Photo by James BunoanIf ever you're doing a crossword puzzle or watching Jeopardy or about to take it outside with your roommate over an argument about whether a tomato is a fruit or vegetable (it's a FRUIT!), Costa Mesa DJ Steve Fisch (a.k.a. DJ aDJective)—who DJs at the Kitsch Bar on Saturdays—is your man. He knows everything! He knows the meaning and etymology of every word! He has read every book! He knows history, science and math! He's a DJ savant! If he could DJ with books, he probably would, but that would fuck up his needles, so instead he must use vinyl! He owns more than 6,000 pieces of vinyl!
OC Weekly: What kind of stuff do you play? Steve Fisch: I really like to mix it up. One of my favorite things is to play Olivia Newton-John and follow it up with “Pretty Vacant” by the Sex Pistols. What have you personally been listening to lately?
The Avalanches. I really like the new Supergrass album. I really go for that sweet pop stuff like Brenden Bensen and the Well Fed Boys, the Jason Faulkner stuff. There are a couple of local bands I'm always into like Smile and Darren Wood's band Cat Fur. I like DJ Shadow. Pete Rock has a great instrumental record. The new Roots record is great. There are a couple of LA bands I love. Los Super Elegantes are a fun band to see. Los Hueros—I think it's kind of Hispanic slang for “white boy”—are sort of a jazzy Steely Dan kind of thing meets the Beach Boys. They have a three-piece vocal harmony, and they cover two songs from the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo record.
What do you play if you want the crowd to hook up?
Prince and Michael Jackson are guaranteed to get the girls shaking their asses, and that's probably the prime directive of the DJ. There's a really a big crowd of people who are into '80s music. Marvin Gaye, of course. It's going to mostly be African-American music of some nature that's going to do it, but you know, it's surprising that Kraftwerk works, too. It just has an insistent groove.
Well, Germans are really groovy.
They are pretty groovy. They can be. They can also be extremely silly. That's evident also.
And they can also be quite scary.
Yes, absolutely, especially in times of economic depression.
What do you play if you want the crowd to go home?
If I want the crowd to cool off, I'll play something slower, or I'll play jazz.
Do you get more chicks now that you're a DJ?
Um, well, um, well, um . . . they are friendlier.
Do you get more guff from the guys?
Sometimes. Guff I don't get a lot. People don't really give me guff.
Sass—do they sass you?
Well, everyone gets a little sassy once in a while.
Do they give you lip?
I think you're going to have to define lip.
You know, guff or sass?
I'm trying to think if I've ever been lipped. There was one time when there was a girl who'd been kissing me, and I had lipstick all over my face, but that's not what you mean.
I mean backtalk.
There is sort of a limit on the available sass in Orange County. There must be something in the atmosphere that sucks it out of there. But there seems to be a concentration of it in the OC Weekly.
What was the first band you were ever really into?
That's easy. I was six, and the movie Yellow Submarine was on TV, and after that, I was a die-hard Beatles fan. My brothers and I had a club where you had to say, “Ringo, Paul, John, George.” We took the bunk beds and hung the blankets off the sides and make a tunnel with blankets and sheets.
