The World According to Chuck The DJ

Many times I’ve been asked, “How long have you been a DJ?” or, “What was your first gig?” My story is long and covers many years, all of which have been great. I should say this right off the bat, two things that I am not known for is my ability to use most any kind of tool, and the second is my memory. So dates, times and locations are as close as I can get them. Let’s tee off.

It all started when I was in Boy Scouts of America. The powers that be decided to host a joint Boy Scout/Girl Scout dance. My Scoutmaster was my best friend’s Dad. He had heard us talk about my sister’s boyfriend stereo and he asked me to ask Don if he would bring his stereo down and play music for the dance. He said no, but I could take it and do it. With that, my legacy had started. With a few borrowed light boxes that RadioShack was making and a couple of colored flood lights with flashers screwed in, I had my first DJ gig. The year was 1969 and I was 13 years old.

The most memorable thing from that first event was something that would prove how far I would go to make the gig work in years to come. I blew up Don’s speakers during the dance. My buddy Jeff, who you will be hearing a lot about, even at the tender age of thirteen, was a wiz at “MacGyvering” things. The venue had a built in sound system that was locked up, but the ceiling speakers were wired through some metal conduit that ran right behind the stage. He cut into the pipe, pulled the wires out, cut them, and patched them into our stereo. Bam! We had sound and the event went on.

Thus the run was started. The first company name was Dawning Opera. Dawning was for our lighting which was turning into what we dug the most, and Opera, of course for, the music. Back then there was a record store in town where you could rent 45’s for ten cents. So I would go down, rent them, put them on tape, a reel to reel, and use that at the dance. This was before “mixing.” If the dance was 3 hours, I would make a 3 hour tape. New tape for each show. Truthfully, back then, the lighting was what we got a kick out of most and having to play music was just what we had to do to play with our lights.

From 1969 – 1974 we had a “DJ Crew” before that term was cool. The core was Jeff and myself. Jeff was the builder, the maker and the visionary of all of our special effects. My job was the music and during the show, the MC, front man and host. Most of our events were Junior High School dances and a few private parties. Many guys came and went within the crew. Mike, Dave, Perry, Randy, DJ and Dave to name a few. We even had a girl for a while, Cheryl, who I was dating and would marry years later.

Everyone brought something to the show, a speaker or two, a slide projector, lighting of some kind. We would all meet at the venue as early as we could, school out at 3:00 pm? We were loading in at 3:01 for an 8:00 pm dance. Getting places early was burned into my brain early on and it is still how I roll today. If you are on time, you are late.

Back in those early years we couldn’t even drive yet. Jeff’s parents would be our chauffeur. Sometimes they would make more than one trip to get the gear to the school and then come back after and pick us up. My parents, on the other hand, would have nothing to do with it and in fact it wasn’t until 1988 that they finally came to a dance that I was doing, and only then because it was in the clubhouse of the golf community where they lived. But that’s just another story, let’s move on.

Those first 5 or 6 years, our light show was huge. We were using slide projectors, movie cameras, overhead projectors, fifty gallon dry ice fog machines and more. The hardest part of all this was finding power to run it, usually 5 or 6 circuits. Jeff became very adept at crawling under, over, getting into locked rooms, looking behind washers and dryers or kitchens to find us the power that we needed.

It was a very 60ish light show. You can Google pictures of that. A lot of the stuff that we were doing is exactly what many of the lights today are doing. The best examples of this are 2 things. 1, take broken pieces of a mirror, glue them to a little round piece of wood, and mount that to a little motor that had a variable speed controller. Then we would aim a slide projector at it, and every piece of mirror would be a beam of light that would reflect on the wall and spin. Whatever slide was in the projector would be multiplied by how many pieces of mirror were on the wood. We had ten of those. Now, go open up your Vertigos, Beamers, Orbits, Scanners or any other number of lights and see how they work. You think their idea is new? Nope, just refined.

The other thing we used to do is take a laser and while one guy was holding it, another guy would hold up the shiny side of tin foil and move it to the music and it would reflect on the wall. Tacky? Sure, but again, look at a lot of the laser effects out there today. Nothing new, just refined.

Did we invent all these things? No, we would just tweak ideas from other sources. One of our biggest source of inspiration was Vulcan Light Company. This was a huge more professional light show that worked with many bands and was run by Bob Manthey, who, at the time had a booking agency called Black Heart Booking Agency that put bands into school dances in most of Northern and Central California. He would book his light show with the bands. You will hear more about Bob shortly.

So, while all the lights were going into the room, yours truly would be center stage, talking to the crowd. They call it “hyping the crowd” now. Between 1974 and 1978 I brought this huge swivel chair with me and I would sit center stage and run the show. There wasn’t much for the “DJ” to do since it was all pre-recorded and that was it.

Somewhere along the way we changed names, for a while it was L.A.M.B. The first letter of the four of ours last name. Then came Spectrum. First it was Spectrum Light & Sound Company, but too many people thought we were an install business. So it got changed to Spectrum Mobile DJ. For a very brief time around 1977-1979 it was Spectrum Disco to capitalize on the disco music fad.

Slowly the crew started to fade away as we graduated from high school and it became a two man show with just Jeff and myself. Also by then the pre-recorded part of the show went away and I was now a DJ. Still renting, and then buying the records and putting them on cassette tapes and building a library of music.

Between 1978 and 1982 the shows were sporadic. Still mostly school dances where we could play with our lights and play the music loud. In fact one of my first business cards simply states on it, “We Just Like To Play It Loud” with our phone number and names. Shows would be fit in between our real jobs, wives and life when we could. I worked in a grocery store as a butcher and Jeff worked for his parents in their machine shop.

Then it happened. The turning point of my life. In 1983 I got a divorce. So, now I was single, in a job that was only so so and I thought to myself, “What do I want to do with my life? What do I truly enjoy doing?” The answer was DJing. But how and what to do? How do I go about starting a business? I turned to Bob Manthey. Remember Bob?

I called Bob and asked him if he ever got calls for DJs. Bob was still huge in schools and his first love was bands. The light show was by now gone and he was King Of The Schools. He said rarely, but would keep me in mind if he did, and then, he did.

For years Bob provided bands and entertainment at summertime youth conferences. This year, they asked for a DJ so he called me. It was in San Francisco at some hotel I forgot and it was for schools all over California that sent their leadership students to learn and they have a closing night party.

My DJ rig at the time was 4 RadioShack speakers that had 2 ten inch speakers and a horn in each cabinet and a bass guitar speaker that had 4 ten inch speakers. I did have a homemade light tree with 4 colored floods that were controlled with a RadioShack “to the music” controller.

Without getting into details, I bombed! Big time! I didn’t have the music they wanted, I put a tape in wrong and played a Blood Sweat & Tears song by mistake, all in all, it was just bad. But surprisingly enough Bob saw something in me that night. He saw the future. He lent me a crapload of money and told me to go out and buy a real system.

By 1984 I was taking time off work at the store to travel all around Northern and Central California doing school dances with a real DJ system. Twenty feet of trussing, crank up towers, Peavey Project one speaker system, CS 800 power amps, more lights, ETA controllers, bubble machines, confetti cannons, glitter cannons, Silly String by the cases and my trusty cassette decks! Jeff would always come up with something new, something WOW! “Flying Butterfly Wing Trussing” was one of his grand inventions. Picture 2 ten foot pieces of truss, looking like a normal twenty foot span, only to all of a sudden split open and “flap” its’ wings with all the lights attached! I truly wish I had pictures of that.

In 1985 I said goodbye to the grocery store and hello to full time DJing. I went to the first Mobile Beat DJ Expo. Then I went to the DJ Times DJ Expo in Atlantic City where I was a panelist on the “School Dance” panel. The following year I ran the School Dance panel for Mobile Beat, and DJ Times. I went on to moderate the next 3 at DJ Times, and Mobile Beat. In 1987 I was honored “Mobile DJ Of The Month” by DJ Times and I moderated the School Dance pages for both DJ Chat and Mobile Beat websites. I also started writing articles for Mobile Beat Mag and DJ Times Magazine focusing on school dances. In the 1990s I wrote one of my favorite articles called “The WOW Factor” which talked about making big impressions at school dances.

Weddings were something I did in the summer because schools were not in session, but I really didn’t like them and didn’t chase after them.

My only real club experience was at a dive bar where I was the house DJ 3 nights a week for 9 wild months. At $250 a night in 1990ish it was a nice weekly salary. (Laughs.) But it ended one night when the boss came up and said, “Next week we are changing over to a sports bar; you’re out.” That’s when I realized never to trust most bar people. There are some great stories from that time and if I write a book, I’ll include them. I have from time to time covered a club for my DJ buddies, but I have never been known for my mixing or club style DJing.

Around 2005, my wife (who I re-met after DJing her fifteen year class reunion and hadn’t seen since we dated in high school) and I moved to Maui. It was a bold move for me because to pick up after twenty years and move to another state was a biggie. The island will embrace you or spit you out. In our case, it embraced us. I had my first event there 9 days after we moved. At that event an agent from the biggest entertainment company on Maui, Envisions Creative Event Production, saw me, liked me and started booking me. Other companies followed suit like Tihati Productions. At this point I do want to give props out to my Maui bud, Randy, aka DJ SkinnyGuy. Before we moved I put the word out that we were moving and I wanted some insight. He was there with anything I wanted to know and truthfully, without his insight, we might not have moved. Many cats on Maui helped me out, Alan, Bud aka DJ Blast were two of the best braddahs a guy could have. Again, more stories for the book from my years on Maui. There are some great ones! (Laughs.)

Schools on Maui were cheap and I was never able to crack that Macadamia nut open. So I shifted to destination weddings and corporate events. There are so many stories from Maui I could share, but if this turns into a book, I will add them.

After almost 8 years on Maui it was time to return home. My wife was producing the largest tribal bellydance event in the world, Tribal Fest, in California and it just got too hard to run from another state. We packed up, said aloha, and headed back home.

2013 and time to re-start my DJ biz once again. This is where networking comes in so importantly. I called my buddy Phil Trau, you all know Phil. He was one of my early success stories. (Laughs.) When I say that what I mean is when I met him, he was a part time DJ and he wanted to be full time like me. I told him to quit his day job and he will do whatever it takes to make it. He did and you all know the result. Over the years Phil has pushed me to up my game and has been a huge influence on me. Sadly for him, he has never been able to “crack that nut” that is my laziness. (Laughs.) I’d like to think that we push each other, but truthfully he doesn’t need much pushing, he just says, “Yes,” to everything where I say, “Is it time to golf?”

This brings us to 2019 and thirty-four years as a full time DJ but fifty years as a Mobile DJ. Wow, I never thought about that. Shoot, this year, fifty years since my very first DJ gig. It’s been a wild and wacky ride. There is so much more to this story, so many details, thoughts and wild stories from the past. Who knows, maybe someday I will write a book and sell a million copies. (Laughs.)

I hope that you enjoy the photos. I wish I had more, maybe for the book!