Interview with DJ Sammy Jo

Did you name yourself after Heather Locklear in Dynasty?

I wasn’t even a DJ when I got it, it was my first boss in a club in New York and he gave me it and said “eugh she was such trouble when she showed up on Dynasty and that’s what you are going to be, you are going to be trouble I can tell right now”, somehow he thought I was going to be this slutty bitch who was going to ruin everyone’s lives in New York

And were you?

Ummmmmm… you’ll have to come to New York and find out.

Is there going to be a big difference between what you play at the Ivy and the Beresford?

I’ve played at the Ivy before and it tends to be a more ‘bang, bang’ commercial sound, but my impression of the Beresford is that it will be slightly more of an electro- underground sound.

What type of energy are you bringing this time to Sydney?

It’s funny I’ve gone more house based music which is coming out of the wood work these days so I’m looking forward to balancing a really hard electro sound with a bunch of really great new house sounds. It’s less of that agro noisy electro stuff and more melodies.

You did remixes of the Scissor Sisters ‘Nightwork’ after they released their album. Was it fun to be able to mess with their stuff after touring with them for so long?

Yeah

Did they like it?

Yeah I think so! I got a really big compliment from Stuart Price who is the producer who is like a God to me and he gave me a really huge compliment about the remix we did for Invisible Lights which was like, enough to make my year.

It’s good to hear you still get excited about things like that, so you don’t have the arrogance of the scissor sisters then?

No I don’t, but I was just with Jake (Jake Shears) in Ibiza and this is going to sound so silly but we were out for dinner and Eric Prydz was there and Jake almost had a heart attack, he loves his stuff and he’s been DJing and playing his stuff so he fell apart, he was so excited to meet Eric Prydz so they still have that bright eyed wonder about them.

Is any of Jake’s DJing any good, secretly?

Yeah, you know… I’m giving him pointers.

You can have a spin off with him one day.

Can you imagine! He’ll steal my job and start DJing before the concerts…

What type of music inspires you at the moment? Do you have a type of music that is your solid base or do you look around?

Actually do you know what I do right now, it’s my secret fetish. Is going out and hearing someone playing like a 115-120bpm set, I love going out and dancing to more slower tempo stuff, that groove, ah, I love going out for that, it’s not what I can play but to me that’s a fun night out.

Jump DJ, your management agency has some very vivid descriptions of their ‘style’ including words like ‘polysexual’, where do you fit into their descriptions?

That is a tough question. I feel like I’m one of the ‘elder statesmen’ of the Jump DJ roster because I have been there from the beginning and it has just grown so much in the last couple of years … I feel a certain sense of ‘papa’, not that I’m that old or anything it’s just the last four years they have blossomed into this really great company.

So you’re Papa Polysex?

Yeah I am Papa Polysex, that’s my new drag-king name.

Obviously you do a lot of commercial stuff, and your work with the Scissor Sisters heightened the gap between commercial and the underground ‘New York meat packing district’ scene you started in, do you feel stereotyped as a gay DJ sometimes?

Not at all, in fact I rarely play for gay parties I mainly play for straight parties, mostly in Europe. Like Razzmataz in Barcelona, there are a couple of gay parties that are really big I play for like ‘Club Sandwich’ in Paris and a party here in Barcelona called ‘Bang’ which I also play for but really my sound tends to get me bookings more at straight clubs. For club bookings I’m more know for a harder electro sound than what the gays seem to like, over here at least.

Do you find that influences the way you play?

Absolutely, because at least over here in Europe the gay scene is more of a lighter electro-house sound even bordering on pop, pop music has really infiltrated the gay music scene in a way over here, then you have to play to that side of things.

Do you have any shameful music collection secrets?

I grew up listening to Burt Bacharact records in my parents living room in the 70’s so I love music that is cheesy loungey stuff and I love horrible campy disco and pop. I don’t know if I have any really dirty secrets, I proudly admit to liking both good and bad music.

Do you ever want to take one of your old awful albums and throw it into the mix?

When a crowd trusts you and you know you can throw anything in I will put in a shitty 80’s song and they’ll love it. That’s the best feeling, it’s so much fun to fuck with them.

I’d better wrap this up so you can do more interviews

Try and make me sound intelligent. Intelligent, funny and available, I need to find a new boyfriend on this trip!

By Alexandra McIntyre