Who the heck is this guy? Barely any article stirred as much feedback and controversy as the backstage series.
Here’s the answer to the question of all questions.
We’ve been running interviews with artists, party promoters and other scene activists for more than 25 years. We noticed a very clear trend: Things got tamer and tamer. At some point producers even refused to tell us whether they use Cubase or Logic, because they were so anxious about an ensuing shitstorm on Facebook. At the same time we were still very involved with the international scene and of course we knew exactly what was actually happening behind the scenes, day after day. But with the ongoing crisis of print media and the ever growing economical pressure that came with it, the same pressure that now brought us down, we had less and less resources to report on these things. The affordability of free journalism.
In this situation DJ Whistle Smoker appeared. Here’s the answer to the question of all questions: He is not a real person. But: Everything he told in the last editions is true nonetheless. How? The stories of DJ Whistle Smoker are what we heard over the last few years from upper league DJs, producers and party promoters, and things we witnessed ourselves. These stories were collected and told from the perspective of a single, fictional character. In this respect there has been a certain degree of dramatization. However, everything is based on true stories, from reliable sources.
DJ Whistle Smoker is the superhero who is ballsy enough to tell these stories. Not in the security of a backstage, but public, for the whole scene. The discussion about these articles was the most passionate we’ve seen in years. We even caused a shitstorm for ourselves – exactly what many artists want to avoid absolutely by sticking to the most general, tamest, open answers.
A real big name wrote us:
“Total bullshit. I know all of the top artists in our scene and can’t think of even one who would do this.”
Sounds a bit like someone being caught in the act… We don’t want to be too smug about this story, but somehow the Backstage series finally brought back what a scene magazine should be like: Free and without any restraints.
Last but not least: Didn’t we all have a good laugh about it?