Bill Brewster > Quotes

“the DJ plays the feelings of a roomful of people.”
― Bill Brewster, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life

“Opium? No! Cocaine? No! The Great American Brain Killer Is Dance Music!’ – Portland Oregonian, 1932 T”
― Bill Brewster, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey

“By registering the number of times each record had been played, its popularity could be accurately gauged. This fact was what inspired the idea of charts; the Top 40 was such because forty records was the standard jukebox capacity.”
― Bill Brewster, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey

“By helping the various splinters of race music reach a much wider audience the DJ had a profound effect on the music’s development.”
― Bill Brewster, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey

“In 1939, keeping jukeboxes stocked with tunes accounted for about sixty per cent of total US record sales.”
― Bill Brewster, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey

“And in fact, Peel had proposed a format very similar to Donahue’s at least six months before freeform was born in San Francisco, though this had been rejected by the station management.”
― Bill Brewster, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey

“There was a brief backlash against rigid formatting, in the shape of the hippie-driven dream of freeform radio. In the US, FM technology, which allowed hi-fi stereo broadcasts, was first licensed for use in 1961. It was the preserve of ‘serious’ radio – often broadcast from universities – with academic programmes, jazz and classical music to the fore. But given the rise of sophisticated (or pretentious) rock music, this too found its way onto the FM band, complete with a new intimate style of presentation, and disc jockeys who chose all their own music and who ignored time restrictions and rotation schedules.”
― Bill Brewster, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey

“This idea of communion is what drives the best musical happenings. It’s about breaking the audience/artist boundary, about being an event, not just watching one.”
― Bill Brewster, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life

“A DJ’s job is to channel the vast ocean of recorded sound into a single unforgettable evening.”
― Bill Brewster, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life

“Jazz, already the music of rebellious youth, became nothing less than the soundtrack of resistance.”
― Bill Brewster, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey