Adam Goldstein is a chill cat. The kind of dude who makes you feel comfortable, the kid-next-door who everyone wants to hang out with after school. He plays records, smokes like a chimney, and has an alarming penchant for retro sneakers.

It kinda makes you forget that, well, he's DJ AM.

A world-renowned disc jockey, DJ AM is a veritable celebrity these days. Straight outta Philly, the now-L.A.-based DJ is known for poppin' off some of the industry's most hype rock and rap records. The kid travels cross-country, getting the most-talked-about parties started. There he is in last week's "Punk'd" episode and in the corner of your girl's Us Weekly. Oh yeah, and his girl's Nicole Richie.

But through it all, he's still Adam. Still doin' what he loves. And lettin' the music talk for itself. Meet DJ AM...

 
The Hundreds: When did u start DJing?

DJ AM: Around ’85?...I started first messing around. I grew up in Philly, and Mighty Mi (from the High and Mighty – he’s another shoe collector) – we grew up together and he had turntables at his house and it was the same group as High and Mighty with Mi, Eon as MC Magnum, and I was AMG the Human Lindrum. I was the beatboxer.

No way!

This was literally 20 years ago. And Mi had some turntables set up and I used to watch him fuck with it and be like “Damn, I really wanna do that.” That was the first exposure to it, then I started making “pause” mixes. My dad bought me this boombox that had an old mic I used to tape to the TV, and on old VCR tapes, I would un-pause certain words to piece together sentences. I used to sit there for days, making paragraphs…remaking the Preamble. If someone said the word, “What,” I would pause it, and piece it together like “What…Are…You…” on an old cassette tape. And I used to love Gumby, and had all these episodes, and I made a Gumboy porno…That’s the same thing as DJing…piece-ing shit together.

Then I convinced my mom to get me turntables. She was like “I’ll get you one.” And I was like “Uhh, what am I gonna do with one?” Finally I got two, after I moved to LA, and started playing an after-hours spot and doing that kinda stuff...

(Nicole peeks over the wall, looking for Adam. She exclaims, "Oh! I didn't know you were doin' an interview!" and coquettishly skips through the room, pouncing on him in the chair. Quiet whispers, and then she's gone. AM laughs, and resumes the conversation...)

 

 I started doin’ this after-hours called the Boiler Room, that was my first job. I worked for $40 a night, and I had to bring my turntables, my home stereo receiver, speakers, and I used to DJ for 6 hours a night, 2AM – 8AM. It was bad news dude. It was completely illegal. My friend’s dad owned a rent-a-car place, and upstairs was a huge space for storage and he convinced him to let him throw parties there late night, so he opened at 2 every night after clubs closed, and sold Budweiser for $5, coke at the bar, guns at the end of the bar. It was fucking mad crazy. And I DJ’d it. It was like ’93. And I was just playin’ whatever. A buncha different people would come and hear me.

From that, I got to do one party at Dragonfly, and 2 guys came to the booth to watch me DJ, and I was like “What the fuck do you want, man?” And they were like “Nothin’, we’re good.” That Monday morning, they called me at work and were like “We’re the owners of Dragonfly, we were the 2 dudes that came in there, do you want the job Fridays?” I was like “Fuck yeah!” It was like $75 a night or something, I was so excited. I had a black-and-white flyer with my name on it...

All I ever wanted was my name on a flyer.

I was so happy. I did that for a year, but all I would do was play for dudes, for my homeboys: Wu-tang, all kinds of selfish-ass old hip-hop. One night I was DJing some chick’s party there, and I put on Jackson 5 and everyone screamed, and that was the first time I had heard everyone scream and I was like “This is what it’s all about.” I can play all that shit at home, or in my car, but I’m at work and I was like “I need to not be so selfish. I need to make everyone happy.” I got addicted to hearing that scream when I dropped a record. Ever since that, I’ve just focused on that and try to do that all night long.

 


How did you start workin’ with Crazy Town?

I used to do a lot of drugs with Seth, the lead-singer of Crazy Town. He was like one of my best friends when I first moved here in ’87. One day he called me and was like “Yo, we got a group now,” and obviously I was the DJ because I was the DJ for all our friends. We started rehearsing, made a demo, and the next day he was like “Dude, we’re signed.” And I was like “Alright!” Went in the studio, made a record, and went on tour. Just kinda happened.

Was that your first experience like that...?

I did work on other people’s albums, cuts on Will Smith’s records, and a couple people had called me for scratching, but that was my first band. I wanted to go to Europe, and they were like “We’re gonna tour Europe and still get paid,” and I was like “Fuck it, I’m in the band.”

What groups did u work with after that?

I did all the cuts on Papa Roach’s record, the one big one they had. Talib Kweli – did all the cuts for him. Nikka Costa…

What’re u doin now?

DJing my ass off. I haven’t started yet, but I have a contract for a monthly in London and Manchester. Right now, every month, I’m in Toronto, San Francisco, Vegas (every weekend), L.A. (every Wednesday), Seattle…and that’s every month.


(AM then introduces us to his equipment. To be honest, I'm a little underwhelmed at first. All I see are a set of turntables and a laptop, hovering overhead. Where's..everything else? "This is everything," he replies. And then I learn...)

Ok, so tell me about this process…

Serato Scratch Live is what it’s called. It’s a program made by Serato in development with a company called Rane (which makes mixers for DJs). These companies teamed up and made their version of what Tractor made – a program called Final Scratch, which was the first one of these…digital DJing, but using records as a MIDI tool to control mp3s, wavs, or aiff files from a computer. So basically, it’s 2 records with time-code on it, and it controls a mp3/wav/aiff file in your laptop.


But it’s the same exact thing as turntables - I have “Technics tattooed on my wrist, I can’t start using a Pioneer CD j—I skipped that whole CD shit anyways. I tried it and was like “Fuck this, it’s not a turntable!” I’m too used to using needles, slow it down, pinch this, speed up, they don’t have that on a CD player – it’s not a turntable, so it’s a different form – you can’t pick a needle up on a CD player, you have to scan. It’s weird – I need the same…it’s what I’m used to, it’s what I know.

These guys made the exact same shit…it’s a real record, but with timecode on it. So now, I get to go to work with nothing but a laptop and 500 crates inside of it basically. Never feeds back, never skips. And it sorts by BPM, if u put the BPM in there. SO I have all the tempos of every song, I can just see… that’s’ the craziest thing…

You don’t think that’s cheating?

I used to think that, but then I realized I never BPM my records. You can do that with records too! Vice, half my DJ friends, all have the BPM written on their records. I never did it because it’d limit me, and make me scared like, "I can’t play this, that’s a different tempo." I would just make it work somehow. But with this, you can hit one button and it all sorts by BPM. It’s like Otis Redding “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” is the same tempo as Ciara's "Goodies.”



Does that mean anyone can be a DJ now?

Doesn’t mean u can mix! It’s the exact same skill level – you have 2 records, needle, pitch are the same. The only thing is you don’t have to carry your records to work. I had a lot of thought about that.

What’s this gonna do for DJing?

When I first got it and tried it, I was so happy and wanted to cry at the same time. SO happy because I don’t have to carry my records and check ‘em through customs or have a record skip or warp. When I’d fly on planes, I used to literally kiss my records before I boarded, praying to God they’d make it there, because if I’d land somewhere for a gig, and if my records weren’t there or 1 crate’s missing, I’m fucked. And they’re irreplaceable – there’s more than 1 record made, but now I gotta find that shit somewhere in the world, and if something happens, I’m screwed.

So I was happy, because all I had to do was bring my laptop and still do my job exactly the same, but at the same time I wanted to cry because I realized this is the death of vinyl. I don’t want records anymore, they’re all big and heavy and take up mad space. I love ‘em… but…The Alchemist, the producer, was one of my best friends in LA growing up. He actually used to DJ, and I used to make beats, and I taught him how to make beats, and he taught me how to DJ, because he had the turntables and I had the sampler. And his career went this way and my career went that way. But me and Al used to wake up every day and roll a blunt and go record shopping, just go digging all day long – that was the thing to do, all through the night, tryin’ to find some rare break…that’s pretty much over. Yeah I still do it, but I record it in my computer as a digital file.


So where do u dig now?

I have pretty much everything I need, almost. I’ve been buying records for so many years, I’ve pretty much done everything. As far as rare breaks, that’s for production, and I don’t really produce anymore – I’m so busy DJing, I’m too fuckin lazy. But for old hip-hop records, people can just buy the CD, rip it in their computer and they got it on vinyl. They can do all the same tricks as if they had a 12”.

But isn’t that all the fun?

For years, it was for me. My youth was full of digging. I love it. But…it’s a wrap!

How may records do u have?

7,000.

Shoes?

Between 500 - 600.

Collect anything else?

That’s it. Records and shoes.

How’d u get into collecting shoes?

The first pair was Air Force IIs, the Charles Barkley’s, that I remember my grandma took me shoe-shopping for school. They were like $80 which was unheard of for sneakers. She was like “Are you sure you need these??” I was like “I gotta have ‘em.” I never looked at a sneaker like that before, like “Oh my God.” Ever since then, I’ve always wanted fresh shoes. I started lookin’ for them, when I walked by the shoe store – instead of sayin’ “I don’t need sneakers” like a normal person, I’d notice ‘em. It’s the same thing as records. DJs compare like “I got this record you don’t have, I got this shoe you don’t have.”



 


Top 5 Albums?

1. Gangstarr “Daily Operation”
2. System of a Down “System of a Down”
3. Boogie Down Productions “By All Means Necessary”
4. Red Hot Chili Peppers “Blood Sugar Sex Magik”
5. Elton John “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”

What are you playin’ right now?

I play a lotta mash-ups, there are a lotta hot ones, a lotta wack ones right now too but…I like playing classic rock and mixing it with hip-hop drumbeats…

That’s actually one of your trademarks, right? Taking rock and…

Mixing it with hip-hop. My sister was a real punk rocker in the 80s – diehard, she was no joke. In Philly, I was a b-boy. I was one of the only white kids in my school – all there was was hip-hop. This was way before it was on the radio, this was like ’81, when I first started seein’ rap and the whole fuckin’ shit. So I got the best of both worlds growin’ up. I’d be in my room bumpin Cash Money and Marvelous and my sister would be playin’ Milkmen or somethin’. And my parents were listening to Billy Joel and Elton John and Bob Marley. So I was lucky, I got exposed to all kinds of hot shit.

 

 











Next?

I just got an offer from Starbucks to put a DJ AM mix CD in every Starbucks. That may be something, buncha different little things like that. Im always lookin’ for a band, something I’m in love with to produce.

You wanna get back into producing?

Yeah, more to take a band I think is talented and coach them…

(For more on DJ AM, check out www.dj-am.com)