Southsea DJ, Sam Foot talks about all things vinyl, what it takes to be a vinyl DJ and the future of vinyl records
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00:00 [music]
00:10 My name's Sam and I DJ under the name of Coco Fono
00:16 and we're in my front room/home studio with all my lovely records
00:23 and I've been collecting vinyl records since at least when I was about 9 years old I think
00:32 and never stopped really.
00:36 It is a bit of an obsession and some people say it is an addiction
00:40 which is probably pretty close to the truth
00:43 and yeah it is becoming more and more for the privileged I think
00:50 and I'm buying less now because buying new stuff is expensive
00:56 and if you're DJing and expect to get paid for it
01:00 as an example a new 12" record could be up to £14
01:06 of which if you're beat mixing you'll only play maybe 3 minutes of
01:11 so over 2 hours at 14 minutes for every 3 minutes
01:16 you're not going to get paid that, you're not going to recoup that money
01:20 so again it's kind of a privileged thing.
01:23 More of a passion project.
01:24 More of a passion project for a lot of people
01:28 or you just choose to not have other things like a car or a house I think.
01:35 The digital side you can have a controller and you can press the quantise button
01:41 which will automatically link in the BPMs
01:46 so they're already beat matching to a certain extent
01:51 and there's lots of other tricks as well where you can do a lot of work
01:57 before you go out and do a set digitally
02:01 so it's pretty much all done.
02:03 That's still work, you've still got to do it, you've still got to choose,
02:06 you're still a selector, you've still got to choose good tunes.
02:09 That's still, and I do DJ digitally as well
02:14 but the vinyl side is just because I've been doing it so long
02:18 I'm comfortable with that
02:21 and I have started using DBS which is an encoded disc
02:26 which is exactly the same as a, shall I get one?
02:29 Yeah, go for it.
02:30 There it is.
02:35 They look exactly the same as a record
02:40 and it's just got an encoded band
02:45 and that will play the tunes off your laptop or USB stick
02:55 using normal turntables but you've got to have a specialist kit for it.
03:00 And it acts and feels exactly the same
03:05 but it can open up a lot more opportunities
03:09 for doing different styles of mixing.
03:11 But yeah, I just do enjoy the process, the physical side of it
03:16 and it's always a challenge.
03:21 Tell us about those challenges.
03:23 Well it can vary, if it's in a club there's a lot of things
03:26 where if it's not set up properly the dance floor can actually make the needles jump up and down
03:31 and I've done that a few times.
03:33 I've been, we used to do boat parties in the Solon.
03:38 Oh, so imagine the water balloons.
03:40 Yeah, so the boat was all over the show
03:43 and they can, especially the Technics can handle to be right on angle and still play
03:49 but this was ridiculous and it was next to the engine room as well
03:51 so it was all reverberating and shifting up and down.
03:56 And yeah.
03:59 What was the outcome of that though?
04:01 Did you manage to play a full set?
04:04 Yeah, kind of.
04:05 It was not brilliant because it was quite choppy.
04:11 And I was downstairs and bottomed a bit the boat
04:15 and the guys at the top were even worse because that was even worse.
04:20 And yeah, there are various different locations like parties in the countryside.
04:26 You've got lots of different challenges there with weather and leaves and things like that
04:33 and yeah, parties in cellars and all sorts of other places where,
04:39 I've been to a house party, I think that was in London,
04:42 where there was literally plasterboard coming from the ceiling from upstairs
04:47 where there's another party and the floors were going, landing onto the decks
04:51 and completely ruining the records.
04:53 Oh.
04:54 Yeah, that was, yeah.
04:56 Like I said, it's a privileged thing.
04:59 And because there are so many people that are DJing, whether it's analogue or digital,
05:09 it's a very crowded market in that, unless you're right at the top.
05:15 And usually you have to be a producer as well or a recording artist as well
05:19 to actually get those gigs.
05:23 A lot of them now are just open decks where people just turn up, they don't get paid.
05:32 They just want to show people their music or hope to get better gigs,
05:36 but there's a lot of that going on.
05:41 Like anything in the creative industries, any artist, whether it's musicians or visual arts,
05:49 they do a lot more for free now than just to get somewhere else.
05:53 And there's a joke across that whole industry of getting to do gigs for exposure
06:01 and the joke is, "I only need three more exposures to pay my rent."
06:08 So whereas it was my full-time job for over a decade, really full-on,
06:18 every week and clubs and bars and whatever, and it did pay my rent.
06:24 And I was making a living out of it, it was proper.
06:28 And I was spending a lot.
06:30 You have to reinvest into new music all the time,
06:34 so my spend on records was quite high back then.
06:38 But now, yeah, like you said, it's a passion project for a lot of people.
06:48 I still get paid to go and DJ, but it actually hasn't changed
06:54 the same amount as I was getting in 1992 to 2024.
07:00 It's pretty much the same amount,
07:04 which obviously is not going to be enough to keep buying if you're buying vinyl.
07:11 Which is a bit of a shame.