Industry Weekly

[Soundscape]

Fergie DJ has seen and heard the scene evolve

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Fergie knows best: “When you’re playing Vegas, you have to really have one foot in the booth and one foot on the dancefloor.”

Few DJs have seen Vegas change the way Fergie DJ has. Originally from Northern Ireland, Fergie (Robert Ferguson) has been spinning records since he was teenager, and lighting up Las Vegas clubs since 2001. He’s called Sin City home for four years now.

“The first time I came here playing dance music, people were looking at me like I had two f*cking heads,” Fergie says. “There was no dance music on the Strip whatsoever or really going on in America.”

How things have changed. That first gig was a Godskitchen event at Ra at the Luxor. Fergie has been a prominent resident since day one at Hakkasan at MGM Grand, the megaclub that has set the pace for the current Vegas nightscape. “It changed the way people looked at this music for sure, here and around the world. It really put Vegas on the map, on the world stage.”

Fergie has changed his style quite a bit over the years, starting out with house music (“That’s all it was called back in the day.”) before dipping into hard house and a more underground sound he cultivated on his BBC One radio show. Today his bigger, wider sound is designed to please the varied clubbers he encounters in Las Vegas and around the world.

“When you’re playing Vegas, you have to really have one foot in the booth and one foot on the dancefloor,” Fergie says. “It goes back to the older days of really keeping your eye on every aspect of the room. There was a learning curve even though I’ve been doing this for 25 years, but it’s been great to go back and really look at what a DJ actually is.”

A funny thing happened on his way to finding the formula to entertain the Vegas dance-music fan: He grew to enjoy his sets more than ever. “I find I get more enjoyment out of it, I’m more free to just try things and dip into different styles, because I’m playing to such a different crowd.” Fergie DJ at Omnia, December 10 & 13.

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Brock Radke

Brock Radke is an award-winning writer and columnist who currently occupies the role of editor-at-large at Las Vegas Weekly magazine. ...

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