I’m an old school snob. For better or worse that’s me. I grew up on vinyl. I bought 45s and albums as a kid, and later bought 12” singles more to say that I have the 12” of Rappers Delight, than anything else.
My first album was Parliament’s “Funkentelechy vs The Placebo Syndrome” that I bought at The Wherehouse on Geary in San Francisco. Loved that long version of Bop Gun with the false ending.
The beauty of growing up in San Francisco was the AM and FM radio stations played everything. KFRC played Top 40, but wasn’t afraid to play a local hit. KSFX was Disco 104 and many other formats. KSAN, KSJO, KOME, and the original KMEL were the Rock stations. KDIA and KSOL jammed the R&B hits of the day.
My record collection had everything from Steely Dan and ELO to Earth Wind & Fire and Bootsy’s Rubber Band, and most everything in between. I was a Funkateer. I loaned out my Commodores Live album so a buddy could tape it and got back Gratitude so I could practice my Phillip Bailey high notes. If you’re under 35, you have no clue what I’m talking about.
After college radio and an internship at KRQR in San Francisco, my first commercial radio gig was at KREO in Santa Rosa, California. I did weekends and overnights, basically for gas money, and then one night the request line rang and it was a guy asking if I’d be interested in spinning records at a club / bar in Rohnert Park, just down the 101.
Now I had fiddled with some Technics 1200s at the college station and in the production studios of the station where I had my internship, but never did anything live. And they’d pay me $50 a night and I might get tips and if I got there early enough a free dinner buffet! Damn! Screw the stage fright!
They had the setup – 2 Technics 1200s, a Numark and some cheap headphones, along with a couple crates of records. All I had to do was show up, play the hits, announce the drink specials, drop in a promo to listen to me later at 2AM and before I left, cash money in my hand.
I spun there until I migrated to KDON in Salinas, did some things there, and then when I was at KBOS / B-95 in Fresno, I did some remixes and clubs – again, mostly with the club’s setup and I’d bring some records. I was a pretty basic club DJ who did some remixes that played on various radio stations, and I’m the first to admit I was nothing special.
After a stop in Modesto where I was the Music Director, we broke record after record – mostly small-label Freestyle, I got to KMEL in San Francisco, and I knew my club DJ days were pretty much over.
Cameron Paul was huge when I was a teenager in the Bay Area and by the late 1980s was a god-like figure in the DJ / Club / Remix world – kids would trade bootleg Cameron Paul Remix cassettes. That’s when KSOL started to drop in “Cameron Paul In The Mix” so nobody could pawn the mix-show off as their own.
I was now getting a paycheck from the soon-to-be-legendary 106.1 KMEL, the same station that employed not only the GOAT, Cameron Paul, but the also-legendary Michael Erickson, Theo Mizuhara, Alex Mejia and Billy Vidal. Music Director Hosh Gurelli even did some remixes and spun at local gay clubs. I was in the presence of greatness, top to bottom, and knew I should just let my turntable days go. Michael Erickson offered to mentor me and help me get gigs, but I knew…it was time. I was OK, maybe kinda good, but certainly not great. Sometimes you just know…
With my club days now in the rearview mirror, I was fortunate enough to still have all the label contacts and stayed on a lot of the mailing lists for years and combined with weekly trips to Rasputin’s, I was able to accumulate quite the collection.
I’ve been sifting though the boxes and crates in one of my garages and helping these records find new homes, as I felt I was being selfish hoarding all this vinyl when there was a new generation of turntable wizards looking for these classics.
25,000 records was my starting point when the downsizing began, and now just doing my part to get the kids started on the basics instead of thinking all music starts with an MP3 file, a laptop screen and bright pink vinyl.
