DJ WARS

The West Central Florida DJ Scene: Corruption (or Disruption) on the Dance Floor?

When you first think of the DJ scene in West Central Florida, you think of the weddings, the parties, the fun. You don’t think of the beefs between DJ’s, the constant fighting over who rules the turf, who DJ’s best, who runs the West.

Unfortunately, that seedier underbelly of the DJ scene unveiled itself to me, an unwitting pawn in "the game", earlier this week. Needless to say, I was pretty shocked to find infighting where I thought I’d find solidarity, bickering rather than brotherhood…

It all began when I received an email from one DJ Marty the One Man Party, AKA Martin Sullivan, West Central Florida’s answer to the call for NY’s finest (DJ’s). DJ Marty has been DJ’ing in Florida since 1994, running the gamut from weddings to Bat Mitzvahs to emceeing parties. His letter read as follows (my personal data has been deleted, but the rest remains the same, any spelling and grammatical errors and all):

"What do you charge Yo & how much you willing to pay Yo! This is a buisness Yo & not MySpace.
DJ Marty The One Man Partywww.djpartymarty.com
Name :* Sione
Address :* ----
Email Address :* ----
Phone : ----
Date of Event : 4/30/2008
Type of Event : Party
Approximate Number of People : 190
Comments :*
Yo Marty the one MAN party! How much does your partay cost yo?!
___________________________________________________________

I was a little bit surprised by the tone of his email and his dismissal of what could potentially be a future customer. I let him know that by sending him the following email response:

Hello DJ Marty,

I’m not sure who filled out this form in my name, but I can assure you that it was not me. Still, this seems like an inappropriate way to respond to customers. Also, if you are into a more formal addressing, wouldn’t your response tend to be a little less childish and not include misspelled words? If you are intending to attract customers, which I assume you are, I’ve looked at your website and it looks like you might be relying on a bit more than just that to do the job. Word-of-mouth advertising is one of the most valuable assets a good business can have on its side and to throw this to the wind is foolish for a business to do. You’ve brought your own actions to my attention, as a potential customer, and attached your website there in your signature. If you are doing this, I’d recommend that you try to be a little bit more polite in the future. I’ve been handed a bad impression of you and your services right from the initial meeting, now. You know the expression about how one happy customer tells one of their friends, but one unhappy customer tells 10 of their friends? It is very often true…

Thank you,

Sione

DJ Marty didn’t hesitate for a second before quickly naming names and pointing fingers. All fingers pointed directly at another local DJ, DJ Junior Rockstar, and all the names were just that one name. DJ Marty sent me DJ Junior Rockstar’s MySpace information as well as all of his business information (address, phone number, real name, etc.). This seemed a bit odd to me, as the easiest thing seems to me to be to just write a quick "Sorry note" and move on from there. This was when I knew that something must be amiss with the West Central Florida DJ scene. I was so intrigued that the whole controversy basically dominated all of my waking hours from that point on until this point right now (the point where I’m writing this, not necessarily when you’re reading this). What was going on? What happened to the DJ Code of Ethics? If things could fall apart and turn ugly between DJ’s in West Central Florida, what was stopping all DJ’s from just rioting and starting a mass revolution?

I decided that I should try to get into contact with DJ Junior Rockstar, AKA Gregory Sanchez, to get his reaction and see if he had any idea about what was going on here or any opinions about DJ Marty…

Hello Greg,

I'm not sure what sort of conflict that you have with DJ Marty (the one man party), but I received some email from him kind of being rude about some contact that he claimed to have gotten from me. When I responded to him, instead of apologizing for the mistake (I didn't contact him originally), he stated that he believed you sent him my contact information. He then emailed me your MySpace information, business information, name and such. Whatever sort of problems you have with one another as DJ's, I just don't want to have my contact information sent around as "pranks" or "tools" for your getting on each other's case.

Sorry, don't mean to be presumptuous in assuming that you did do this, but just that I was frustrated in that this was happening at all and was then sent your information as "who to blame", basically. If you have any insight into what's going on with this situation, I would love to find out! I also think it's pretty inappropriate of that DJ Marty to have sent out your contact information amidst all of this as well.

Thank you,
Sione

I did not get too much of a response back from Mr. Sanchez, though he did seem to insinuate that it really was all Sullivan’s doing. He wrote back saying simply, "I never sent anything about you to marty i never even heard of you. he has the problem with me i did nothing to him he a immature bully and needs to get a life[sic]". Wow. What can I say? There really was something going on between these two and there was clearly no love lost between them! It was at this point that I began to wonder just how deep it went. I began to get a little bit nervous, unsure as to just what I’d uncovered and how serious this was. My mind raced, thinking back to the beef between Tupac and Biggie. This was serious business!

I contacted a few of other DJ’s who work in the same area(s) in Florida as both DJ Marty the One Man Party and DJ Junior Rockstar to try to find out if I could get any more information about what was going on or if it was just a problem that was permeating the whole West Central Florida DJ scene. Unfortunately, it seems that everybody I attempted to contact was very "tight-lipped" about the whole situation, which left me with nothing but more questions. I don’t know whether other DJ’s were just a little more into looking out for each other than Sullivan and Sanchez were, or they just had no idea who either DJ Marty the One Man Party and DJ Junior Rockstar were. Either way, I think that their silence speaks volumes…