Bang Gang Deejays, D is for Disco, E is for Dancing

Recently I caught up with Jamie Doom from the Bang Gang Deejays. We took a few minutes to chat about the new album they are releasing, why Melbourne is better than any other city in Australia, who the Bang Gang would knife fight, and poo. While one of these topics was awkward, overall the interview turned out well.

Patrick Collins: I thought I should ask you first off, should I call you Jamie or Mr. Doom?

Jamie Doom: Jamie is what most people call me, I've never been called Mr. Doom, I'm still too young.

PC: Okay then Jamie, if you had one wild animal as a pet, what would it be?

JD: One wild animal? Rhino? No I wouldn't want to play around with that. I mean I always wanted to have a monkey when I was a kid. But you find most wild animals start stinking after a while and they don't make very good pets. I mean, I had a turtle for a while and it stank, it was like taking care of a poo (laughs). I let it go, I set it free. Poo gone wild.

PC: Okay what's the best hangover cure you've found? I assume in your profession you have to deal with a lot of them.

JD: Yeah, I mean, I never came down with a system like ‘drink four cups of water and eat a tomato' or anything. What I have been doing recently, and it isn't even that inventive, but whenever you wake up, you pop four Neurofen and then go back to bed, or don't go back to bed. It's a typical thing but it works.

PC: I've heard drinking beer again in the morning is good.

JD: Yeah but if you can still stomach beer, if you can still look at beer, let alone stomach it, you never got that drunk in the first place. That's not a proper hangover.

PC: If you guys were a real gang, what would your rival gang be?

JD: A gang with like, weapons?

PC: Yeah, like, who would you knife fight?

JD: Jesus, who would we knife fight?! I'm not sure, like another band? I dunno, that's a hard question. You'd want to find someone you can beat really, wouldn't you? We'd probably go up against the Soulwax guys then (laughs). We could beat them.

PC: On your upcoming national tour, are you excited for any one club, or one city over the others?

JD: Probably Melbourne is the big one for us. We do that once a month anyway so it's like our own party compared to playing in other people's clubs. It's at a club called 3rd Class which is always fun. It's like this dingy little shithole club, they have this drink there called ‘rave juice' which is two shots of Agwa and a Redbull, in a plastic bag with a glowstick. Actually the second room is the girl's toilet, or like where everyone lines up to go to the toilet, that is part of the dancefloor, and there were all these girls just waiting for a piss just there next to you.

PC: So you and Gus did the Cum & Sweat mix, but how does it normally go down (since there are six members of the crew) when you get ready to record a mix?

JD: Well it's usually just me, Gus, and Adrian kind of taking charge. With LSD, Adrian mixed one CD and then Gus and I did the other. I mean, everyone has input on tracks and ideas, but it is pretty impossible for five or six people to sit down in a studio and mix a CD. It doesn't work to split it up and have everyone do their own mix and then just glue them together at the end. Although that might be an interesting project for some type of promo mix.

PC: So you guys have a new record out, D is for Disco, E is for Dancing on Modular right?

JD: Yeah, it's out at the end of this month in Australia.

PC: How are the Bang Gang 12"s going? Are you still releasing new stuff on that label?

JD: Yeah, that's just our little label that again, Gus and I mainly run. We just released our tenth record and we took a little hiatus at the start of the year for four or five months but now we've got about 12 or 15 more releases in the pipeline. We are pumping those out and we will be doing a label compilation next year or so.

By Patrick Collins

Release: Compilation

To Cure: A quiet weekend

Keywords: Bang Gang Deejays, Sydney, 3rd Class