Support Your Local

Marx, late Friday nights. Douglas Greed on vocals with Nagler on drums, and the usual rotation of local DJs: Cris Urban, Alexander Lorz, Malte Seddig, Spanks, Vonda7, Modig. If you went to clubs in Berlin you knew these names. Not because they were famous, just because they were there every week building whatever that night was.

That’s the thing about local scenes. They’re invisible unless you’re in them. Carlsberg ran this Support Your Local campaign where you’d vote for your favorite DJ and they’d make some money from it. The idea was embarrassingly direct—just show up and make sure the people who actually build the thing get paid.

I never cared much about the DJs I read about in magazines. But the people who shaped the actual nights, who understood their crowd and their city—those people mattered. You knew what they’d play, how they’d read the room, what they were capable of. That’s a real relationship in a way that following someone online isn’t.

I don’t know if that series still happens. Sponsorship money dries up, people move, scenes change. But the basic idea was sound: that the people who actually build culture deserve to eat and deserve to be recognized by the people who show up. It’s not complicated. It just requires showing up.