Academy Awards to Use DJ

New York Times
February 18, 2007
A Night Out With Liza Richardson
Strike Up the Turntable
By MONICA CORCORAN

WEST HOLLYWOOD

EVERY performer has a different definition of a tough crowd, from comedy clubs in Berlin to the buffet-obsessed folks aboard a cruise ship.

“You can’t pay me enough to play a wedding,” said Liza Richardson, a professional D.J., as she sipped a dirty martini here at the Italian bistro Dominick’s. “The couple has their list of favorite songs and then, you have to please the parents and maybe even the grandparents.”

A week from today, Ms. Richardson will be spinning tunes at the ultimate Hollywood wedding: the Academy Awards. Tense guys wearing tuxedos? Check. Rambling, awkward speeches that make everyone’s toes curl? Check. A crowd ranging in age from starlet to septuagenarian? Check.

She is the first-ever Oscar D.J., and admits that she is as nervous as a nominee.

“My job is to keep the mood upbeat and to keep everyone from wandering off to the bar during commercials,” said Ms. Richardson, 42, who will be playing three-minute sets from a suspended booth during untelevised breaks. “But my personal goal is to get Forest Whitaker to look up and give me a thumbs up.”

At that very moment on this recent Friday night, though, it was a roasted branzino with glassy eyes that was ogling her.

“Whoa! What? How?” Ms. Richardson exclaimed, fork in hand.

She and her friend Tereza Scharf, who is married to the artist Kenny Scharf, summoned a waiter. When he politely told them that the chef preferred patrons to fillet their own fish, the two didn’t fuss. They shrugged and gingerly dug in.

Ms. Richardson, who is as slender as a tulip stem and feline in her demeanor, wore a mint green minidress by the up-and-coming London designer Christopher Kane and minimal makeup. When she laughed, her head jerked backward as if someone had tugged at her long light-brown hair.

In Los Angeles, Ms. Richardson has a devout following for her weekly Saturday night radio show devoted to underground funk and house music called “The Drop” on KCRW. Techno music lovers melt at the mere mention of her name. She worked as music supervisor on the films “Lords of Dogtown” and “Failure to Launch,” and currently oversees the soundtrack for the NBC show “Friday Night Lights.”

Ms. Richardson and Ms. Scharf chatted about Beat poets, the current resurgence in Italo-disco music, and tinnitus. (Ms. Richardson, like most D.J.’s, is quite sure that she will need a hearing aid at some point in her career.)

When the topic veered to how the masses process music, a discussion on the dearth of modern philosophers ensued. “I don’t think music has replaced philosophy because people want songs to be so surface,” said Ms. Scharf, who is Brazilian. “But what else moves people on so many levels?”

After espressos, the two hopped into Ms. Richardson’s white station wagon and headed to a pre-Grammy party in Hollywood held by her manager and other music industry executives.

“Oh boy! I think we have to just dive in,” she said, upon arriving in a courtyard packed with a young (mostly male, scruffy-chinned) crowd. Ms. Richardson chatted with a few guests and nursed a plastic cup of vodka.

The two decamped shortly after 1 a.m. Plans for moving on to an underground D.J. party in Venice were trumped by Ms. Richardson’s intention to go surfing at dawn. “The industry isn’t about sleazy, rich music producers anymore because there’s not enough money,” she said, referring to the decidedly unpolished scene they left behind. “Now, it’s just a bunch of young guys hustling.”