The Night the DJ Forgot His Playlist

When DJ LazerCat woke up that Saturday morning, he felt like a god. His phone was blowing up with messages from fans, promoters, and one very eager club owner promising an “unforgettable night” at Club Orbit. The flyer had been circulating for weeks: "One Night Only – DJ LazerCat Live!" It was going to be packed.

What DJ LazerCat (real name: Jordan Finkelstein) didn’t know was that the most unforgettable part of the night wasn’t going to be his music—but the complete lack of it.

5:00 PM – The Calm Before the Bass

Jordan sat at his kitchen table sipping a smoothie that tasted suspiciously like sadness. He’d recently gone vegan, and this particular mix of kale, banana, and some weird root he couldn’t pronounce wasn’t doing him any favors. Still, he smiled. Tonight would be epic.

He opened his laptop to do one final check of his USB stick—the one that held his 4-hour prepped set, transitions, backups, and all the sick beats he’d spent weeks curating. His screen lit up.

“Drive Not Found.”

He blinked.

“Drive Not Found.”

He unplugged the stick and plugged it back in. Still nothing. The folder was gone. Completely empty. Like his smoothie glass, which he chucked across the kitchen in panic.

5:47 PM – Mild Panic Becomes a Meltdown

Jordan tore his apartment apart like a raccoon on Red Bull. Every USB, every backup drive, even his cloud storage—nothing. The file had somehow been deleted in the night, possibly during a failed attempt at downloading what he thought was a Lo-Fi chill remix but turned out to be malware from a suspiciously named site: “Beetz4U.biz.”

Club Orbit was expecting him at 9 PM.

He did the only thing a man in his situation could do: he texted his ex, Kara.

Jordan: "Hey. This is NOT a booty text. I need your help. Music emergency."

Kara replied almost instantly.

Kara: "Sounds like a you problem. But I’m intrigued. Continue."

Thirty minutes later, she was at his door with a half-latte, half-wine drink she called a “sippuccino” and an expression of half-pity, half-amusement.

6:30 PM – Building the Frankenstein Set

Kara, despite having dumped Jordan for being “too EDM for my aura,” still had a soft spot for crises. Together, they scoured old playlists, deleted Dropbox folders, and even an embarrassing SoundCloud account from his dubstep-only era. Slowly, a new set began to form, stitched together with whatever decent tracks they could recover.

“There’s a weird charm to this,” Kara said, sipping her drink. “You’ve got late-night jazz, 90s Eurodance, and—what even is this? Viking throat singing over trap beats?”

Jordan shrugged. “Experimental.”

By 8:15 PM, they had an hour of decent music and a lot of noise.

“You could always fake it,” Kara offered. “Just act like you’re doing stuff while a premix plays. It’s 80% visuals anyway.”

Jordan considered this. But DJ LazerCat had standards… sort of.

9:00 PM – Showtime (Sort Of)

Club Orbit was already vibrating with energy when Jordan arrived. The LED screens showed his logo—a neon cat with lasers shooting from its eyes—and the crowd was screaming. Smoke machines hissed. A drone flew overhead. Someone was throwing glitter like it was a form of currency.

Jordan took a deep breath and walked onstage, USB stick in hand, praying to the gods of tech and tequila that the Frankenstein mix wouldn’t melt anyone’s ears.

He plugged it in.

The first track hit: Viking Trap.

The crowd froze.

Then someone yelled, “IS THIS… FIRE??” And suddenly the dance floor erupted.

What followed was an hour of the most bizarre, genre-defying set Club Orbit had ever heard. Jazz bled into trance. A remix of “My Heart Will Go On” segued into German techno. Someone crowd-surfed during a Bollywood-house mashup. People were crying. Or maybe laughing. It was hard to tell.

11:00 PM – Viral

By the time Jordan got off stage, sweaty and shell-shocked, he was a legend. At least locally. Kara met him backstage with a smirk.

“You’re trending,” she said, showing him her phone. A video titled “DJ LazerCat Goes Off the Rails and It’s Pure Art” had over 200K views.

“What are the comments saying?”

She scrolled.

“This man is either a genius or deeply confused.”

“Viking Trap just changed my life.”

“Is he okay? Blink twice if you need help.”

1:00 AM – Aftermath

Jordan lay on the floor of his apartment, eating peanut butter straight from the jar. His phone kept buzzing. Bookings. Collaborations. An offer to play a music festival in Denmark called “BøøgFest.”

Kara sat beside him. “You know… sometimes a meltdown is just a remix waiting to happen.”

He looked at her, then at the jar of peanut butter. “You think they’ll expect Viking Trap at every show now?”

“Only one way to find out.”

Moral of the story: When life deletes your playlist, just drop the weirdest beat you can find. You might just start a trend.