The Pioneer CDJ-2002 (Photo: Pioneer)
NEW YORK — The stresses of running a multi-day music event are still in their earliest stages for Mike Hayworth, the audio-visual coordinator at New York’s annual Electric Zoo festival.
Hayworth is one of the festival’s primary contacts for performing artists and agencies; he is responsible for liaising with artists and making sure each musician is provided with all of the equipment he or she needs.
While parsing through the initial wave of tech riders, Hayworth came across a request he has never seen before in his five years of experience on the job.
“One of the DJs we booked from France, who performs as Le Monstre, asked for a new model of CDJ that I wasn’t aware existed,” explains Hayworth.
“He had asked me to provide him with two Pioneer CDJ-2002s, specifically noting that they should equipped with Thunderbolt ports.”
The Thunderbolt port, which was developed by Intel and Apple, was first released in 2011.
“I’ve never seen a CDJ-2002 before, they must be pretty new.”
Thunderbolt ports are capable of transferring up to 10-gigabytes of data per second; a feature that Le Monstre explained to Hayworth as being crucial to his ability to perform his DJ set.
Le Monstre (Photo: Electric Zoo)
“I don’t really understand why he can’t just use USB keys,” admits Hayworth.
After many unsuccessful attempts at finding a place that rents the new CDJs, Hayworth thought it would be best to contact Le Monstre directly to clarify any possible confusion.
“I emailed Le Monstre’s agent and asked if CDJ-2000s would be okay instead.”
The response Hayworth received was “rather blunt.”
“Le Monstre himself sent me an email about a week later that said ‘Le Monstre only plays on CDJs with Thunderbolt ports.’”
Hayworth — who is still unsure where to find any Pioneer CDJ-2002s — brushes off the email as just another thing to add to his master task list for the festival.
“I have a friend who’s really into gear…he might be able to help me out.”
