John Digweed Archives

How I Broke Into the Music Business and Made $100K

In Creative Work/Career, Life Purpose & Goals, Music Business, Personal Updates, Writing

Jackie at the old Loöq Records office on Brannan.

As I’m trying to launch a new career (fiction writing), I’m also taking stock of an old one (producing electronic music). I signed my first track in 1992, at the age of 23, to Mega-Tech records (an offshoot of the famous San Francisco disco label Megatone). I released my latest record, a reggae/breaks hybrid track, a week ago.

Breaking in wasn’t easy. I remember vividly sending out cassette tape demos in padded mailers to record labels in New York City and Los Angeles, following up via phone, and getting shot down by arrogant label runners (I’ve made a point to never be mean, running my own record label, even though our signing bar is very high).

Peak Frustration

By J.D. Moyer

On November 23

In Creative Work/Career, Personal Updates, Writing

I remember the moment I felt the most frustrated with my music career. It was well before my music career had actually begun. I had a middle-of-the-night radio show at a college station, a Macintosh Plus and D-70 keyboard in my dorm room, and big dreams. But none of my demos had gotten any love from music labels.

The moment: I was crossing the street, padded envelope in hand, preparing to drop yet another cassette demo in the mail to yet another label. I needed, and felt like I deserved, a cathartic release to the pent-up frustration I was feeling. Success must be right around the corner. This had to be the track that got me signed.

Well, it wasn’t. Nor was the next one. Or the one after that.

It’s a cliche that success is “right around the corner” from disappointment, rejection, paralyzing self-doubt, and abject failure. It’s not true, most of time. Usually what follows peak frustration is more frustration, hard work, more rejection, deliberate and painstaking improvement of skills, and eventually, possibly, small incremental successes. “Big breaks” which to an outsider seem to be based on phenomenal luck are more often the result of throwing enormous amounts of competently cooked pasta against the wall. Some of it will eventually stick.

I did eventually sign a couple tracks to a San Francisco disco label that was branching out into house and techno. Then I signed a track to a major label rave compilation.

Then more demos, more rejection.

It’s not like you reach a certain level of success and you no longer have to deal with being rejected (or worse, ignored). If you’re in the arts, it’s part of the territory. You can pretend you don’t care, but everyone cares. You might not care about the money or fame, but everyone wants to be acknowledged.

To get to my big break (John Digweed discovering a self-published Jondi & Spesh vinyl release in a Berkeley record store bin) I had to write a bunch more tracks, find a music partner/co-writer, put out half a dozen releases on our own credit-card funded imprint, be completely ignored by local tastemakers and scenesters for years, and generally fuel my efforts with youthful bravado, stubbornness, and plastic.

What followed was a pretty damn good couple decades, the dividends of which I am still enjoying today. Top-charting dance tracks, major TV and videogame licensing deals, US and European DJ tours (fancy hotels, limo rides, big venues and crowds), and co-hosting an epic dance music event that had a line stretching around the block every week. Though music is no longer my #1 focus, I still enthusiastically produce tracks and co-manage Loöq Records.

So what is my #1 creative focus? Writing. Fiction writing, specifically. And in that area, I’m enjoying/enduring a good run of frustration and rejection. I’m older now and I have a few life accomplishments under my belt, so the rejection doesn’t hurt as much. But it still stings! I’m currently writing and submitting science-fiction short stories to pro markets and my rejection notices just entered the double digits. Ha, that’s nothing! (think veteran writers). I don’t know if I’m at peak frustration yet. I’m not naive enough to assume that success is right around the corner.

Starting a new creative career over age 40 might be called quixotic. Less generously, deluded. More optimistically (and how I choose to frame it): an attempt at reinvention, mid-life learning, and hopefully, eventually, meaningful contribution (entertaining and inspiring readers).

I guess I’m writing this to encourage you, if you’re in a similar space. This post from Ferrett Steinmetz gave me the courage and fortitude to make a serious attempt at writing (and more recently to start submitting my work). Incidentally, the author of that post is having a great run. You can purchase his debut novel here.

Thanks for joining me on my own ride.

I Could Never Have Predicted This (100th release on Loöq)

By J.D. Moyer

On March 2

In Creative Work/Career, Electronic Music, Music Business

Sometimes life just pulls you into things, and you’re happy to go there.

A raver offering up her boobies to John Digweed.

In 1994, when I was just a 24-year-old fool, I was invited to join an electronic music collective operating under the alias Trip ‘n Spin. The “initiation,” as I remember it, consisted of me playing a few self-produced dance tracks (recorded on cassette) to Sam Urton (alias Novabass), Greg Lindberg (alias The G), and Stephen Kay (alias DJ Special K or Spesh).

Angles of Estrangement

By J.D. Moyer

On July 14

In Electronic Music

Jondi & Spesh -- Angles of Estrangement (Loöq Records)

I’ve been writing and publishing electronic music — mostly dance tracks — since around 1991 (the heyday of rave). In those early years I released a few tracks on my own as “DJ JD”, but the music quality took a jump a few years later when I met and started collaborating with Spesh. As part of the Trip ‘n Spin Recordings collective/dance label, we released a series of polka-dotted house music vinyl 12″ singles as Jondi & Spesh.

Discovered by John Digweed in an East Bay record store.

One of our releases, “We Are Connected,” caught the attention of a world famous (yet still up-and-coming) UK DJ named John Digweed. We learned that our odd track somehow fit into a new category of music called “progressive house.” Fine with us. The track was included on Digweed’s Bedrock compilation, and became something of a hit.

JSJ - Ghosts of You (Renaissance)

Spesh and I did our best to capture the momentum, and wrote and released a large number of dance tracks through the early 2000’s. We collaborated with Jerry Bonham on a project called “JSJ” that produced two wildly successful releases on Renaissance Recordings. We started our own record label (Loöq Records) and released a full-length album — also called We Are Connected — that did pretty well (especially in San Francisco). At the same time, we were running a weekly in San Francisco called Qoöl that for a long time was wildly popular — lines around the block and so forth. For several years running we were voted into Nitevibe’s Top 10 San Francisco DJ list. Fun times!

Too strange?

Around 2004 our music careers came to something of a fork. We released an album on Spundae Records called The Answer. It got some good reviews, but never really took off. I’m still proud of that album, but it veered away from the known dance music genres, and some people didn’t know what to make of it (maybe the incredibly weird cover art had something to do with that). Spesh and I toured the U.S. (supported by Spundae), and then did a self-organized tour in Europe that was both fun and exhausting. I knew for myself at that point that I didn’t want to pursue the possibility of becoming an international superstar DJ (even though we had a pretty good start!). It just wasn’t for me.

Spesh continued to pursue his own DJ career, and together we continued to promote Qoöl and run Loöq Records. For a time, producing as Jondi & Spesh fell by the wayside. I was burning studio time on my other music project — Momu — and Spesh was spending hours and hours listening to tracks and making mixes. In addition to all the music stuff, we’re also both married guys, and work other gigs for money (I do database/programming work, and Spesh is a freelance advertising producer).

Excuses? No way! We were just taking a breather until we figured out what we wanted to do next. After almost twenty years of producing dance music, we were both ready to try something different. The “different” turned out to be a complete change of direction — we started experimenting in the studio with some ambient tracks. Using parts from previously produced tracks, we deconstructed and reconstructed our way into an entirely new album.

The result is “Angles of Estrangement,” out today on iTunes, amazon.com, Beatport, and everywhere else. For now it’s a digital only release, though we might follow up with a CD release (and I wouldn’t rule out vinyl if it does well).

The music came together quickly and easily — it was a blast to produce. That said, we were extremely meticulous in the mixdown phase, working to get the feel of each track just right. We made every single track on the album seamlessly loopable; each one starts exactly where it begins. The original idea was that the music could be used to accompany art installations. From the (rather dramatic) press blurb:

This album is comprised of previously published material that has been radically altered. Certain rules were applied to the re-composition process. For each of the “songs” in this collection, elements of soft and loud were deliberately used in search of contrasts designed to provoke the listener. There is little or no percussion. Each composition contains a dramatic arc, and within that arc, an event. Each piece begins exactly where it ends, and thus can be played in an endless loop.

Individual interpretations guide the listener.

Uses for these compositions stretch beyond the simple delivery of sensation or emotion. They are also meant to accompany life’s occurrences as alternate soundtracks to common events or carefully constructed realities such as films or other works of art.

Let us know what you think about the project. It’s a new direction for us — a real break from the pounding four-on-the-floor stuff we’ve been doing for years. I’d love to know what you think.

Oh yeah … you can download the 14 page digital booklet right here. Enjoy!

ANGLES OF ESTRANGEMENT — SOME FULL-LENGTH PREVIEWS:

Second Sky