It’s complicated being CEO of Goldman Sachs and a DJ

David Salomon

The end of the pandemic, when it comes, will only be identifiable in retrospect.  But perhaps one sign that we are reaching the beginning of the “back to normal” period must be that once more, David Solomon is playing live DJ sets.  And once more, gossip columnists are being snarky about it, digging around for quotes to illustrate the not very startling news that although the CEO of Goldman Sachs was booked for the BottleRock Festival in California, he wasn’t the biggest act there.  They’re even still calling him “DJ D-Sol” when in fact he has been releasing music under his own name for a while now. 

The New York Post has made an attempt at moral outrage, suggesting that Goldman employees were “fuming” at the fact that the BottleRock festival happened in September. At that time, Goldman was making adjustments to its back-to-office policy in order to deal with the Delta variant and was banning unvaccinated employees from its offices, and BottleRock’s lack of a vaccination policy was allegedly an affront to Goldman sensibilities.  As far as we can tell from Instagram stalking, the affront wasn’t that deep though.  Most of the comments on Solomon’s feed are either congratulatory, trolling from other FInsta accounts, or opportunists asking if he’ll give them a job.

This isn’t the first time that Solomon’s DJ activities have caused some minor contention: in July 2020 he DJed at a Hampton’s party where there was allegedly inadequate social distancing. It’s technologically possible to play a DJ set over a live stream – David Guetta did it, for example.  But it could also be argued that this is a poor substitute for the real thing, and that serious musicians need to make direct contact with their clients.  They benefit from the interplay of new ideas in chance conversations while queuing for coffee, and if nothing else, the younger generation of EDM disc jockeys need to serve their apprenticeships. Quite like banking really.


 Daniel Davies- Read more on efinancialcareers.com


 

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