They Call Me “Deej” . . .

Hello Steemit Universe!

My name is Dale Lafayette. But, somewhere along the line my best friend Tom started calling me “Deej” ...and it sorta stuck. Admittedly, I've been occasionally associated with a few other choice words that I won't bother to repeat here.

Steemit recommends an introduction for the first post, and this is mine. It is by no means a complete accounting of my life, but it’s certainly far too lengthy to be a concise bio. Hopefully, it’s a least a little interesting...

Sitting down to write this, it occurs to me that I’m lucky I never quite figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Maybe that’s a byproduct of starting life in a low-income, dysfunctional neighborhood and spending most of my time on the street. Thing is, I guess it worked out okay because over the years I’ve also been called a DJ, musician, vocalist, producer, artist, graphic designer, web developer, author, editor and publisher.

The nickname my buddy threw out was in reference to my love of all kinds of music, the fact that I published a music magazine for five years, and that I became one of his go-to DJs when he ran the DJ department at one of the largest and most well-known booking agencies in Northern California.

My lifelong affair with music began as a kid living in the East Oakland projects in the 1960’s, collecting 78s and 45s and listening to radio stations KFRC, KDIA, KSOL and KRE. Then came 8-tracks, cassettes, and eventually, CDs. I was fanatical about growing my collection and pursuing a variety of music styles and emerging genres. Early on, I became a kind of “Bedroom DJ” (if you can say that about a guy playing music way too loud in his studio apartment), and found that I could enjoy a wide variety of music in a single set. I might throw down some Miles Davis and Return To Forever next to The Zombies and Led Zeppelin with a little George Clinton or Sugarhill Gang sprinkled in. I was giddy with this stuff and started making crazy-ass mix tapes.

This sort of reckless musical cross-contamination became my personal soundtrack during years of creative adventures in art, graphic design and publishing – a result perhaps of an early obsession (similar to music) with comic books, specifically, Stan Lee’s Marvel Comics.

During the 1970’s I was among the first Berkeley “street artists” who sold various crafts and products like leather belts, jewelry, pipes and clothing, etc. – just about anything that could be made by hand – on Telegraph Avenue. I created and sold mobiles made from fishing line with shells and driftwood collected at Marin’s Stinson Beach, along with psychedelic watercolor paintings and cosmic collages I did at my hotel room on the corner of Haste and Telegraph, right across from the historic One World Family New Age Center & Natural Foods Restaurant.

In fact, I lived and worked with this amazing group of artists, writers and healthy lifestyle visionaries on and off for several years, learning an amazing variety of skills while gaining a heightened sense of responsibility and purpose. Our “Teleport Lounge” became a kind of cosmic, light and visionary art-filled musical wonderland hosting a variety of colorful groups, bands and talents from all over the world (my favorite being the the Sun-Ra Orchestra) on the same stage as a number of communal bands and weekly channelings by Allen-Michael. (I've since re-connected with many good folks I know from those days, and currently help with tech support for the website.)

I opened “Signs & Graphics” next to Berkeley’s iconic People's Park in 1980, and soon my visual art could be found adorning storefronts all over the Bay Area. In 1991, I completed a collection of original paintings entitled “Kozmik Thang: Explorations In Synergistic Art” which were featured at a variety of Bay Area galleries, coffee houses and an office building or two in downtown San Francisco.

In 1992, I acquired a small karaoke enthusiast club newspaper called Karaoke USA and — transforming it into a slick, full-color national trade magazine for the DJ and Karaoke industries — founded VisionMagik Multimedia Group, a successful ad agency and publishing company. As previously mentioned, I left advertising and trade publishing to cultivate a career as a popular Bay Area DJ and entertainer in 1997, regularly booking gigs at some of the most sought-after parties, events and venues in Northern California.

At the same time, I established Advanced Marketing & Entertainment (AME), a creative media development company, met my awesome life partner, and became a father. I thought, “Maybe this is how I wrap things up” and felt pretty dang good about everything I had accomplished up to that point. Content to do some DJing, recording and website design to keep busy and pay bills, I settled in and innocently began what became perhaps the biggest chapter of my crazy-multi-dimensional life: being a work from home full-time dad, and learning as much as I could absorb about web development – in that order.

I also began self-training in digital music production and released my debut album online. Entitled “Adventures Of A Digital Pirate” (borrowing from Lenny White’s ‘Adventures Of Astral Pirates’), it features a nonsensical mixmash of various beats, samples and concepts, and alludes to the fact that no music genre, track or sound is safe from a hungry DJ.

2018 now and still a dad in training, I own and operate the AME Network of web properties and marketing assets, which includes subsidiaries AME WebXpress, AME DevDepot and AME Studios, our creative media division. AME offers everything needed to make an impact on the web and beyond — from domain names and full service web hosting to complete website development and cutting edge real world marketing solutions. We’re earning our place as a preferred alternative to the big cookie-cutter corporate giants by delivering world-class products at competitive prices and supporting them with full, personalized service. Many clients have been with us over ten years now.

Musically, in addition to home-studio mixing, recording and some planned live video broadcasting, I’ve recently partnered with Paul “P-Dub” Woycheshin (sound engineer for The Beach Boys, Jose Feliciano, Tower of Power, Ratt, Poison and others) to build and grow East Bay Mobile Recording. EBMR offers mobile sound, video, entertainment, recording and production services, and we're launching an all new in-house recording studio that is under construction. My 18 year old, Austin, is helping and gaining quite a set of skills in the process (in addition to getting paid – joy!). I’ll be integrating my mobile DJ System into our operations, providing live on-location entertainment when needed along with handling key marketing & web development.

Speaking of which, I'm like a kid in a candy store with my elaborate new home-studio Digital DJ Workstation, featuring cutting-edge gear and software from top companies in the industry along with an ever-growing, massive library of material. The evolution of music in just my lifetime is staggering, and I’m incredibly lucky and thrilled to have been a part of those early discussions with Pioneer and other key manufacturers while a music trade magazine publisher, advocating for exactly what we are witnessing now with emerging new production and performance technologies.

What blows my mind is that, with all the transitions in music since watching Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show and buying my first James Brown single on King Records (I Got The Feelin’ - 1968), it's still all about that funky, blood-pumping rhythm. The DJ has become the cultural music icon of our time, and young DJ stars from the dance music industry are pulling in millions around the world. Man, is it just me, or are there angels singing? Turns out DJs not only save lives, we brought vinyl back from the proverbial grave!

And the beat goes on…

So, I come across this beta launch of Steemit. “Steem what?” I ask. Being totally bored and almost queasy when I deal with Facebook, Twitter and the quagmire of web-based social kindergartens that the folks are all corralled into and spending way too much of their time and intelligence (is that what you call it?) on these days, I decide to roll the dice, jump on board, and see where this thing goes!

My thought is to post a series of hopefully useful tips and insights I have gained into DJing, the music industry, web development, multimedia and a variety of art forms, some stories (fact and fiction), and probably a few heavily opinionated rants, which I prefer to call “observations.” If you find any of this worth reading and would be willing to check out my posts once in awhile, please support my apparent delusion of significance and encourage my behavior here. If not, I can’t say I blame you, really.

I figure, “…what have I got to lose?”

See, this super hot girlfriend once dumped me, saying in parting that I was “ineffectual.” It crushed me for about a week. True story. A few years later, she showed up on New Year's Eve at a club I worked at called King’s X, grabbed up and passed out a bunch of my cards, and bragged all night that I used to be her boyfriend. She capped things off by dancin’ dirty on a bar table right in front of the DJ booth at midnight. I never saw her again. But, I forgot all about one of the worst weeks of my life. So, like I tell my son when things get wack: “Stay frosty, dude… it’ll pass.”

And it does.

Deej – March 13, 2018

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Links:

Website
Facebook
MC Tomkat Online
Marvel Comics Group
One World Family / Galactic Messenger
Karaoke & DJ USA Magazine
Adventures Of A Digital Pirate
East Bay Mobile Recording
AME Network
AME Studios
AME WebXpress
AME DevDepot