On Friday August 28th, the #1 DJ in the world passed away and that angel was the extra great, always supportive, ultramagnetic…. DJ AM.
I wasn’t super close with Adam like a lot of my friends and colleagues - Eli & Diplo both wrote some beautiful words on their blogs about Adam (Eli posted an AMAZING AM mix from the Do Over too). I felt compelled to write about Adam because I think people should know what he did for music, what he did for one underground bunny & mostly for OUR community. Plus, I think it’s an uplifting story because Adam was just that, uplifting.

I only got to chill with AM on a couple of occasions. Mostly @ his club LAX in LA. But, the first time we met was quiet in NYC, on a pre-gig double biz date in 2004/5-ish. NY club promoter Bill Spector was working at Lotus and he booked AM to spin that night. Bill asked me to join the dinner at Megu with Adam & his girlfriend at the time, Nicole Richie. I had just started promoting commercial clubs, I was brand spankin new in the game. I knew who AM was but like a lot of people I wrote him off as a “Celebrity DJ”. I was a little more close minded then in terms of “my scene” and I was more excited about meeting Nicole, the pottymouth daughter of Lionel Richie. She was actually pretty boring which worked out because Adam, Bill & I talked about music for the entire dinner. I told Adam I had just started DJing on vinyl & of course being the natural promoter I am, I also told him about all my excellent friends making music… Spankrock, Diplo, Amanda Blank, etc. They were all unknown then but he was very intrigued. I told him how Baltimore Club would be HUGE…He told me about a new program for DJing called Serato and everything it was capable of doing. Dinner was awesome…then, we were off to Lotus where AM did his damn thing til 3AM or so! His set was mind melting!!! I had never heard anything like it before. He must’ve played 122 songs an hour if not more! I watched from the sidelines with wide eyes, opened ears and I’m sure my mouth was wide opened too. I could not believe it.

Soooo a couple years go by…(circa 2007 now)…I had been steady DJing, I picked up momentum as a promoter, I started performing and even did a song with Armand Van Helden. I was travelling to Europe, I finally got on Serato, then I got some bookings on the West Coast This all happened while AM was growing even bigger, club after club all over the world, starting his own club LAX and even had a deal in Las Vegas. Somewhere else in there he started a Sunday night party called Banana Split at LAX with Steve Aoki & Mike B which advertised a free keg on the dancefloor. Now I thought to myself…What is going on? How did this happen? Being judgemental, confused and very curious I thought… What does any up and coming curious and eager young DJ do? They go to LA, see what this crazy party is all about and DJ the fuggin party! I didn’t really know what was in store for me. The party was insanity. Los Angeles had never merged on a dancefloor quite like this before. It was AM’s way to give back to the community unconditionally every Sunday for the music and for the fun of it. And magical it was.
I was beyond nervous. Steve & Adam came in midway through my set, both with opened arms full of hugs. My last song I had planned to play was the Jesse Rose remix of my AVH song “Playmate”. I guess Adam heard my song coming on, looked over to Steve and said “Where’s the mic?” Steve looked puzzled and AM grabbed his headphones, rewired the mixer and handed me his headphones and said, “Roxy, use my headphones as your mic”. Of course I did just that grinning ear to ear singing my heart out using DJ AM’s headphones for my mic. No big deal. I was of course wondering if what was happening was really happening but I always remembered it and I will always remember how he helped me overcome my fear to perform on the spot mid set.

I always felt really blessed to have had that moment in LA w/ AM & Aoki.
And much more recently AM emailed me in July to tell me how hard he thought my new Afrojack remix banged in the clubs. I was so excited! The greatest DJ in the world was emailing me & likes my song? Yep. Just to be his genuine, awesome, uplifting self.

I recently read this on someones twitter…

“It takes a minute to say hello but forever to say goodbye”

We will miss you Adam. No one will ever do it like you did it.

xo

Roxy

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 11:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.