Author Archive: Eric San Juan
Eric San Juan
February 17, 2021
If I was starting out as a DJ, I would need to consider what type of DJ I actually want to be. Will I be looking for a club or pub residency? Or do I want to attend wedding receptions or children’s parties? There are many types of work as a disc jockey, and it needs some serious thought before taking the plunge. After all, there is a decent bit of cash that needs to be put down at the start, and whilst dj finance options exist it is good to think things through before going forward. Important Considerations To be a successful DJ, I will need to be able to entertain an audience and put on a show. As such, consideration needs to be…
Read more
Eric San Juan
February 10, 2021
Penned by the incredible Carole King and her husband, Gerry Goffin, this is one of those old classics that I’d have scoffed at in my youth. Too much shmaltz, too much romance, too much like the music my mother liked. I wanted something edgy and challenging, right? But a funny thing happened on the way to adulthood: One day I found a cassette of Aretha Franklin’s greatest hits. I have no recollection of where it came from or where I got it, but in a fit of boredom and curiosity, I gave it a spin and decided to pretend I was into it. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks: That voice. That voice. WOW. How had I not sat up and paid…
Read more
Eric San Juan
February 9, 2021
It would be hard to overstate the impact Miles Davis has had on me, my taste in music, and how I approach music in general. His relentless experimentation, his drive to forge his own path, and the plain ol’ fact that his work is FANTASTIC have ingrained themselves into my life in a deep way. It all started with “So What,” the opening track from his legendary Kind of Blue record, arguably the greatest jazz record of all time. When someone wants to get into instrumental jazz, I always recommend they start here. Listen for the aspects you like — the tinkling piano, the roaring sax solos, the meandering pace — then go check out the artists responsible for those elements (Bill Evans, John Coltrane,…
Read more
Eric San Juan
February 8, 2021
Is this one of the great songs in hip hop history? Absolutely not. I can’t lie: it hasn’t aged well. It’s pretty dated. But it legit changed my life. U.T.F.O.’s “Roxanne Roxanne” is probably my earliest rap memory, a song that took over the playground of my small New Jersey town, passed around on mix tapes recorded from the radio and memorized by half the school. There are still lyrics I quote to this day (including for some damn reason, “dermatology is treatment of the skin”). It also sparked the so-called “Roxanne Wars,” a series of songs hitting back and forth at one another that played out as an ongoing story between rival rappers. As a kid, I was mesmerized. This was right out of…
Read more
Eric San Juan
February 7, 2021
When I first started exploring jazz in the late 1990s, vocal jazz wasn’t tops on my list. I preferred (and still prefer) the instrumental stuff from the late 1940s through the late 1960s. However, I still made it a point to listen to the major names of the genre when it came to vocal jazz, too, because if I was self-educating, I wanted to take it all in. Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and many others helped me zero in on the aspects of vocal jazz I liked. Then there was Billie Holiday. Her haunting voice was already familiar to me, in no small part because it’s been imitated so many times. It was … different. Otherworldly. There was little joy…
Read more
