How did I get here?

In 1989, the day my father died, I remember La Bamba was playing on the car radio. We were passing the radio station that was at the end of Broadcasting road in rural Pennsylvania. A square box of a building with a large tower amongst rolling grassy fields. I remember thinking that the radio DJs lived in that building and that one day I would too. That never happened. The station was torn down and strip malls took its place. I never pursued a Radio career and instead I moved west and studied Cinema. 

The change in geographic location also brought a change in musical preference. Having left the dominance of urban hip hop culture and of such Rap giants like Jay-Z, 50 cent and Nas, I  found myself surrounded by new sounds influenced by the California skate and surf culture. These new sounds challenged my subjective aural senses to redefine what was considered "good" music. Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and The Misfits became the new gods.

A "new" format of listening to music, albeit an old-fashioned way, also expanded my horizons. My roommate at the time, my brother of 11 years my senior, had a record player. This would become my gateway drug, down the slippery slope of the rabbit hole of undiscovered music. At this time in the early aughts, record stores were shuttering their doors; "closing store" sales and thrift stores were all that were left outside of the urban metropolis. Digging through boxes in the back of a vitamin store yielded Stevie Wonder's Innervision, Marvin Gaye's What's Going On?, Lou Reed's Transformer and others for 50 cents a piece.  Having found this new hobby, I would move on from the rough and ready records of the bargain bins to the pristine and clean collections of the record store. I discovered, ironically, The Last Record Store in Santa Rosa California.  In these shops, the necessity of well-kept, listenable media became of importance.

During this period, new technologies in music sharing and listening had become more advanced and wide spread.  Ipod dumps and music blogs saturated the aural landscape of access and "acquisitions".  The minutiae of sub genres had become ever more prevalent as one tries to distinguish between Thrash Metal, Speed Metal, and Power Metal or Gangsta Rap, Mafioso Rap and Thug Rap or Proto Punk, Punk Rock and Post Punk.  The devil's in the details and it fascinated me.  I would begin collecting from the collectors, aficionados who focused on the rare and obscure; Break Beats, Garage Rock, Electro, Post Punk, Boogie, Italo Disco to name just a few.  These genres have left an indelible mark in music, but remain largely unnoticed.  I began cataloging my digital files to include these subsets in their tag: Rock would become Rock.Garage Rock, R&B to R&B.Northern Soul, Metal to Metal.Thrash Metal etc.  I crafted playlists with ease as a simple search in a database could easily create a Rock n Roll and Soul series, Punk Rock and Metal or Synth Pop and Hip Hop.  As a bartender I shared these sounds with the patrons through the locale's stereo system, bypassing the algorithmic setup that was put in place. A common question, "what are we listening to?", would develop into a discussion about music.  My passion and a chance encounter with a future fellow radio DJ would lead me to where I am now.

I've spent hours modifying thousands of track and for what purpose? I came across a 45 of the Viscounts "Harlem Nocturne" and I thought it would be a great intro song. An intro song for what? Subconsciously I had been preparing myself for this role. Since that day in 1989, driving past the radio station.