Add to that the cost of import techno records every Thursday and you have yourself a winner of a long-term crack addiction with a costly pipe. With a limited budget (I could only eat so much ramen), I had to settle for a cheap Numark mixer, one Technics 1200 and a $30 Technics SL-5300 that couldn't keep a beat. Like most wannabe DJs who weren't selling weed, I had to crawl my way up the equipment ladder the old-fashioned way: university loans. Sure, I'd have been laughed off the dancefloor if I tried to do that in a club, but like a mother who's just given birth to an ugly baby, it was still a magical moment I had squeezed out a shiny baby mix and I wanted more. I remember my first mix like it was yesterday: Two Plastikman tracks that were so similar, they might as well have been the same track. For years, the tech remained the same: two or more records or CDs playing through a mixer and at the controls, an individual looking to make something interesting happen with it all. DJing has come a long way, and it's hard to believe that it was basically the same hardware at the center of such a huge spectrum of musical experimentation, from disco to hip hop.
