A night in the life of a strip club DJ – everything you never wanted to know about DJing in a strip club
Chapter 4
And now for your examination and study, ladies and gentlemen: the strip club DJ.
Of all Western culture’s archetypes he is the most overlooked. He is the punchline of a joke everybody knows but never bothered to tell: A yammering, oversexed madman, barely intelligible — and barely making rent.
Still, a DJ supplies a club its most essential ingredient. Scraped to its core, a strip club needs three things: dancers, customers and music. Strike the music. Leave the strippers and the men. What’s left? A brothel.
More still, there’s much more to a DJ’s job than playing music. Think of a DJ booth as a strip club’s air traffic control tower.
Depending on the shift, the time of day and the day of week, there can be sixty or more dancers and heaven knows how many customers on the club floor. It’s the DJ’s job to keep track of it all — with the help of the club’s manager, who will provide invaluable intelligence throughout the night.
The job is frenetic, requiring one’s body to accomplish three or more actions, all in a single motion, often in the midst of distraction: clicking and dragging with the mouse in one’s right hand, sliding the mixing board’s crossfaders with one’s left – all while snarling into a microphone. In addition, a DJ must always be ready to shift to Plan B, and to bring those contingencies to life with such sleight of hand that no one notices.
“It’s a dying art,” Adrian, the clubs’ head DJ, explained my first day on the job. “A lot of clubs are turning to AI DJs. It’s not the same.”
He’s right.
Serving up the right music for the right dancer at the right moment endows her with a wild and luminous power. She’ll move, not the way a stripper moves, but the way she moves, transfigured into a human work of art. In these moments a club isn’t so much about lust as ethereal beauty. The dancer is the great artist, the DJ her assistant.
Two songs. Each played for three minutes. Fade down the first on the mixing board. Fade up the second. Change up the lights. And keep snarling into that mic. All night, hour after hour, until your head’s spinning and your veins feel like they’re coursing molten lava.
A good DJ keeps jolting the club with high voltage, sustaining its charge, keeping the pace – dancer after dancer, stage set after stage set. He’s the hidden kapellmeister. His symphony: fire and rapture. All Third Movement. Scherzo, fast and untamed.
The DJ is also the club’s top salesman, ever coaching customers toward their next questionable decision.
It would be laughable to suggest I’m an expert strip club DJ. I should also note here that I take myself not at all seriously while talking into a microphone. Any number of more experienced DJs could surely pick apart my methods like vultures on a roadside carcass.
Adrian and other DJs I know are capable of a kind of sorcery I can’t imagine practicing. They use more or less the same equipment you’ll find in the club’s booth to create and remix their own music, much of it electronic and Drum and Bass, which they perform in nightclubs and at music festivals.
Yet, I found myself pleasantly surprised to hear Adrian, who’s been at this for more than two decades, say the following during a recent phone call: “You’re killing it, dude.”
And one of the club’s owners passed by the booth twice within about four minutes this week, each time inexplicably dropping a twenty on the mixing board.
So I suppose I’m doing something right.
Here’s how the strip club DJ’s craft works — as it was taught to me and as I’ve come to practice it.
The work essentially includes two components: what a DJ says on the mic and what a DJ does with his hands.
Similarly, a DJ has two key implements in his toolbox: A computer running a DJ app and stage-lighting software as well as a four-channel mixing board for fading up and down each song.
DJ software, such as Virtual DJ, Djay Pro or Traktor, is a digital metaphor for the two-turntable setups DJs have been using since the 1940s.
The difference: Instead of two record players you have on your screen “Deck A” and “Deck B.” And instead of vinyl, you’re streaming music from something like Apple Music or Tidal. Each dancer has a playlist from which the DJ is expected to choose her songs.
Most nights we’re running what we call “two-song stages” – that is, the dancers are on the stage for two songs at a time, each song no longer than three minutes.
Which dancer takes the stage next is determined by a text file on the DJ’s computer screen that includes the night’s dancer “rotation.”
No matter what chaos may be unfolding around him, a DJ relies on a routine that brings rhythm, becomes the club’s heartbeat.
It goes like this…
First, you call Halo to the stage. “Brace yourselves, now! Try to keep your composure! Here comes Haaaaloooooo!”
As Halo climbs those stage steps, you check your list and see that Frost is the next dancer in the rotation. So, during Halo’s first song, you scroll to Frost’s playlist and choose her music.
Then, just before Halo’s first song reaches the three-minute mark, you’ll announce her second: “We’re goin’ in for another one! Keep your hands and arms inside the car at all times! Here we go one more time, Halo!”
That’s when you put the next dancer on stand-by: “Stand by Frost! Frost is comin’ up next!”
Near the end of Halo’s second song, you’ll talk her off the stage: “There she is, the devastatingly seductive Haaaaaalooooo! Put your hands together and show her some love. That is how that gets done! Damn, Halo!”
As Halo descends the stage’s steps, you’ll do a “promo” on the mic — encouraging customers to spend some time in the VIP rooms or on the lap-dance couches.
“Let Halo take you by the hand and lead you back to one of those private suites. You can get into those things for 15 minutes, a half-hour an hour or more! We always recommend more here at Whispers!”
Or…
“Get up close on those couches! Get back there and get yourself some dances! Change your life forever, man. I guarantee it.”
And then you call the next dancer to the stage.
Two songs. Each played for three minutes. Fade down the first on the mixing board. Fade up the second. Change up the lights. And keep snarling into that mic. All night, hour after hour, until your head’s spinning and your veins feel like they’re coursing molten lava.
Breaks, by the way, are rare. If you need to piss, make a run for it at the beginning of a song, wash your hands fast and sprint back into the booth, drying your hands on your pants as you go. (It looks as ridiculous as it sounds.)
Meanwhile, a strip club DJ is tracking virtually everything happening in the club. He’s developed a situational awareness that borders on animal instinct.
From the lap dance area, I’ll hear the sound of an open palm slapping an ass-cheek, loud, hard and sharp. That’s Harley. She’s always spanking her own ass, usually while astride a traveling corporate cog, freshly escaped from his hotel room. I needn’t turn my head toward the lap-dance couches to know she won’t be available to take the stage.
There are a whole lot of other things to keep tabs on as well: Which dancers are in the club? Who’s ready to hit the stage? Who’s calling it a night and heading out the door? Who’s drunk? Who’s passed out in the VIP room she commandeered for herself hours ago? Who keeps disappearing into the ladies’ room to snort bumps? Who’s in trouble with management and about to be eighty-sixed? Who’s in a good mood and who’s on a tear? Who’s twisted her ankle and needs a break? Who’s in a VIP room with a customer, and how long has she been there?
Likewise, how many guys are out there on the club floor? Are they throwing ones? Are they buying dances? Is one of the dancers about to hook a guy and lead him back to those VIP rooms? Are any of those guys drunk enough to cause trouble — about to jump up on the stage, grope a passing dancer, pull a gun or start a floor brawl?
Foremost, A DJ has to remember every dancer’s name so he can call it correctly into the mic. He remembers whether a dancer likes red lights, purple or a morphing kaleidoscope of rainbow hues. He knows whether to hit the strobe while she’s spinning on the pole. (Some dancers become disoriented and fly off the stage.) He remembers the girls’ favorite songs as well as the music they suddenly find stale and tired.
While the DJ is introducing girls to and from the stage, the manager will call out, “Sin’s doin’ 15!” That means a customer’s bought 15 minutes in a VIP room with Sin.
“One-five!” the DJ shouts over the music.
“That’s right!” says the manager.
The DJ starts a timer on his screen. (Remember, 15 minutes, a half-hour, an hour or more!)
On a good night, he may have five or six VIP timers ticking at once. When a timer’s alarm starts screaming, the DJ clicks on the mic and says, “Sin! Your time is up. Time’s up, Sin.”
He’ll want to make sure Sin has emerged from that VIP room – to be sure she heard him, to be sure she’s safe — and to be sure she’s ready for the next stage rotation.
Dancers have a habit of asking for a brand-new song (not in their playlists) 30 seconds before they’re supposed to be on stage. These requests have a way of redlining a DJ’s pulse. The current song’s last seconds are counting down, and he’s on the mic talking the other dancer off the stage while he searches up the new song.
Complicating matters, songs — especially of the hip-hop variety — can come with imaginative spellings, making it hard to find the right track. (See Nicki Minaj’s “Beez in the Trap.”) One dancer couldn’t stop laughing from the stage when I played the Archies’ 1969 classic “Sugar Sugar” instead of the requested “Suga Suga” by the Vallejo, California rapper Baby Bash.
Just after 2:30 a.m., I’ll toss my glasses on the desk, press my palms into my eye sockets, then click off the soundboard. An unsettling silence will fall over the club.
Back in the locker room, the girls will slide out of their one-piece slingshot bikinis, pull on their jeans and sweatshirts. Some of us will gather around the bar, talk about the night, laugh. Then the doorman and I will start walking the girls to their cars.
“Get home safe,” we say.
“Love you,” some of the girls say back.
Finally, I’ll climb aboard the motorbike and rumble my way home, feeling all at once numb and electrically charged in a way I can’t quite explain.
Off the bike, still head to toe in leathers, I’ll crack Sean’s door and find myself, just for a moment, watching him sleep. He’ll be taller than I soon, but for these seconds he’s still my little guy.
Then, sometime just before 4 a.m., I’ll slide under the covers next to Lisa. She’ll be rising for her own workday in less than two hours.
“How was it?” she’ll whisper.
“Crazy!” I’ll say, way too loudly, especially for the hour, because my ears are still ringing with both the club’s pounding pulse and the motorbike’s cat-scratch scream.
“Shhhhh,” she’ll say, gently pressing her palm against my shoulder. “Glad it was good. Get some sleep, Mr.”
I’ll lay there, awake, Lisa’s body tucked against my thigh, until the fire and adrenaline are done with me.
Then I, too, will drift away.
We hope you enjoyed this fourth – and free! – edition of Diary of a Strip Club DJ, the story of a reporter who became a DJ in a large American city’s two roughest strip clubs. DSCDJ depends on readers’ support. Become a paid subscriber to receive new weekly dispatches about what goes on in a strip club while no one’s looking.