Clayton Counts calls himself “one of the hardest-working unknown DJs in the city.” Since moving here from Texas five years ago, he says, he’s played everything from “lounge music for old people to hip-hop for kids” at places like Whiskey Sky, Reserve, Darkroom, the Allstate Arena, and countless private parties. He DJs to support his work as a composer and producer. “I was a writer before I moved here,” he says. “I make more money as a DJ.”
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Counts Friendstered me a couple weeks ago to find out if I knew anyone with an extra laptop and a delay pedal for a gig. He didn’t have access to his own equipment, he said. When I asked why, he told me a story so good I started taking notes.
“I said very politely, ‘You told me you were a DJ,’” Counts says. “‘You could just ask me to do it.’” Counts says Sarpalius started raging, screaming at him to leave, yanking cables out of the computer and mixer. “I asked him again as politely as possible to let me attend to my machines and leave. He continued screaming, so I called him a whining little bitch. He then repeated my invective as a question, in a squeakily inflected voice, to which I responded, ‘You even said it like a whining little bitch.’”
Outside on the sidewalk, Counts says, he pulled out the pepper spray he carries around for self-defense and blasted it toward the bouncer’s legs. “It was a warning shot,” Counts says. “I didn’t want to spray him in the face.” But the door swung back open, and some of the spray might’ve gone inside, he says. “My retinopathists have warned me against getting into fights, and I am a pacifist to begin with. . . . I took only the necessary caution in preventing myself from getting clocked in the head, possibly blinded for life.”
Counts was taken to a police station in Logan Square, where he spent the night behind bars with a guy who was vomiting all over himself, he says. He was charged with simple battery, a misdemeanor. A court date has been set for August 24.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Andrea Bauer.
