Junior Brian Scavo, more commonly known by listeners as DJ What the Bleep, has been turning tables since 2004.
Scavo’s disk jockey name, What the Bleep, comes from a man named ‘SQUI,’ who gave Scavo the name at a party in 2004. The name has nothing to do with the documentary ‘What the Bleep Do We Know?’, said Scavo.
‘It’s common for DJs to be given their name,’ he said.
Scavo wears two dog tags around his neck, one with his DJ name, and one with the date of his first DJ event at the Detroit Electronic Music Festival on May 28, 2005.
‘It was a year after I first realized I wanted to be a DJ,’ he said. ‘And it was at the same show I first attended.’
In 2006, Scavo began DJing for WBGUFM on 88.1 FM, the radio station located in West Hall.
‘I bring on a lot of guest DJs,’ he said. ‘I try to keep it to anything you might find at raves, [such as] electronic dance music.’
Junior Jared Miller, who worked at 88.1 with Scavo, said Scavo brings a lot of diversity to the station.
‘He really brings what he does as a profession as a turntablist into the station,’ Miller said. ‘He’s very passionate about what he does.’
Miller and Scavo worked together for two years, and were both part of the WBGU executive staff.
‘What’s really great about him is you can tell he’s the same person through everything because of his music,’ he said. ‘He uses music as an outlet.’
Along with his radio show, Scavo also DJs out of his house on an Internet radio station broadcast out of the Netherlands. The station, called Jungletrain (www.jungletrain.net.) is a 24/7 drum and bass station that has close to 300 listeners.
‘I usually have more listeners at this station rather than WBGUFM because people know what they’re looking for,’ Scavo said. ‘It’s all the same kind of music all the time.’
When DJing out of his house, Scavo uses several different techniques, including ‘beat matching,’ or adjusting the speed of records so one song flows directly into the next without a hitch in the music.
‘You change the speed of the second record to try and match the first,’ Scavo said. ‘People want to keep dancing. They don’t want to have to stop between tracks.’
Other techniques, which are all part of ‘turntablism,’ Scavo said, include scratching and juggling. Scratching, which is mostly just for show, is when DJs scratch the actual records. Juggling is when a DJ takes two records of the same song and finds the same beat, matching it over and over.
Love for the art of DJing inspired Scavo to create his own major, an Individual Planned Program.
‘I honestly couldn’t tell you what my major is called,’ he said, ‘but it incorporates recording and music technology.’
DJ What the Bleep also does live shows. On Jan. 9, he will be at the Clazel opening for the band Phantasmagoria. Aaron Pickens, guitar player for Phantasmagoria, said they are looking forward to working with Scavo again.
To hear the beats of DJ What the Bleep, listeners can tune into 88.1 FM (or wbgufm.com) every Friday night at midnight. Scavo’s Jungletrain show is from 7-9 p.m. every Wednesday at www.jungletrain.net.
