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Lars Behrenroth - Upcoming DJ Gigs

03/22/24 SOUND BY THE SEA - Oceanside, CA - ALL VINYL - event page



R.I.P. Frankie Knuckles, The Godfather Of House

Very sad news: Frankie Knuckles, the "Godfather Of House", Grammy award winning remixer, producer, DJ and one of the nicest people in the industry has reportedly passed away at the age of 59.

What was first by many believed to be a bad April Fools joke has been confirmed via social media by Vick Lavender, Paul Johnson, David Morales and many other friends of his.

Frankie's Wikipedia page has also been updated, citing March 31st 2014 as the date of his passing.

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State Of Independence With Theo Parrish - VIDEO

My friend (and roommate from the old Hamburg days) Constantin just shared this on Facebook and I wanted to make sure you spend 3 minutes of your life listening to one of my favorite artists and DJs, Theo Parrish. It's the first of Let's Be Brief's "State of Independence" film series published mid 2013.

I'm especially keen on the quote "The best we can do is(...) start to highlight individuals that are really driven.. cause that's where it starts!"

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Follow Lars Behrenroth on Soundcloud

soundcloudThis is my fourth post to update you about social networks on which you can find and follow me.

Soundcloud was initially intended to give musicians and labels a platform to exchange music but it eventually turned into the "Instagram for music". This very strong worldwide community allows me to reach even more people with my music than if I'd just post it on deepershades.net. If you're an artist, Soundcloud is also perfect to share your demos with me through a simple message.

I usually post the Deeper Shades Of House radio shows, Deeper Shades Recordings releases, occasionally DJ mixes, as well as my own remixes & productions on my Soundcloud profile, some of which can be downloaded and others are just available to stream. 


For example check out this Deeper Shades Of House Classic Special for the 400th show:

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Open Letter Regarding The "Most Respected House DJs 2014"

Open Letter Regarding The Most Respected House DJs 2014

UPDATE: Apparently the editor of the "Most Respected House DJs 2014" list, who by the way has still not come forward with his true identity, has taken a few points I raised in this letter to heart and modified his original post. You can now find a disclaimer that the list is "In No Particular Order" while the numeration still exists?! and added even more people (I guess he forgot some of his friends).


Dear Mr. Johnson,

I was just tagged on Facebook since I apparently made it on to your list of "Most Respected House DJs 2014". 
While I, as others, appreciate to be recognized for what I do and am happy to be mentioned alongside many of my heroes, friends and peers, too many irregularities and acts of randomness stood out to me and immediately discredited this list. 

I will avoid pointing out any particular DJs in the following statements but if necessary, I can back them up. I am also not going to argue who shouldn't be and who definitely should have been on this list because it is quite obviously a randomly compiled list of personal favorites and taste can't be argued but I certainly would like to raise some points.


1. Shouldn't you respect the DJs like the title suggests and make sure their names are spelled correctly and most embarrassingly, avoid that several names appear twice on the same list? How thorough could your research have been if two DJs show up on two different ends of the list, and there may be even more duplicates but I've spent enough time looking at this!

2. The word DJ should be removed from the list title as you mentioned quite a few names of people who either hardly DJ, not DJ anymore or not DJ at all.

3. "Who is Michael Johnson?",  I have been quite deeply involved in the house music industry for more than 20 years, mostly as a fan but also as a producer, remixer, DJ and radio host and have never come across your name or met you before. What credentials do you exactly have to compile a list with an official title like "Most Respected House DJs 2014"? Why are you or your name nowhere to be found? It seems to me that you are just a fictional character invented by the true compiler of this list to avoid conflict and discredit this list even further based on professional involvement with a lot of names mentioned.

4. All of the criteria you mention are not criteria, they are simply a way to cover yourself and to avoid being called out for randomly going through a database of names and arranging the list anyway you saw fit. 
 - When you call for common sense regarding the definition of House, you call for acceptance of YOUR definition of House. A lot of the DJs you mention on the list don't even play House (in some cases not anymore, which by your given standard should disqualify them from being included).

5. Right above the first name of your list you post "Let the controversy begin" which shows me your lack of seriousness regarding this topic and that you created this list purely for your own pleasure or to draw attention to yourself (if you actually exist) or to the website which hosts your list.


I will cut this letter short at this point because I'm sure everyone had enough of this topic by now. In conclusion I would like to offer some suggestions.

- In my personal opinion a ranking is not necessary as it is useless without any empirical evidence and, more importantly, respect shouldn't be scaled. 

- You should have named the list "Michael Johnson's Favorite (House) DJs 2014"

- If you have to create another list of any kind in the future, why not coordinate with industry related press, blogs, journalists and roll out a call for nomination. That in combination with the use of social media would allow 10s if not hundreds of thousands of fans to get involved by nominating their personal favorites. You could then feed the nominations into a database and have all fans vote for the end result.


Thank you for your time and attention,
Lars Behrenroth

 

These are screenshots of the original posted, not modified list from Friday, January 2014. Please click on the images to expand.



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