All we’re hoping for is at least one bearded lady. (Photo courtesy DJ Skribble)

From a stint on MTV’s The Grind and Spring Break to radio, studio work and life on the road as a touring DJ, Long Island’s DJ Skribble is carving out a home for himself in the circus.

Well, Studio 54′s version of the circus, anyway.

Joining the likes of Paul Oakenfold and Z-Trip as jocks with a show, DJ Skribble’s Freak Show starts Saturday night at the MGM Grand club. In between weekend gigs in town, Skribble will still be out on the road — and finding the time to tutor a precocious DJ Pauly D in the ways of the celebrity DJ lifestyle.

Tell me about the show coming up at 54.

I’m looking so forward to it. It’s going to be pretty cool. It’s called Skribble’s Freak Show. MGM, Angel Music Group and ourselves all put together. It’s going to kind of be like a twisted circus of characters and eye candy and music. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Why now for you to come and do a residency?

I’ve been traveling all over the world for so many years. It’s good to know you have a home to go to every Saturday night. I’ll still be traveling on Thursday, Friday and stuff. But that staple now there is every Saturday you have a home. You can experiment and go in there. It’s a transient crowd so you’re still playing for a lot of people throughout the country because so many people are in there from all over the country and all over the world. Those people go back to their cities and their markets and they say, “Hey man, we went to see Skribble in Vegas.” So when they come to Vegas, they go there. It’s kind of cool.

Was any of it the road getting to be a grind at all?

I’m so used to the grind anyway. If I wouldn’t be in Vegas I’d be somewhere else. It’s actually less of the flying. You’re going to the same destination every week. Being on an airplane to me, I think we fly more than pilots.

Can you talk about some of the visual elements that are going to be included in the show?

I’m not allowed to talk about a lot of them, but we’re doing full production. Obviously, it’s a circus theme so you can kind of get an idea of what we’re going to have going on there.

You’ve had Perfecto and then Revolution and now your show. What do you think is going on in Vegas right now with big productions like this?

I think what’s happening as far as me as a DJ, I love to perform. The technology that’s come out with Serrato and Tractor and all these computer-based programs, it’s taken a lot of the performance out of a lot of the DJs. I don’t even keep the computer in front of me. It’s always to my right. I don’t want people to look up at the stage and just see a computer. I think what’s happening with a show like this, is it’s really giving me the opportunity to perform again and really show the skills, whether it be scratching or some of the turntable tricks. People are going to be focused on me as well as you want to make them dance throughout the night, but you’re definitely giving them more of a performance.

Studio 54 sometimes gets knocked as being a club for an older crowd. Are you conscious of that coming in?

I am. I’m conscious that it’s an older crowd. I’ve been in this game a long time. What’s good about this is my demographics are anywhere from 16 up to 45. It’s cool because you’re going to get some of those young kids who know me, and you’re going to get the 21, 23, 25, 30 and then you’re going to get the 40-year-olds in there who watched me or saw me when they were growing up. It’s that whole big spectrum of people we’re going to pull. It’s great because musically you can really dig in and go all over.

What do you have planned musically?

I’m still here to play the hits. You’ve got to play the hits. People want to come there to dance. You’re not going to go start playing obscure dubstep, hardcore electro. We are in Vegas. Vegas is a mainstream market and you’ve got to stay pretty much mainstream. You do it with a little bit of a twist so you’re not just getting the exact same version they heard on the radio. You’re going to play “Tik Tok” but I might play “Tik Tok” a little different. I’m going to play Lady Gaga, but I might play a different remix of Lady Gaga. That’s cool and people still get it. It depends on the crowd too. Some nights might be a lot more commercial than others. Some nights it might be straight up Top 40, what they hear on the radio, because that’s what they want to hear. If that’s what the club wants to hear and that audience wants to hear, then that’s what you’ve got to play. I’m not there playing for my friends and myself. I’m there to play for the people that have spent their money to come see me and spent their money at Vegas and at MGM and at Studio 54. Whatever they’re going to want to hear and whatever their feeling, if I see something’s not working, I’m right out of it and I’m going to make them dance.

That’s the most important key to the whole thing. We can have all the eyecandy and everything in the world, but musically, if I’m not catering to the audience that’s watching me, then we’re not doing our jobs. I could try to be the coolest person in the world, but if that’s not what the night’s going to contain, then so be it. But I think we’re going to be cool and I think we’re going to have a genre of music that’s going to spread across all the spectrum.

What’s the most important thing to keep in mind when you’re trying to balance the music and keeping the crowd happy, and the performance aspects?

That’s just it. You can play Top 40 and still make it cool. It’s how you play it, and when you drop a certain song. It’s all in the programming of the night, which always changes. It’s never the same because you have an influx of people coming in at certain times. Maybe tonight it’s a late crowd, this night it was an early crowd.

You also have to gauge how far you hold on to the reins before you let loose and start dropping bombs. If you see you’ve got a really early crowd and it’s an older crowd, they might not stay until 5 in the morning. You can’t hold back until 1 in the morning and start letting everybody have it. You’ve got to come in harder and you’ve got to come in earlier. If you’ve got a younger crowd, chances are they are going to stay out late and you can hold back a little more and build the night. It all depends on what kind of crowd we’re going to have, and what kind of crowd we’re going to have week in and week out. That’s the beauty of Vegas. It’s never the same thing twice.

How’s everything going with Pauly D?

(laughs) Pauly D. You know, I’m actually going to be in the studio with him tonight. Pauly, a lot of people don’t realize, Pauly was a DJ before he got on the show. Everybody’s hating on him, this and that. He’s been transformed from the farm leagues playing on a AAA baseball team, moved up to the Yankees after Jersey Shore came out. Anybody’s going to be overwhelmed by that.

He’s getting a lot of shows in right now. He’s playing different rooms. It’s not like he’s just playing in Rhode Island. He’s playing rooms all over the country, getting that experience very fast. He’s evolving into a good DJ. He’s got the residency now in Vegas and he’s going to do his thing. He’s a smart kid. The show didn’t take him because he was a DJ. The show picked him because he had crazy hair and he had his look. What he’s doing with his platform that he’s been given with Jersey Shore is taking advantage of this career that he really wanted to do, which was DJing. Nobody can fault him for that.

Speaking of his residency, he’s going to be here in the spring. Will there be any collaboration with you guys on stage when he’s in town?

His show is on Friday night, the day before mine. Unfortunately I’m going to be in Detroit on Friday, and I think he’s got to go to Houston on Saturday, so we’re not even really going to see each other.

MTV just announced they’re dropping the Music Television entirely. As a veteran MTV guy, was that a bummer?

I know, I heard that. I’m a little disappointed about that. Like anything else, the channel evolved. It made the channel great, and they’ve become a cable network that has done a lot of reality programming which has been very successful for them. I don’t look at it as something that died. I look at it as it evolved into what it is today. Listen, when you have 5.5 million people watching one show, which is the highest-rated cable show and the highest-rated MTV show of all time, that’s a pretty big achievement.

By Jason Scavone

Comments RSS