Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010

DJ bring the Badabing to Myrtle Beach's Club Boca

By Ashley Morris -

DJ Badabing, known off the mike as Joey Monteleone, stepped out of his deejay booth to chat with us about the person behind the hot sounds at Club Boca, the art of deejaying and how he not only spins music for a living, but spins the plates of his daytime careers as a general contractor and salon owner.

Q: Brief us on your background and when/how you became a deejay.

A: I'm originally from Brooklyn, N.Y., and moved to Myrtle Beach in 1996 because my brother started his own deejay company, Gemini Sounds, which mostly did weddings. There are seven kids in our family - five boys and two girls - and all boys are deejays. Back when I was 13 or 14, I would help them load up lights and sound equipment, so I was around it all the time. They're in their 40s now and I just turned 31. Anyway, then I met a guy who said he was looking for a light guy at Malibu's, so I figured that was a way to get in there somehow. Shortly after that, in the winter of 1997, I started filling in as a deejay there and started full-time at Boca in 1999. Today, I'm the entertainment director for all four clubs [with Celebrations Nightlife]: Malibu's, Froggy Bottomz, Club Boca and Broadway Louie's.

Q: What do you like about what you do - and what does it take to be good at what you do?

A: I think more than anything, it's the entertainment value of entertaining hundreds of thousands of people every year. It's a rush. I would explain it as being able to control a room, like we're the puppet master taking everyone on a journey through music. It takes a great personality and a lot of patience with drunk people. One downside is not having weekends off. I think I've only had three weekends off in the almost 15 years I've been doing this.

Q: What can folks expect to hear and experience at Club Boca?

A: I spin mostly current club, newer music at Club Boca - as much high energy as we can make it. But it's mostly mainstream over the winter, recognizable music that's fun to dance to, original remixes. We get a mix of people in here and that's the fun part of deejaying (especially in the winter): you really have to read the crowd because a deejay has to play to the majority. In Myrtle Beach, Top 40 is popular, a lot of hip-hop crossover with rock and techno and house. It takes a while to get new music here in Myrtle Beach, so I'm in a Web site network with deejays from Vegas to Miami and New York. I'll spin vinyl and use CDs - no computer-operated mp3s because I think that takes away from the art of deejaying. Beat mixing is a form of transitioning from song to song without taking a break. Put it this way: you're doing a good job if the crowd can't pick out the end of one song and the beginning of the next one.

Q: Do you have an appreciation for live music, too, or are you just a club purist?

A: We have a house band at Froggy Bottomz, so they do their own creative thing and I love live music. It's nice when live music is combined with deejay music, like DJ AM did with Travis Barker. It's a lot different for a deejay to pick up a song and give it a try in front of a crowd than a musician to try out a new song. It takes like two weeks for them to learn the song, and then it's not worth it if people don't like it.

Q: What have you seen change with club music since your start nearly 15 years ago?

A: It's amazing how far music has come since I started. I first started deejaying in 1995 in New York, the days of the "MTV Party to Go" stuff. In general, that was the deejaying for the party. Today, there's a lot more computer-influenced music than back in the day, when we would spin stuff like "Celebration" or "Push It." It's now hard to mix older music with newer songs because of that. Once in a while, we'll toss in an old one, but it's hard because there are a lot more effects in music these days. It's funny, because when musicians talk on awards shows or interviews, they'll sound nothing like the voice on the dance song.

Q: What's your schedule like on deejay duty and off-duty?

A: In the wintertime it's nice, because I'll only work Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. In the summer, it's four-to-five nights a week from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. But I work a lot, regardless. I own a hair salon, Bella Hair Studio, in Carolina Forest. I'm very family-oriented, so I told my sister, who moved down here and wasn't happy where she was working (she's cut hair for 26 years) that we'll start a salon; I'll take care of the financials and she'll run it. I also own a construction company, which built the salon, called Monteleone Contracting. My father supported seven kids as a general contractor, working all the time. I was always intrigued by that field, so I became a licensed general contractor in South Carolina. We do residential and commercial projects, like the renovations to Club Boca.

Q: Anything else you can possibly squeeze into your schedule or future plans?

A: Well, I'm engaged. We plan to get married in late October 2010 in Vegas.