Oh and I’m still using the same laptop today 1.5 year later
[ link ]Nice one! The most DJ friendly fail you’d want.
[ link ]I’m not Guettas biggest fan but he think he handles his quite well and was still smiling so I wouldn’t say it was cringeworthy, the Black Eyed Peas one however..
[ link ]Yeah you’re right, he does handle it like a pro.
[ link ]I never said like a pro (blaming your equipment rather than yourself isn’t professional).
[ link ]This is one of the lighter fails, because I doubt anybody in front of the stage noticed that it happened, but it’s always nice to see that even the greatest make such beginner mistakes.
(Starting at 1:55)
http://youtu.be/5Ni1UONvKCA
“I’m not on! I’m not on, I’m not on! I’m not ooooooooooooooooooh.”
[ link ]video in no1 wont play in germany
and totally agree it’s all about how you deal with the fail. when i was using an old VMS4 controller in a club situation it froze 3 times before i ditched it, every time I had a CD ready to play and just ended up using CDs for the rest of the night. I think maybe them controllers were sensitive to current or something.
Shows that learning DJing the old way (manual beatmatching) it still a valuable skill to have
[ link ]You poor Germans have it hard with YouTube don’t you?
[ link ]I recommend the “Proxtube” add on to you. So far it unlocked the videos every time (Well, you have to watch it on the YouTube page. It doesn’t work for embedded videos.)
[ link ]It’s available for Firefox. Don’t know if other browsers are supported too.
This fail must be so epic, even the GEMA doesn’t want us to see it. (GEMA is the german “society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights”, a bunch of bureaucrat A-Holes trying to kill german club culture with unrealistically high fees while paying virtually nothing back to the scene of independent musicians and producers that usually get played at these clubs.)
[ link ]Awesome #1, just awesome.
And let this be a lesson, have a backup, track, cd, MP3 player, phone anything that will keep the audience from realizing the total mess up.
Unless of course your entire rig hits the ground.
[ link ]Gotta do a happy hour gig today. Now, I don’t feel so bad about the many times my laptop crashed on me.
[ link ]Oh yea, the oral sex line in Biggie’s rhyme was borrowed from a Richard Pryor joke.
[ link ]Yeah, maybe the cavemen had it right and we should have stuck to banging a couple of rocks together. Hard for them to crash. (the equivalent is probably a “crumble”)
[ link ]video1 is a very good point. Something else to add: it sometimes helps to have a great MC to hype the crowd when stuff like this happens.
. I swear he could have kissed me lol
[ link ]Sometime ago, a DJ friend of mine was playing at a gig and I was beside him, dealing with people who had requests and other stuff. that way, he could concentrate better. At some point, the laptop froze and the music stopped. Immediately I saw this, I didnt even wait for him to say anything. I took the mic and started cheering the crowd, and telling them stuff like “we’re about to take y’all to the next segment of the night. are u ready? make some motherf**king noise”.
So I “distracted” the crowd while my friend was busy restarting the software and getting the music loaded again! By the time the beat dropped again, the crowd went ABSOLUTELY CRAZY cos I’d already built up the anticipation!! Oh, I loved the look of gratitude on my friend’s face that nite
#6 was just painful to watch. Gettin dissed by Biggie on Stage OUCH!
[ link ]True that! That Dj must have had an awful day (career?) after that…
[ link ]Day? Yes. Career? Naa that is DJ KaySlay (The Drama King) Still a pretty important DJ for Hip-Hop. Especially in New York
[ link ]lmao wow….I will say #6 with biggie could be the worst….its enough to just mess up but to be told that you f**kn up in front of a massive crowd so many times is just embarassing….hard t recover from that
[ link ]No kiddin’ … poor guy looked like he might cry.
[ link ]I don’t go to gigs without some sort of backup anymore. After a MASSIVE hardware failure during an opening slot for a fairly well known DJ where I spent 20 minutes with the techs attempting to sort things out, I like to have backups for my backups these days.
[ link ]The true judge of someone’s character is how they act when faced with adversity and subject to ridicule.
[ link ]GREAT THREAD. I laughed, cringed, and could relate to every video at some point in my life…maybe other than the Paris one…although I’ve probably been saved by a sound guy a time or two.
[ link ]Sharing a personal fail of mine:
I accidentally stumbled on the power cable of my laptop and plugged it out WITHOUT noticing….Being too busy mixing and whatnot I didnt even notice the power led on the laptop itself indicating that the cable is unplugged….Night goes on, I continue playing and then the bloody laptop starts hick-ups due to going into pwer-saving mode on USB ports…..Took me a lot of sweat and agony to figure out what had gone wrong….
[ link ]My first (paid) gig of my life was on this last Friday the 13th… It’s a long story but I don’t think it can get any worse than this..
So for the build up towards this gig, I checked about 7 times on exactly what kind of music I should be playing. The type of crowd they expect, age groups, etc. Over and over I checked.. Unfortunately I couldn’t actually go to the venue on a different night to check it out, as this was kinda there first night to make the bar a happening place. It’s basically this very upmarket hotel bar, with posh trimmings and over-priced booze and a place that looked like 50 year old men go to smoke cigars and sip scotch…
Anyway, so I was instructed to play Electro and House by the promotion company, as this was an evening aimed at getting a younger more vibrant crowd into this bar. Sponsored by Skyy Vodka, many promotional things. I was then told the night before that the crowd is going to be varying in age and tastes, so I better bring a whole lot of Hip Hop just in case. I don’t have much Hip Hop but I managed to get a whole lot of kick ass Hip Hop together. I got all my best tech, minimal, Electro, swing house.. every song that I thought was needed, so no matter which way the crowd went in their vibe, I was ready to adapt and make that place bump. I even got a whole lot of Pop stuff, even though I hate it, I wanted to be ready to impress. I even had a special little set prepared as a kinda finale, which I had tested out a week before, and it was a raging success.
So I get there a little late, because the taxi cab driver drove me all over the city trying to find the venue, that was the beginning of the disaster. I get there, set up literally in 5 mins and then I go over to the sound engineer, who starts off telling me that he is this big time guy who works with a lot of big time local DJ’s. I then find out, that he had actually requested me to be there the night before to test sound etc, which the event organizers never thought necessary to let me know about. He then fannies around the sound deck behind the bar in the back end of the bar, for about 30 mins (time ticking away), then whips out a microphone lead and plugs this gender change adapter onto the mic lead and puts my RCA cables into that. So I am ready, I line up my song, put it in a loop, so we can do a final volume test, as people are entering the bar. And it was much older people, no young people… my heart starts pumping at that realization. The engineer then buggers off to the back, cranks it up loud, so loud that I had my master almost all the way down. I was signaling to have him turn it down a bit but he was nowhere. I then realize that the song that is coming out the speakers, sounds nothing like my song in my head phones. I am convinced they still have the previous back round music still playing.. so i push pause and everything goes silent.. Crowd looking at me like, what is this dude doing.. I push play.. song starts again.. and IT IS my song, but with all the vocals gone, maybe 20% of the bass, and all these like flat and weird noises coming through on the beat that I actually did recognize. To make it really sound terrible, the sound kept flaring up and distorting and the bass would scream through and sound like it was a few decibels away from blowing the speakers.. Crowd cringes.. I am going red in the face… It was barely music.. I am frantically trying to adjust knobs and things to see what the hell is going on.. I realize that every knob on my controller is perfect.. I was having nightmares the night before, about forgetting a filter on or something, but it was all perfect..I am trying to get my friends to talk to the sound engineer but he is no where…
So I just push through, basically the night came down to, I play for 30 minutes, and then a band plays for 30mins, and we alternate.. (The band was this Philippine’s cover band, playing 80′s and pop). So I only had to push through for 30 mins (thankfully).. I try my best, the sound is quite honestly repulsive, and I am trying not to look like I suck, but its well obvious at this point.. no one is impressed… I get to the end of my 30 mins, filter out.. everyone gives me this weak sickly applause and I clear off to find the engineer to say what the hell is going on with the sound.. The manager of the bar intercepts me, and says, why am I playing dance music, I am supposed to be playing 80′s, can I not see that everyone here is older and they don’t understand the stuff that I am playing.. I am trying to explain that I am playing what I was told to prepare by the promoters and that I don’t have any 80′s… and even if I did, the sound is so terrible that it wouldn’t even sound like 80′s… They basically pull me straight after that, I only went back on stage to pack up my gear in front of the whole bar.. To make it “feel” worse, the band (who was phenomenal) saw I was having difficulties and tried to get the crowd pumped for my next set, saying things like, “give it up for the DJ!” and I walk on to pack up.. to make me really pissed off, they turn the back round songs back on from some play list on the bar computer, and guess what.. Freaking Electro blasts out, and then all the young crowd started filling up the place, and I just sat at the bar, with my feet up on my controller travel case, sipping the free drinks I was allowed to have all night by management and feeling like a big idiot… and so angry at being told not to play my tunes and then they played the exact same stuff over the speakers…
What a freaking nightmare… and it was Friday the 13th, and I am not superstitious or anything but it really felt like that was out to get me.. So my first gig went down like a flaming Zeppelin…
[ link ]You just learned more in one night than most DJ’s learn in their whole bedroom careers. Be proud of yourself, a night like that will NEVER happen to you again, because you know so much now compared to DJs who never get as far as a paying gig.
[ link ]You’re so awesome and supportive Phil! I too share your view of Ross and feel that he’s gained SO MUCH from his first gig… Just so you know I’ve watched so much of your stuff and you’ve have been an amazing help for me building my Digital DJ career here in Toronto and I’ve now just accepted a position on a cruise ship starting at the beginning of September. Seriously, I don’t know if I could’ve accomplished what I have without the help of your site and amazingly clear videos and sharing of incredible information… you are a TRUE GEM for the industry and I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart!!
Mark Caravaggio aka DJ Charlie Clean
[ link ]Thanks for the kind comments. Your cheque’s in the post…
[ link ]Ross, if it makes you feel any better… I was also DJing on Friday the 13th and had what I would call the worst gig of my fairly young DJ career. Same idea in the sense that I was told certain music to play (Top 40/Dance/Latin/Disco/Italian Hits) and when I played exactly what they wanted and the organizer realized that her requests wasn’t doing the trick in having a packed dance floor she took her craziness out on me and thought she could order me to play exactly what she thought would work to get the party jumping. Unfortunately what she didn’t realize is that these people just weren’t really dancers to be honest, and not every single party will have a packed dance floor. This was also the classic case of large venue/small amount of people (approx. 50) and it was a family 50th bday party. More of a family social event than rockin’ dance party. So much of this business is being prepared and I’ve certainly learned that having literally everything in your musical collection will be amazing to whip out as you get those random 80′s requests/motown/swing etc. Being prepared, just like scouts I suppose, should be the #1 rule of being a DJ. Unfortunately we can’t count on the organizers for this. The only way you have full control is doing everything yourself and doing it your way. I truly hope you’ve taken away some really positive things from your 1st paid gig Ross and I wish you well in your aspiring DJ career!! Oh, and by the way, I came back on Saturday the 14th and Sunday the 15th and had two of my most incredible gigs ever!! Always forget about that last gig and get on the horse and do your thing for your future gigs
[ link ]#word! you seriously should consider making a “LIKE” button for this website, Phil.
[ link ]I was thinking the exact same thing about the “Like” button. Would be very handy.
[ link ]Ha ha – I *was* DJ’ing on Friday 13th and I’m glad I didn’t see any of these videos beforehand.
Luckily the session went well, got on nicely with the band I was following. However, I should have checked some of my MP3′s because a Boz Scaggs album I wanted to use had all the wrong tags and I temporarily messed up the atmosphere by playing a moody guitar-laden track instead of a jazzy little ballad. Oops!!
[ link ]Im sure these things have happened to all of us at least once. Whatever happens, just roll with it. Just keep smiling, and keep the energy up and keep having fun because whenever a mishap occurs, the crowd is going to look directly to the stage to see wtf just happened to the music and if you are standing there pissed, they will respond with the same.
[ link ]I remember working at Simons in Gainesville one night in the loft while Keoki was playing a set and full on passed out on the decks. After a stern talking to by Simon he said he was fine so Simon let him continue. Well old magic carpet wasn’t done yet after his next mix he took the needle off the wrong record. Needless to say he was kicked off the decks and resident Joe C. Took over and played one of the most unforgettable sets ever every song was banging every mix better than the last.
[ link ]*(MENTAL NOTE: turn off Apple Remote responsiveness prior to DJ gigs)*
[ link ]Yeah this kind of things defiantly happened to me before. The worst was when at a house party a disco moon (like a disco ball but in the shape of a crescent) fell from the ceiling and smashed the screen of my laptop.
[ link ]Where is Steve Angello’s utter fail in this list? Should be at least top 3!
[ link ]