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Last Night A DJ Saved My Life. By Bill Brewster & Frank Broughton. Headline. #7.99.
There's surely no greater sign that western society is about to collapse into the sea than the adulation heaped upon DJs. Can I be the millionth person to point out that they just play records?
As you might glean from the title, Last Night A DJ Saved My Life is less of a sober appraisal than a loved-up celebration of the turntablist. Brewster and Broughton write like a pair of jaw grinding groupies. "We are quite prepared to think of the DJ as God," they gush. "The DJ has been the driving force in popular music." Is it nave of me to point out that musicians might have more of a claim than DJs here?
By tagging the history of the DJ onto the story of popular music, Brewster and Broughton give the impression that those spinning the wheels of steel played a part in shaping it. That's like suggesting that because Kate Adie turns up at all the world's hotspots, she somehow causes the conflicts that stoke them.
Blame Jimmy Saville, whom this book improbably reveals to have been the first club DJ....