Jonas Blue Quotes

For me, I have the highest amount of respect for DJs. There's a real skill set and ability to hold a crowd's attention for four to five hours, especially with an R&B/hip-hop and open-format music.

The role of a DJ is being able to keep people on the floor for X amount of hours so you can't just push buttons to do that, you have to have good tracks and a knowledge of where to take people.

When you're DJing, there are songs I love to play, but I know people are going to walk off. It doesn't matter what I like. You have to be able to play the popular song and slip in one of yours, in such a way that they don't notice it. You've got them in such a roll that you get them back into what they think they like.

I can read a crowd pretty well. I know what to play and know how to keep it interesting for them and for myself as well. Most of the other DJs are more like producers so they become famous because they make hits and then they start DJ-ing. But I'm more from the other way around.

A lot of work and thinking goes into my DJing. I want the entire night to progress seamlessly and when I have to adapt the energy on the fly for the crowd on any given night, I can do so with harmonic mixes that I've practiced over and over again. I am far from the only DJ that does this and it's something I take pride in being able to do.

Playing a room, it's a real dictator-type situation - you can really move the crowd the way you want to. In a festival, there's a sea of people, and it's harder to lock in on any one group.

Most of the time - at the Grammys for example - a DJ will perform with just their hands in the air because they can't do anything and that makes it a little awkward, I think.

My fondest memories were watching the Beastie Boys get prepped to come on stage. They had a lot of antics and they play a lot of basketball... then they were giving out cameras to the crowd, and performing from the bleachers. The most important thing I learned was that you control your crowd, not the other way around.

Club DJs don't talk to the crowd.

Doing DJ sets is like - is difficult to me. Cause you have to find that happy medium of playing what the crowd wants and what you want.

The DJs with a lot of hype are not necessarily the best DJs at creating a vibe.

When I'm in front of a crowd, I don't think 'Oh, there's some hard-core metalheads and some alternative fringe types, so we should be okay.'

At Coachella, I want to start separating how I do a big festival set from how I do a club set.

I'm really not one of those deejays who go, 'I play music that I like.' I play it for the crowd. I believe that's what a deejay should do.

I've always wanted to be a DJ so I could play the music I love for other people. That feeling hasn't changed, but my sets are always evolving. In terms of tailoring to a specific crowd, certainly I do play differently depending on the situation. It's a different feel, for example, in a small club versus a festival.

Playing live is such a total visceral experience, and really, as a musician, you're trained from the beginning to be a live performer.

I'm not crazy about arenas just because I can sell them out. It doesn't do anything for my ego at all. I want to play places where people don't have to sit in the nosebleed seats and wonder what the hell is going on.

The young people look great on television. They're youthful and have a lot of zip and energy, but when you see them live, they can only do about 20 minutes because they haven't got the training to hold an audience for an hour and a half or so.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me. Every night I had a live audience of 25,000 people to win over. My goal was never to be the loudest or the craziest. It was to be the most entertaining.

I was never really a DJ... I just kinda figured it all out at once as I started to tour. I was making music and producing and I just had to start to DJ as I got more into touring.

Vegas has the Whitman's Sampler of audiences. They come from all different places, so you have to do some crowd psychology. You have to find the heartbeat of the room. It doesn't shift my jokes, but it shifts my timing and my attention.

We would play songs live on stage, and then we'd watch their reaction we were receiving immediately, if people were dancing and singing along. If they weren't, then we'd go into the dressing rooms of the different NBA teams that we were playing in their arenas, and we'd change the songs right there.

A lot of times, it's nice to open, because the heat's off you. You just go out and blast your set and say to whoever's going to finish, 'There you go.' Even though when you first start, people are drifting in, and that's kind of a bit disconcerting.

It's very intense to be in front of a live audience. It's just an amazing experience. It's dangerous. Everything out there is heightened. The bad stuff is extra-worse. The silences are extra-silent. The good stuff is amazing. It's electric when you walk out there. For 90 minutes, you're on this other planet.

My opening acts are always really strong because I need a guy who can take on a big, big crowd. Which is not that easy to do.