DJ Dave Bishop

Cleveland DJ David Bishop has a perspective that few people do in Cleveland. He grew up in Detroit in the '80s, when our rustbelt sister was considered the cradle of techno/house music. Names like Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May weren’t exactly household yet, and Movement, Detroit's Electronic Music Festival at Park Plaza, was but a glint in Detroit’s post-industrial eyes. Years later, Bishop was spinning house music in the heart of New York City – fulfilling residencies at the Leopard Lounge and the Rubber Monkey and sharing showcases with DJs in many other clubs. To hear Bishop tell it, this was teeth-cutting in the truest sense of the word; sometimes his biggest performances were in battling older sound systems and attracting more partitioned tastes. Cool Cleveland spoke to Bishop about the state of the DJ union.

Now in Cleveland, Bishop has found strength in numbers and an open, quality scene with a character other cities across the country lack. Joining longtime scene luminaries Doug Burkhart, Rob Black, Mike Filly and others, Bishop is working to get the word out about another best kept secret in Cleveland – those who speak through those two turntables and a microphone.

Cool Cleveland: Cleveland’s DJ scene doesn’t seem to “cannibalize” itself like it used to, with multiple events competing and dividing the scene up. What do you attribute that to?
David Bishop: People have started to collaborate together and trust each other a lot more than in the past. And there aren’t as many competing things going on...Doug [Burkhart] over at Grand Poo-Bas Record Shoppe up on Detroit [Road] set up clevelandnightlife.net, which has helped the scene a lot. He’s a mainstay. I don’t want to call him a granddaddy – because he’s not an old man – but he’s definitely entrenched and important. He started that site up for people in the business and for those who are interested in electronic music as a place to go and have debates and discussions.

What do you see as the biggest obstacle for Cleveland DJs to overcome today?
The potential audience feeling comfortable with what the scene is. These scenes and the music had a rap all across the country for being an accessory to drug culture – going to a “rave” and doing drugs and the 14-year-olds with the glowsticks and whistles and all that stuff. That scene still exists and certainly you can find that, if that’s what you want. But there are a lot of us in our 30s where that’s just not attractive anymore. You’re supposed to have a fun time and enjoy the music – dance if you want to dance – but not have it so loud, powerful and driving, that you can’t talk either.

That’s sounds like a tall order in a smaller, more fickle market like Cleveland.
Yeah, you’re right. It is still a lot harder to get a crowd to show up and every place is hurting to get a crowd in Cleveland. For a while, there was a lot happening. It seemed like headliner after headliner over the last two years with smaller crowds. At first I thought the audience was just too fragmented – too many competing niches and not enough population size to support every niche. But it’s really an economic thing, too. Club owners can’t always afford to compete and when national headliners like [Paul Oakenfold] come through, and the clubs are operating at a loss just to get them in here.

So, is Cleveland in a conventional sort of quandary?
I have a friend who has owned a couple clubs in Cleveland and he had a very progressive place recently. He had to close down. He wanted to give everyone something new and challenge the audience, but he wasn’t making money at it. It’s a delicate balance. You almost have to build the audience first and then expose them to new styles a little at a time. It’s tough. People here are much more comfortable with music and a scene that they know. It’s hard especially in the Midwest to say to people “Hey, this is new. Like it.” In my experience, Midwesterners don’t think that way. Places like the Blind Pig and the Velvet Dog – they do well because it’s a comfortable scene with music people know. Midwesterners generally like to be a little slower in trying and liking new things. In places like Manhattan and San Francisco, [they] want new. If it’s not new and a little crazy, people just aren’t that interested in it.

How do you break the Cleveland quandary and build the audiences?
You need a critical mass of diversity, because all of those different elements make a good party happen. And to do that, you need to have people drawing from each other’s crowds in a relationship-building sort of way. I think about events at Wish, where events are happening upstairs and downstairs...that needs to keep happening in Cleveland for the scene to thrive or, at least, to maintain.

San Francisco, New York, Miami, Chicago and to a lesser extent Detroit - these places have an audience that are always hungry for the new thing. But there’s a shift growing in Cleveland…and what Cool Cleveland is doing is helping to get that message out. I think it may be hard to sway the guys at the Blind Pig to go run right out to Mercury [Lounge] or something like that. But that’s not to say it can’t be done.

I’m sure it can be. DJs really have an opportunity to pick up the baton that mainstream music dropped. With the popularity of iPods, everyone has their own soundtrack now. It’s only logical that people will have to work to experience that collective consciousness in other venues.
Exactly.

So, Cleveland vs. New York. Are the scenes like night and day?
Well, in some respects...the biggest difference I noticed coming to Cleveland was the accessibility to play as a professional and to be able to do so right away. It seemed a lot easier to get your arms around the scene here, understand who’s playing, and know the people and clubs that have everything going on. And when I did get to play out in Cleveland, every single place has had top-notch equipment. The flip side is that even those crappy little places in New York draw a crowd because of a larger population.

There are some very noticeable differences and pros-and-cons in both cities. But there’s an intrinsic, latent power in the fact that the scene in Cleveland is more connected and that “folks know folks.” We have a great arts community in Cleveland and the strong relationships built within that framework are often built really fast.

It’s arguably our greatest asset and something to be proud of.
You know, when I first came to Cleveland, I hopped in one of those airport cabs that said “I Like Cleveland” on the side. You’ve been here your whole life, so you know what I’m talking about. “I Like Cleveland.” And I thought, “Hmmmm… nothing like putting your foot down and being proud of something!” Everything in New York is “I Love New York” and subliminally, this first experience in Cleveland felt like a “things don’t suck so bad here” sort of mantra. There’s really no reason for the inferiority complex.

Interview by Cool Cleveland contributor Pete Chakerian peter_chakerian@yahoo.com

Photo by Liz Flynn

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