March 5
The Re-energization of a DJI’ve been DJing now for over a decade. The more I say that out loud the more astonishing it seems because I can remember when DJing and beat mixing was all that I wanted to do… and I was horrible at it. I couldn’t mix two songs together if you spotted me the first 8 beats. After a while I became so frustrated that I contemplated giving it up completely. Sure I was competent with my tables but I wasn’t nearly as good as I wanted. I had a gig at AM 930 for a while but that paid squat, it was a news and sports station and most of my work was done on the board (including one heartbreaking night in 1997 when a certain closer failed to get the last two outs of a certain game 7) without ever cracking the mic. I just wasn’t feeling it anymore.
I quit the radio station and started teaching classes on MS Office for a training company in Parma. One of my students and I were talking about music during a break when he informed me that he was a DJ at the 100th Bomb Group. This guy was in his late 40s and seemed to know what he was talking about so it had sparked my interest once again. With this new found energy I began practicing again, but this time with more focus and a sense of purpose – something I didn’t have previously. The training company actually hired this student to be my new admissions director so we developed a pretty solid friendship, which only motivated me more. I finally had a contact that I was certain over time would help me get where I wanted to be.
