New York-based Billboard award-winning DJ/remixer Reed McGowan shares his 20-plus years of DJ expertise regarding the state of club music, his 'sexual bravado,' advice for new DJs, sex in a tanning booth and more:

Muzo: You've been DJing since you were 16 years old - that is an impressive feat! How do you feel about the current state of club music - has it evolved?
Reed: Well, first off, in the state is in NOW, I wouldn't say it has evolved at all, lol. While the continuum of dance music has been interesting over the years, I think it is sort of feeding off itself now, because all the ideas seem to have been depleted and are now being regurgitated.

It's as if we are living in a black hole or a vacuum. You can even see it in the way some guys are mixing now, with the attention span of a fly...mixing a lot of sound bytes, instead of full songs, which to me doesn't give any depth in the experience. Full songs are almost lost in the process. I suppose sampling & looping in itself can create a different kind of narrative...but truly after a while, I just want to stab the DJ in the ear.

A DJ is telling a story, and if the plot of the story is just "blah, blah, blah," then why bother? In order to evolve, you have to have context. Some of that is learned from an appreciation for history, and if you are bombarding yourself with the same crap all the time, how can you ever evolve?

Maybe all of this is culminating into an evolution of some sort, but it seems very transitional now, and very stagnant. Most dance music does not seem to have a sustainable shelf life anymore. I can listen to dance tracks from 25 years ago, and some still have a contemporary feel to them. So what does that say about current club music? There needs to be direction to evolve, not just random noise with no journey or purpose in mind. If the bottom line is a profit, then most surely, the music will suffer.