SOUNDING OUT THE CITY

By RICHARD "TREATS" DRYDEN

Did New York terrestrial radio get the memo? The ranking of music influencers isn't 100 percent official, but the totem pole is as follows: Internet, television/film, fashion shows, and, at the very bottom, radio. We send our condolences to you, Nikola Tesla!
 
Fashion shows win these days for raising their production value and changing the way people hear music. And to think, their deejays do it all without following Tesla’s painstaking efforts to flip electric frequencies!
 
With an endless number of tastemaker deejays keeping their ears open to the streets, the Big Apple’s Fashion Week produces some of the best tunes. Past runway shows for Baby Phat and Heatherette tapped DJ Cassidy and super-producer, Swizz Beatz, to provide the sound. Blink and you probably missed the Geico caveman on deck because deejaying is so easy, anyone with a padded iTunes library can do it, right? Perhaps that’s why deejays are billed under the new, fancy name, sound producer.
 
According to a report made by Agenda Inc.—consultants for Dior, Cadillac, and Karl Lagerfeld—sound producers from last August and Winter opted for tunes like, “Pull Up To The Bumper,” by Grace Jones, and “Knocked Up” from the Kings of Leon.”

Here’s the playlist of the most played songs from AW09/10 according to the experts: