Club Stirs Pot With Laptop Ban

Kenny Summit, owner of Cure and the Cause in Glendale, Calif., said in a statement that performers at his club need to “LEARN THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE already,” and told all seeking to DJ his club to come with professional equipment, as opposed to laptops with external “controllers” to assist with mixing. Summit later clarified that the ban was a result of amateurs who did not know how to plug in their gear and causing a delay in the music.

“This ban on laptops is more like a ban on the people who can’t bother to learn how to be a real professional and learn how to setup and break down their equipment without ANY disturbance in the night,” he said in an interview with Magnetic.

The argument over whether it’s appropriate for DJs to use controllers connected to laptops to manage playlists has been going on since the technology to assist with automatic mixing became widely available. CDJs, professional-grade equipment now embraced by industry purists, are prohibitively expensive and some internet warriors viewed Cure and the Cause’s decision as elitist.

On the Facebook post announcing his decision, though, waves of support poured in, as did comments like “you are bad!” and “did you build the DJ booth too small?”