Not long ago we sat down at Progress Coffee and shot the shit with one of Austin’s most respected DJ Institutions: DJ Mel. For almost ten years Mel has been plying his trade, developing his craft, and honing his skills here in Austin. Sure, we could focus this interview on his nine years DJing at the fabled (and debaucherous-by-reputation) Monday Night at Nasty’s. Or his Friday gigs at Tambaleo. We could ask him philosophic questions surrounding the packed-house success of his quarterly Rock the Casbah parties.

But we’ll leave that to more able journalists. Besides, all that hurrahing and semi-pandering just takes away from him as a normal, nice guy. But whatever. We want the dirt! The unclean truth! What the hell is it about him that we can latch on to and drag through the mud? We're the media damnit, and we must TEAR DOWN anything remotely successful!

Well, we found out. And the answer is: there is no dirt. The man lives pretty clean. He’s a genuinely good guy. Fucking funny too! No front. So strap in, and we’ll just let this one go wherever it needs to…

On ridiculousness.

AUSTINIST: Let’s say you’re a breakfast food. Pick any food. Who would you want to be eating you? Any kind of breakfast. No pressure.

MEL: [obviously understanding the question, but not yet impressed with it] …

AUSTINIST: Any kind. An egg. Strawberry. Whatever.

MEL: [beginning to take us seriously, but not yet committed to answering] That’s… a… good question, man. A really good… question. [suspiciously eyeing the exit]

AUSTINIST: We’d be a chocolate croissant. Chocolatey, French sweetness.

MEL: …

AUSTINIST: Delicious.

MEL: Right. [Snapping into focus] Well, not because I totally missed out on this dude, or missed out on him doing his thing, but I’d be a bagel that Michael Jordan would eat. And it would fuel him while he was playing and help in his decision making. Because, I mean, the guy… not to be shallow but his decision making as far as the whole Nike thing… it was ridiculous. Now the products are out there on their own.

AUSTINIST: Yeah. He’s like, totally taken care of. Money, right?

MEL: [Warming up to us quite a bit] Right.

Here it should be noted that Mel is a Nike collector, of mostly the classic variety. An Old Skool Kicks fanatic. After that question was up, we segued brilliantly into our next question.

On ABSOLUTE ridiculousness.

AUSTINIST: So sorta along the same lines, we want to know what your “Guilty Pleasure” would be. A “Guilty Pleasure” is a relatively famous person out there who you would have sex with, but you KNOW no one else would. And you can’t explain why, you just would. They get your goat, so to speak. It has to be someone that no one else would get with. Like Phyllis Diller, or Barbara Bush. They don’t have to be fine. In fact, better if they aren’t. You want to be the only one. So… who?

MEL: That’s… [begins laughing playfully] Wow! That’s… crazy! That’s a good one…

AUSTINIST: We know! We’ll come back to it later, since it takes some time to properly consider. Ours is Margaret Thatcher. HOTTT. Three “T”s.

MEL: [incredulous] Seriously?

AUSTINIST: Oh yeah. Seriously.

At this point Mel was really warming up to this brand of questioning. We could tell that he was going to be game. But then, our unscripted line of questioning went all serious on us.

On inadvertently depressing subjects.

AUSTINIST: Okay, another scenario. Let’s say you have a younger brother, whether you do or don’t makes no difference, and he has been drafted to be sent to Iraq to fight for “Freedom” or whatever they’re calling it nowadays. What kind of party do you throw him?

We know, we know. An almost heartless question. Some people would have just decked us for it but Mel took it all in stride.

MEL: I guess we’d have a get together at the house. You know, mainly family, to see him off. Of course his friends would be there too, because I’m sure they’d want to drink it up, because he’s not going to for a while! [Iraq’s dry, for those not in the know] Not to be too sentimental or anything, but after the close family thing he’d probably want to be with his boys to have their last night out together. For a while, anyway. You know.

Sensing that we were straying too far from our preferred line of questioning, we pulled it back in.

On the quest for intelligence.

AUSTINIST: If you were an Alien in search of intelligent life here on earth, you know, just flying around and checking out the scene, where would you go to? To actually find it, to harvest it? Intelligent life?

MEL: [without missing a beat]: The blue states. Have you seen that map? That’s a scary ass map dude!

AUSTINIST: Yep. Jesusland all over the place.

MEL: It’s scary dude. If I were floating around in a space ship somewhere, looking for intelligent life… I would avoid those red states.

AUSTINIST: Well, what about outside the continental US?

MEL: Well, I would say Alaska, and the Eskimo. Not just because I was born there, but because there is something about folks who live in that no-frills lifestyle and have survived that way. There’s something to that. No cell phones, no TV, no internet. I’m telling you, there’s something to that.

AUSTINIST: Hm… Inuits. That’s cool. We would have tried Chicago. We don’t know why. We’re probably wrong though.

MEL: Hmm…

On being blown out.

AUSTINIST: So, yeah. How about this: what if you were a birthday candle, on a birthday cake. Who would you want to blow you out?

MEL: Good question… who…

AUSTINIST: There’s lots of ways to blow out a candle.

MEL: [perking up a bit] That’s true! You could be really drunk and just… oh wait, well, back to that whole “repulsive female” thing from earlier-

AUSTINIST: The “Guilty Pleasure”?

MEL: Yeah, yeah. Not that she’s repulsive or anything, really, but I don’t ever hear dudes talking about how they’d ‘love to get with so-and-so’… and I don’t hear dudes saying they’d get with Ann Richards.

AUSTINIST: No, no they don’t. Not that I’ve ever of. So Ann Richards is your Guilty Pleasure? Seriously?

MEL: She’s just RAW! She’s Texas, and so NO – NONSENSE you know? And I find that so attractive about her.

AUSTINIST: She just takes the reigns. But it’s not a physical thing though. We hear you.

MEL: Just the way she speaks with so much confidence and presents herself, I like it.

AUSTINIST: And the white hair? You dig the white hair? Platinum and shit!

MEL: Uh, yeah man. [dubious] I dig the hair. I hope that doesn’t come back to haunt me!

After remembering how much pull the ex-governor has, we decided to make a quick turn in the questioning.

On “old standard” questions and living with critique.

AUSTINIST: Well what would you do if you all of a sudden had $14 million. Cash. In your lap. No need to work anymore. Classic question.

We don’t know why we chose 14, but that’s what came out. Perhaps for tax purposes. Who knows.

MEL: I’ve been asked this one before, and you know, I’d probably keep my day job, except I’d obviously want to work a-lot less. I’d just keep with what I’m doing, but without all the hustle, you know? Travel the world and DJ without having to convince some club in Berlin to fly me out. Know what I’m saying?

AUSTINIST: Word. To do your photography too?

MEL: No, not as a job or anything. I don’t want to ruin that by making it a job, you know. Well, not ‘ruin it’, but I don’t want what happened with the DJing to happen to my photography. I love DJing. But once you get paid for it, it changes. No one criticizes my photography right now. I don’t want people coming out to criticize my photos or send me hate mail about how “dude, I don’t like how you took that photo” you know? “You added all that Gaussian blur on that photo on Photoshop” and blah-blah-blah. It’s something that I really enjoy, and I don’t want that to happen to it.

AUSTINIST: You get that a-lot with your DJing? People emailing with critiques and shit?

MEL: Sure, people email me with things. Not the majority or anything, but still. With my photography, the comments I do get are serious, and its mainly serious photographers. Always constructive. But with the DJing, most of it positive, but when I do get a negative one every now and then, it’s usually not done with tact.

AUSTINIST: We should be allowed to set one out of like, ten of those people on fire. Right?

MEL: Well, no, not like that. I just want to say to them: “hey, thanks for your opinion, and you are more than entitled to it. I appreciate that you took the time to say something, but we really need more of a forum for that kind of thing.” Not so one-sided.

AUSTINIST: Like a dialog of some sort.

MEL: Right. If someone doesn’t particularly like what I’m doing with the DJing, then set up some turntables next to me and we’ll see what happens. Set up at the bar next door even. That’s more fair, you know?

AUSTINIST: BATTLE! Old skool style!

MEL: Yeah, because I go to work everyday and clock in like everyone else. I’ve got to work to pay the man too, you know? I don’t think I’m better than anyone else. I’m just doing what I do. I don’t understand where the hate might come from.

AUSTINIST: Fucking haters.

MEL: Well, not like that, man. I’ve just been doing this for a long time. I’ve played empty rooms and made my way up to where I am. [laughs] Sometimes I still play empty rooms! This is what I do, and I work hard at it. Now I am doing my best to learn how to deal with the criticism. It’s interesting though. I’m getting better with it.

On the future or parallel universes.

AUSTINIST: Have you thought about doing something else?

MEL: Well, I love what I’m doing right now. But if I wasn’t doing it, or it doesn’t work out in the future, there’s two things I’d also like to do. Physical therapy or breed dogs.

AUSTINIST: [taken aback completely] Physical therapy? Breed dogs? What the…?

MEL: Yeah man! Physical therapy for athletes or children. Or, I’d have a place out in the middle of nowhere, peaceful, where I’d just breed dogs. Like, rat terriers or something.

AUSTINIST: Whoa. That’s… different.

MEL: I’d just want to do something that honestly helps people. Not that DJing doesn’t help or entertain anyone, but I would love to help people in a way that is more concrete, you know? No opinions or critiques, but honest appreciation for helping people. I’m a small dude, but if some five-hundred pound patient needed my help, I’d do it!

AUSTINIST: That’s honorable and shit.

On memory relapse.

MEL: Oh, wait, I figured out who, if I was a birthday candle, I would want to blow me out. Two, actually, for kind of the same reasons.

AUSTINIST: Shoot.

MEL: Miles Davis, for one, because he would have those incredibly strong lungs, and it would be such an honor. And Biz Markie. Just to see if he’d spit all over the cake. It’d be all “that’s YOUR cake now man!” Just to see.

AUSTINIST: We like it. “Just to see.” Thanks for your time Mel. The chai here is fucking delicious by the way.