athomic

If it weren’t for djmix.net, I wouldn’t be doing this.  That may seem a bit cut and dry, but truthfully, it wasn’t until I found that site that I was able to get a better sense of what mixing meant to me.

I dj’d in the past – from 1987 till 1992 I worked as the resident DJ at a “the biggest bar east of Montreal”, Rumours, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  The fact that Rumours was also a gay bar owned and operated by a non-profit organisation (GALA – Gay and Lesbian Association of Nova Scotia)(yes, the real acronym is much more entertaining but the lesbians objected, apparently) made it even more unique.

I got my job at Rumours purely by chance.  I befriended the main dj, Smitty, and whenever she wanted to run to the bathroom or dance with her girlfriend, she’d call me up and tell me to throw the next track on.  Naturally, my first attempts at mixing were, well, horrifying.  In time, though, she left me unattended for thirty minutes  at a time, and eventually got me a gig there.

Things were really up and down there – we had two managers at one point – “M” and “S” – “M” was more like a mom – she was very diplomatic, firm but fair and when things were especially tough and they had to cut back on staff, openly wept at the prospect of having to let anyone go.  “S” on the other hand was kind of evil.  She was the ice queen, someone not built to deal with people, frankly.  On one occasion, she chose to sit in with me when it was time to buy music for the club, and vetoed every track she didn’t like – at one point even saying “You’ve already got 5 mixes by this Junior Vasquez guy – you don’t need more”.  We were all really glad when she finally left.

After I left Nova Scotia I moved to Toronto, and for a year or so worked in a local bar, first as a dj in the main bar till I was replaced by Barry Harris – (ya, I wasn’t about to fight that one ), and spent the next few months working as the karaoke dj (it was surprisingly fun, actually).

After THAT it got kinda quiet – mixes for bars, personal trainers and aerobics instructors.  It was fun, but really not that fulfilling.

Then I found djmix.net and everything changed – I went from making “fun” mixes (that was the word most people used to describe my mixes) to experimenting with different genres, tempos; I fiddled around with progressive house, techno, psy-trance, mashups, and more – it was great discovering all these new sounds.

So – that’s it for “history” – mostly this site will feature my mixes, plus music I like – including video.  And just so there’s no confusion, it may not always be “dance music” – if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s not to marginalize yourself to one particular thing, get out and explore and you might surprise yourself.

Thanks for visiting…and check back from time to time.