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DJ Spen - DJ Biography
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 At the age of 13, DJ Spen was getting his mixes played on the local radio station…"Basically, I was listening to the radio one day and I gave them a call and said, 'I can do the same thing,' " says Spencer, a.k.a. DJ Spen.
"My mom took me to the station, I met the guys and gave them something I had done on a cheap tape deck. I didn't have a mixer, I just used the pause button to mix pieces of songs together. My brothers were older, and they would bring home tapes that guys had done in clubs and I would emulate what I heard, adding my flavour. The guys at the station liked it and eventually played it, and that was the beginning."
By the mid-'80s Spencer was a freshman in college and an on-air personality at WEBB. It was about this time that he tried his hand at songwriting, taking cues from early rap giants like the Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash as well as more leftfield influences such as Grace Jones and Tom Tom Club.
"Everybody was in crews back then, so even though it was just myself, when I walked in they asked me the name of my group and I made up a name -- the Numarx, because I had a Numarx mixer at home. Then they asked me, 'How many people are in the group?' I lied and said, 'Four.' The group became myself and my cousin, and evolved until we had five people and recorded an album [It's Our Time on Study Records], and 'Girl You Know It's True.' "
That song sound familiar? Perhaps you know the more popular cover version by German studio construction Milli Vanilli. Most people wouldn't want to touch that disgraced duo with a 391/2-foot pole, but Spen shrugs off the lame-by-association tag.
"A lot of people like that song, but they get phony. They say, 'I never liked that song' when everybody and their mother was singing it. It didn't sell 7 million copies because nobody liked it. It's unfortunate what happened later, but I didn't have anything to do with that."
Spencer eventually left WEBB after a change in ownership and caught on with Basement Boys Records as a songwriter and pre-production assistant. "When the Basement Boys had three different projects on major labels, they didn't have time to work on anything new," he says. "They always had people coming to them, but they didn't have the time to deal with these artists. I would work on projects from the ground up until we had a demo. From there my role evolved to co-production, and eventually me putting a song together from beginning to end. That's how 'A Feeling' came about."
That song, by the Jasper Street Company, became a house classic and led to Spencer doing production work for Crystal Waters and Ultra Nate and remixing for Martha Wash, Karen White and other R&B/dance heavyweights.
 "I think remixing may be my strongest point," Spencer says. "It's a little more complicated, with more time involved, and a whole lot more foresight, but this is essentially the same thing I was doing when I was 13. I started mixing on the radio when I was 13, and was DJing five months later. I've done that pretty much my whole life since then."
You'll probably hear something from Jasper Street Company's New Birth or remixes for ATFC and the Black Mighty Orchestra on Easter Monday, 16th April, but he also likes to give props to dance music's pioneers.
"A lot of DJs don't realize where the music they're playing comes from," he says. "I've been in touch with a lot of people who lived through the disco era, and a lot of the music we play today wouldn't exist without those songs. So when you hear me play, I go all over the place. I'll play new stuff, old stuff like Gamble and Huff, guys like War, Curtis Mayfield, Barry White, George Clinton. Depending on my mood, you might hear anything." |
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14th Mar 10
The Story So Far...
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What DJ gear are you using in 2010? |
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25 %
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18 %
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31 %
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Ableton Live -
15 %
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