Bryan Black from Motor posted a poignant message on Twitter this week highlighting the divide between his chosen path of living his life through music and the alternative journeys peers from his youth pursued.
"Found out my best friend from high school is a devout Republican and watches Fox News,” the one-time Prince engineer turned techno-rock icon revealed.
“We used to smoke pot and listen to Dépêche Mode,” he recalled, “Sad.”
Skrufff asked a bunch more DJs about how much they’ve stayed in touch with schoolyard contemporaries and discovered a markedly different range of experiences.
“I’m not in touch with many, but one girl I went out with for a few months at High School reappeared in a very disturbing way,” Christopher Lawrence told Skrufff.
“Ironically this girl called Lisa broke up with me to go out with another kid at my school who was a mobile DJ. She thought he was so cool. She was my first real girlfriend so I was pretty bummed out by it at the time but I got over it by the first month of summer,” he recalled.
“Years passed by then suddenly last year she started posting really mean things on my Facebook page, Myspace and my Youtube page. She was especially nasty on Youtube. Every time a new video of me was posted she would be the first to comment and it was always the same thing: How I had ‘sold out’ and that I was a fake and a fraud because ‘I used to listen to Led Zeppelin with her.’
“I never liked Led Zeppelin. They were hippies,” the tech-trance superstar DJ continued.
“I liked AC/DC and Metallica. I had to get her banned from all my social networking sites because she became frenzied. The really frightening thing was the photo she had on her Facebook page. She looked like something from Mad Max with these two feral looking kids. It makes me really grateful that she dumped me. She is also one of the reasons I can't go back to any school reunions.”
Recalling being ‘beaten with a red paddle’ by his Elementary School teacher then almost being expelled from High School fiddling attendance slips, he was equally enenthusiastic about reconnecting with any other old school friends.
“I have never attended a school reunion,” said Christopher. “Why waste a good Saturday night listening to a really bad DJ play Celebration by Kool & The Gang and hanging out with people I never liked in the first place while a cheap red police light sadly reflects off of the lone disco ball in a hotel convention room?”
Fellow US club star Tommie Sunshine (http://soundcloud.com/tommiesunshine ) said he remains in contact with two old school friends from Naperville Central High School and admitted he recently came close to attending a reunion.
“I was all set to go DJ my 20th but I had to cancel for a gig. I was secretly relieved because I didn't feel like explaining to a room full of accountants what I do for a living and how house music saved my life,” he said.
“Everyone grows up and becomes what they are destined to be. You can never look back. If you stay present, enjoy the company you keep and keep only the people who treat you right around, the people from your past remain who they were in your heart and mind,” Tommie continued.
“Facebook has ruined all that which is why I don't have a personal page. I have zero interest in communicating with people whom I never liked 20 years ago. If I'd missed you, I'm sure over 20 years I would have been compelled to track you down,” he said.
New York producer Oliver ‘The Horrorist’ Chessler attended Tappan Zee High School in his youth and took an entirely different approach to Tommie.
“I've stayed in touch with almost everyone over the years. When Facebook became popular I reconnected with anyone else I ever knew,” said Oliver.
“What happened to them all? Well my closest childhood friends all became very successful. One is an executive at Apple, another a head chef in a Vegas hotel and my closest girlfriend is a lead costume designer for television shows such as Law & Order. Honestly, the music producing friends I made in my 20s; most of them are still involved in it, struggling,” he said.
London tech-house maestro and Wiggle promoter Nathan Coles attended White Hart Lane School in Tottenham and said he remains in touch with just a handle of old school pals ‘only through Facebook’.
"I don't know of anyone who ended up famous at my school, either,” said Nathan, “though maybe a few have popped up on (reality TV snitch show) Crimewatch,” he laughed.
Like Tommie, Nathan said he’d missed school reunions due to DJ bookings clashing and admitted feeling ambivalent about his childhood in general.
"I was quite popular a school, because I became the class clown. This gave me a bad rep though and once I got that, it was very hard to shake,” he recalled.
“So I ended up on report for two years and my art teacher used to lock me in the stockroom cupboard during her art lessons, because I was so disruptive. It did have windows though and I would nick (steal) some of the stock each time by taping it round my waist (Midnight express style) and sell it to my corner shop for fags (cigarettes)."
“At the time I hated school,” Nathan added, “but when I look back now . . .they were great days.”
DJ Lottie, who attended the Hammond School in Chester, was less nostalgic.
"I have to admit I don't keep in touch with anyone from my school. I think there was a school reunion a few years back but I didn't go,” she confessed.
“I was a bit of a loner at school and always had my Walkman (showing my age) on between lessons.
"It wasn't until I started going clubbing at 17 when i started making friends, found like-minded people and started coming out of my shell. I went to an all girls school and while I appreciate my education I never felt like I really fitted in. My life started to have direction (and became a lot more fun) when I left in 1988 and discovered acid house and it was that period in my life where all my old friends come from,” she said.
Christopher Lawrence’s radio-show Rush Hour: http://www.rushhourradio.net
Nathan Coles: http://soundcloud.com/nathancoles Nathan’s joined by Cesar Merveille (Cadenza) Terry Francis and Eddie Richards at the next London Wiggle party on Saturday 19th February at Paramount: http://www.paramount.uk.net
Jonty Skrufff: http://listn.to/JontySkrufff
