People-Music-Moments #9
Jon Boi
Hi everyone, I’m Johnny I’m a DJ, podcaster, joker and addict, I KNOW… what a combo. I’m also a massive over thinker, so it’s taken me a lot longer to fill this in than I care to admit.
Music has been the backbone of my life, it’s been present through all the good and not so good times. A song is one of the things that triggers the same emotion no matter what circumstances it’s experienced in.
For a long time I actually listened to music subjectively. I listened to it for other people. Being a dj conditioned me to skim for elements that people would like in a club/podcast/radio setting, not necessarily what I like. This actually lead to me resenting music as a whole until when I went to rehab I actually fully connected with the music that I love again. Lockdown and no dance floors really helped with this too. Anyway, I’m procrastinating…
Song 1
George Acosta - Emotions
Standing outside a youth fellowship group on a Sunday night at the local church was where I met one of my best mates and dj mentors, Haywire. We both went to the same school, he was a few years above me so our paths hadn’t crossed until then. He had this magical thing I’d never seen before, an 128mb MP3 player. It was blue and mind blowing. He let me hear a tune on it and the tune pretty much bonded the 2 of us for life. The pads and floaty synths with a whispering vocal of
‘As we travel from time to time,
The past represents the future
The past represents who we are
Today
All around us, music evolves
Into what we call
Emotions’
When reading that out it doesn’t really make much sense, but that track brought me happiness (and still does) that most others I've heard since havnt been able to touch.
Song 2
Charlie Wilson - Forever Valentine
First heard it on Dj Volatile’s ‘Switch Valentines mix’ when I was in isolation in rehab. Since then I’ve told Vola that his mixes got me through that time of my life. I’d recommend everyone checks them out.
The soulful funk vibe of the song made me dance in isolation, and the lyrics rang true to me because I knew I wanted to make my mrs my ‘Forever Valentine’. I sent it to her at the time and since then the song has been special between us. We are getting married this year, cheers Charlie!
Song 3
Artemesia - Bits & Pieces
Being from Northern Ireland I think everyone has a memory of this song. It’s particularly special to me because when I hear it, it brings me straight back to when I played it to 25000 people in Windsor Park before Carl Frampton walked out. Sweet Caroline is normally the jewel in the crown at any boxing event, this event wasn’t set to be any different. Although after Neil Diamond finished we got word from the tv crew that we had some time to fill before the main event walk outs. I panicked for a second then realised there was only one thing to do, so I reached for ‘Bits & Pieces’, played it, so 25000 people raved & sang with me in the lashing rain. It kicked off a small old school set for me which I’ll never forget.
My phone was dead at the time, but when I got home my Twitter had went mad with people watching the fight on PPV all over the world and tweeting me for playing the song… some along the lines of ‘performance of the night goes to the DJ’ haha It was pretty awesome! Good times.
Since then I’ve played every boxing event in NI and this year I’m heading to do a few across the water.
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