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 August 2005 - August 2006: Selector
DJ Series @
Jupiter, Berkeley, CA: 1/4/2007 Born 1974, Dearborn, Michigan. I hated music. Probably because it was my worst subject in elementary school - I just didn't get what the instructor was wanting us to do. Although I enjoyed a few trips to the basement to listen to music with my Dad, who maintains (to this day) a serious audiophile soundsystem and a large music collection of LPs and now, CDs. The first cassette I bought: Men at Work's Business as Usual. Not that I haven't ever played from that in a D.J. gig (I purchased the 12" later for 25 cents) - it has its place. In 6th grade, Candace gave me a gift: a tape of Run D.M.C.'s Raising Hell; she already knew I liked some of their songs. I played that tape a lot. It still rocks the block - "Peter Piper," "It's Tricky," and the one I live: "My Adidas," (I have 8 pair!) When your collection lacks, you really work your favorites. I heard Kirk Lee's mix tapes - the first urban / hip-hop stuff I ever heard, he was 12 and put together some amazing stuff I knew nothing about. Wish I had his playlist. That was in Baltimore. If I only became a d.j. when I moved to the U.K. in 1987... I could have capitalized on a whole revolution in dance music - from acid house to breakbeat techno to jungle and drum 'n bass. I caught hints of it on the radio, in London at the record shops, on the telly. But the only physical pieces I got out of it: stuff like Yello's "Oh Yeah." And I started to buy actual records. And I had to catalog my Dad's entire collection of LPs into a notebook - over 2,000. I thought that was a lot, but today I have more records than my Dad. It was 1989 when I moved to California that I bought my first CD: Digital Underground's Sex Packets - a fruitful, funktastic earworm all the way through. My parents weren't all that impressed or supported with my acquisition of hip-hop. Taner schooled me on Paris, NWA, and music with serious bass - like D.J. Magic Mike. He even helped me install an amplifier my Uncle Bob gave me into my '66 Ford Falcon, after we went shopping for 6 x 9 speakers. Hooked up with my CD player, we would cruise around town and boom the bass, like to Tower Records where I bought Black Sheep's A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing just because the haircut on the cover looked cool with them posing with the sheep. At CD Land in Palo Alto, I could actually listen to all the used CD's they had in stock - and stumbled on Funkadelic's Maggot Brain. KMEL DJs schooled me on a bunch of stuff, they would play more local artists and cool mixes back then - it was fresh. And I bought a tape of EPMD's Business as Usual - featuring DJ Scratch on the scratch. I was intrigued. That was high school. College at U.C. Berkeley opened things up a bit. Lots more records! My freshman dorm roommate Stefan (a sophomore) introduced me to the meccas of records within a block or two of our dorm: Rasputin's and Amoeba. Down the hall, a budding hip-hop producer, Frank Correa, who would later do work for L.A. based Self-Scientific, accompanied me to my first hip-hop concert at the Henry Kaiser Auditorium by Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland. The bill: EPMD, Das Efx, Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth. Das Efx tripped me out, EPMD rocked it well, and then when DJ Scratch did his solo and tore it up... I was then convinced that I had to become a scratch DJ. But college would make it wait! So I accumulated several crates of records, listened to the Wake Up Show and 10 O'Clock Bomb on local radio, and waited until I graduated. I even skipped out of the first half of my last college final exam to raid Lazy Eddie's record shop on Telegraph - they were giving away everything for free! I used to run into Peanut Butter Wolf and Beni B there. By the end of college, I had started to attend DJ battles in various record shops. I remember heading out to Concord for one and seeing an amazing routine from a guy called Soup Rock. He's now Megatron and spins more grime, dubstep, and drum and bass than he does hip-hop! Frank and I attended a memorable freestyle scratch session with Mixmaster Mike and Q-Bert at the now-defunct Nu Upper Room in East Oakland. I've seen Mixmaster Mike perform quite a few times since then, and although he's evolved and rocked it, he's never quite replicated that turntable jazz. I ran into Neil, a former roommate of a friend of mine from my freshman dorm, at the 1996 U.S. DMC DJ mixing championship held at a cafeteria in the industrial Bayview district of San Francisco - Neil too would become a dj (Nunagi) and colleague. We saw this crazy dude looking like a heavy-metal guy from Cleveland, DJ Swamp, steal the show and the crown. Graduating in May 1997 from Cal, I brought my Mom, Dad, Sister, Nana, and Uncle Bob for a memorable scratch session with Q-Bert at the Asian Art Museum in Golden Gate Park. I enjoyed my Grandmother's incredulous reaction to he performance. After finally buying my Technics 1200 turntables after a battle judged reluctantly by DJ Flare in Redwood City, I had my first goal to accomplish: make a mixtape. The concept: Hip-Slop - hip-hop, electro, and a lot of peculiar and odd records to mix with it. I recorded it in 5 segments in San Bruno, pasting them together onto two master CDs. During the time I recorded this, I was constantly practicing mixing and cutting on the home setup, trying to develop the skills as rapidly as I could. But something happened that would change my tack: I developed a form of R.S.I. - repetitive strain injury - not exactly "carpal tunnel syndrome" but just as debilitating. Any tense movements with my upper body or arms exacerbated the problem, scratching being one of the suspects. Hey, if it's difficult to brush your teeth, you can imagine. So I focused more on the mixing... and started to open up to different kinds of music than hip-hop, electro, and their influences. At Zebra Records in San Francisco, I listened to this 10" single by R.A.W. and Curious? - the first jungle / drum and bass record that I liked. To this day, it remains one of my all-time favorites - delicious drum arrangements and sick ragga samples. After moving back to Berkeley in 1998, a church friend Rufo suggested I check out, listen to, and get involved at KALX radio on the Berkeley campus. After attending an orientation in fall 1999, I became active. KALX is rich. Over 100,000 pieces of music - I explored the library. Hundreds of pieces of new music, with insightful reviews provided by knowledgeable DJs. Sutekh and Nommi schooled me on the history of electronica in a wonderful session provided to station DJs that opened my eyes and ears to all kinds of music. I started to actually find some jungle records worth a listen as well. Detroit techno and UK breakbeat - I had lived in both places but missed the action as a youngster. Now it was time to catch up. After completing DJ training, I compiled a live best of new electronic music mix for the Shortwave specialty show, with my parents and Sister in attendance. Called "Electronicollage 2000", I fit more than 50 song excerpts onto the one hour program, and it moved so naturally. It began a tradition that continues to this day, and half of my available mixes are one year end of the year electronic compilations of 50 to 60 songs. It took 15 takes. And it was done: my first honed dj mix - Bad Bad Tack, 20 minutes of 10 jungle and drum and bass tunes. I feel that it still rips and I happily pass it out as a demo. It scored well on the Live 105 "Subsonic" drum and bass mix competition in March 2001, but I didn't win the guest dj spot with Roni Size and the Reprazent crew - Megatron did! Later that year, I scored my first regular show on KALX - Fridays 9:00 to midnight. A showcase of many different styles of music, with the focus changing each week. Doing it week after week, I elevated my game and gained a following. One of my future collaborators, AJB, was one of my regular listeners. I joined a crew with AJB and a few other DJs - we did events at The Galaxy Club (now Milk), The House of Shields, and Harpoon Louie's. The crew broke up, but then I received a call from AJB in the spring of 2003 - he had auditioned at Kingman's Lucky Lounge in Oakland, and he invited me to do the same. I tried out, got the okay, and then AJB, Robynn, and Hanktheguywiththerecords joined forces with me to put on a legendary night at Kingman's called "Free Flo Fridays." For 3 years, we consistently packed the house with a crowd as eclectic and diverse as our musical selections. We brought in all-star local guest DJs such as Delon and Davoud (who would later join the crew), Samira, Sergio, Earflaps, Pone, Chungtech, Disco Shawn, Canyon, Melyss, R3M, Zita, Nunagi, Red Stickman, JRS, Powerlounger, Bryan Cox, Nate Harrison, and global DJs like TLR from Amsterdam. At "Free Flo Fridays," we featured all kinds of beautiful music and kept it moving all night long - from hip-hop to house, broken beats to electro and techno, downtempo to liquid drum-n-bass, disco to 2 step, funk, soul, and jazz to abstract beats, dub, dancehall, and reggae to new wave. Today, I continue to make mixes, play radio shows, and gig locally playing diverse styles of music. I finished another yearlong radio weekly at KALX Berkeley 90.7FM, Tuesdays 6 to 9pm, hosting "Turntable Salad," in August 2006. I'm the producer of Shortwave, KALX's electronic music specialty program, which airs at 11:59pm on the first and third Sundays of each month until 1:00am Monday mornings. (Alternating with Yo! KALX Raps, if there's a 5th Sunday we negotiate who's programming the hour.) I often host Shortwave and I'm in charge of recruiting dj and musician talent to showcase a variety of styles of electronic music on the show. Occasionally I host Information Overload, KALX's difficult listening program, and I have hosted Round Midnight, the jazz program. Terra-ism, my latest session mix, features a range of international styles of music, including dub, reggae, rai, shaabi, bhangra, hip-hop, electro, drum and bass, and fusion. And hot off the presses is 2006T, my latest year-end Shortwave top-60 radio mix.  |
