I. Am. Beat Boy.

It’s here. My third collection of beats, flips, and reimaginings of music we all love. Well, I love it, and I know you will too.

This one time…

Back in the olden days of making mixtapes on an analog 4-track, a Pioneer CDJ-1000 rented from an audio store for the weekend, and a handful of CD-Rs, I set about making a mixtape of all love and love-related songs. I wanted something extra to add to it, so I searched around the internet for […]

Tinnitus.

Bells ring; drums, ring; hell, even freedom rings.This is not a ring.More akin to a whistley whine.Or a whiny whistle? That never stops.It’s not a pulsating, or a sireny whine;It’s one, single, unbroken note,Like a dead guy slumped over his car horn. That’s always there.I can’t ever not hear it.Even when I’m not listening to […]

DJ Chronicles – 6: Once A DJ…

…always a DJ. I could no more quit DJing than I could quit breathing. I was supremely depressed about bombing hard at Soundset 2009 (even though I’m probably the only person who still remembers it), but I wasn’t in any hurry to dump all my equipment and records, and retreat into a cave in some […]

DJ Chronicles – 5: The Times Were A-Changin’.

Right around the late 00’s, the DJ game began to change. Well, maybe “evolve” is a better way of saying it. More and more DJ’s were discovering the wonders of Traktor Pro and Serato Scratch Live. These new doohickeys allowed you to manipulate music that was converted to electronic media, just like vinyl records. It […]

DJ Chronicles – 4: Keep The Turntables Turnin’…

Well, somebody must have been paying attention to me while I was trying to make my mark in the Minnesota turntablist scene. One of the first gigs I got asked to do was to provide music for a house party over by the U of M. Boy was that an adventure. It was during my […]

DJ Chronicles – 3: I, Turntablist.

So I’m fresh out of college with my degree in Creative Writing, and a minor in Music Recording that I was only a few units short of finishing, a pair of ungently-used turntables, a beginner’s-level mixer, and a bedroom full of records. Now what? Well, I managed to make a few contacts thru working at […]

DJ Chronicles – 2: In Full Effect(?)

My freshman year at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles was spent trying to get my rapping career off the ground. Ya see, when I was in high school, I wrote a rap for me and my friends to perform for some project in Chemistry class. When the rest of my friends chickened […]

DJ Chronicles – 1: The Genesis.

I’ve always loved to write, but I’m not just a “wordsmith.” Besides writing, reading, and watching more television than I should, I’ve been a lover of music all my life, and I’ve been a DJ for almost 30 years. I remember listening to music on the hi-fi as a kid. The hi-fi was a console […]