Raul Campos, Music host

It's so amazing to be witnessing history in the making and the dawn of a new day!  After talking to peeps today, it's safe to say many are still speechless and on cloud nine.  No words can express the feeling that's rushing through my body after the results of yesterday's election.  It's been a long time coming, but it's finally come.  Nobody knows what the future holds, but I think it's safe to say, at least we'll not be going backwards anymore.  It was such an honor to be part of such a great event last night at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza for the Generation Obama victory party.  I was so overwhelmed on various occasions I just had to stop, be silent and just look around to take it all in.  It was sensory overload at times.  Congratulations to everyone who organized the event, the other DJs Z-Trip, Shepard Fairey, Jason Bentley, Jeremy Sole and the thousands of supporters who packed the house.   The pictures below show it all!

Shepard Fairey and Raul Campos

Special thanks to Beth Topping for snapping such great shots allowing me to share them with you!!  Let me know how you spent the night.  Feel free to share comments, images and events that were going on wherever you may have been.

What can I say?!?!?!  Josh Wink revisited the KCRW airwaves this past Friday night to drop a classic acid house set!  His name is synonymous with the unmistakable dance music genre.  He was in town for a very cool performance for the popular Compression club night at Cinespace following his guest DJ set on KCRW.  I was very excited to rush down to Hollywood to check him out live in a nightclub atmosphere.  It's easy to say, I was not dissapointed.  He definitely brought the goods!  He played a bunch of new music, including tunes from his forthcoming album on Ovum Recordings, A Banana Is Just A Banana!  Here are a couple pictures of him in the mix at the club.

Just as expected, the Bowl was awesome last night!  It was a huge honor to host the closing night of this year's World Festival Series.  There's definitely more to come, but for right now check out this video from the stage immediately following my introduction as we welcomed Ozomatli to the stage.

More pictures to come from this very memorable night.  Also, I want to let you know of a cool screening going on tomorrow.  Check the info below.  I'm gonna be dropping a set of music before the Q&A and the screening of Megunica.  There's gonna be food provided by Border Grill and beats by yours truly.  Hopefully we'll see you there!

Megunica Flyer

So another summer has come and gone.....  Wow!  It just flew by.  For ten years now, KCRW has closed out the summer with fantastic line ups at the Hollywood Bowl.  Some of my highlights over the years include Sergio Mendes, Thievery Corporation, David Byrne, Bunny Wailer and countless others.  I've been fortunate enough to introduce many of these on stage.  This weekend is my turn for 2008.  I'm super excited about getting to introduce Ozomatli, Michael Franti, Lila Downs and Nortec Collective this Sunday evening.  Can you say PARTY?!?!?!?!?!

Hopefully, we'll see you there with 18,000 of your closest friends.  So as you might guess, I'm definitely gonna be dropping some tunes by artists that are gonna be featured at the bowl.  I'm also gonna try to get into a classic house set.  Following the World Festival night, I'm gonna head over to The Vanguard for Deep.  Marques Wyatt is gonna be holding it down all night spinning nothing but classics! 

Also, I'm gonna drop the new Thievery Corporation, Pop Levi, Brazilian Girls, who'll be here Monday morning on MBE and a whole lot more.  By the way, you gotta check out the new video for Pop Levi's 'Semi Babe' tune.  It's interactive!  Trust me on this one, you'll get a kick out of it.  Click on the links below in seperate windows.  Enjoy!

What a blast!!  It was great to see Beat Street and Breakin' for the first time on the big screen.  These two movies were so influential to me as a kid.  I truly believe if I had not seen these flicks growing up, I would not have gotten into DJ'ing as seriously as I did.  It was a great turnout at The Silent Movie Theater last night.  And what a pleasant surprise it was to get to see and hear iconic DJ Arabian Prince drop a couple of live sets before and between movies.  It's obvious to me that I'm not the only one that has such high praise for these two works.  Within the packed house were hip hop DJ/Producers Peanut Butter Wolf and Cut Chemist, as well as KCRW family members Beth Topping and Nassir Nassirzadeh.

There were so many great events going on over the weekend.  Did anybody make it out to Nocturnal Festival?  If so, what did you think about it?  If not, what did you go check out?  I'm always on the lookout and interested in hearing about other events.  More to come....

It's Friday night, which means the weekend is here!  It's time to let loose and get ready to enjoy the weekend.  So much stuff is going on around town.  My picks for the weekend are Supreme Beings of Leisure and Carmen Rizzo playing tonight at the Echoplex.  Tomorrow, I'll be spinning at Moonshadows in Malibu from 6pm til around midnight.  If I didn't have to DJ, I think I'd be at Nocturnal festival going on at the National Orange Show in San Bernardino.  Sunday night I'm going to the movies!  A very special double feature of Breakin' and Beat Street is happening at the Silent Movie Theatre.  You know I'm gonna be there for that.  These are two of my favorite movies of all time!  Later that night, I'm possibly gonna round it out with a lil Charles Webster, who'll be DJ'ing at Deep, which happens at Vanguard in Hollywood.  Hopefully, I'll see you at one of these events.  If not, enjoy whatever you get into.  If you want to check out a full list of events going on, check out our calendar page. 

So as you may guess, tonight's show is gonna feature a lot of music related to events going on this weekend, as well as a bunch of new music that just got added to the KCRW music library.  Feel free to post a request to this blog if you wanna hear something or as always, you can call during the program at 310.450.5183. 

I got the phone call at around 9pm on Saturday night from a buddy, "You better leave early to get here in time for your set!" 

I had already been watching the news and getting reports from a bunch of other people saying it was really busy down there and finding parking was chaos.  Sure enough, after giving myself more than a couple hours to get there, we managed to park about an hour before my 12am set time.  Keep in mind, I live about 10 miles from the beach.  It was like rush hour traffic, but in the middle of the night!  We still had to walk a bit to get to the pier, as we were instructed to park at the SM Civic Auditorium.  As we were getting closer and closer, it just became a bigger and bigger sea of people.  If it wasn't for the fact that I had to spin music, I probably would've done a 180 and headed right back home.  It was that intimidating, but we went for it.  Immediately, we started noticing some of the very cool installations and art exhibitions.  The wall of mist and great installations in the water and under the boardwalk gave the pier a very unique look.  I only wish there was more of it! 

There were so many people that it made the art almost a little underwhelming.  I've heard so many different numbers trying to find out how many people were at the pier in Santa Monica for the Glow event.  I've seen 45,000, 70,000, 100,000... even 200,000 from different sources!  All I know is that it was nuts!  I've also heard mixed reviews about the event overall.  All I can say is, from a DJ's perspective, it was fantastic.  The biggest rush a disc jockey can get is by rocking a dance floor.  Sending a crowd into euphoria by spinning music and creating a vibe is the most gratifying feeling one can have behind the decks.  Whether you're at a club, a house party or an event like this one, it's like nothing else! 

Garth Trinidad was in the mix as I made my way to the DJ booth.  I can see that the crowd was definitely having a great time.  By the time I got on the 1's and 2's, which was after 15 minutes of quiet time as the ferris wheel orchestra thing happened, the crowd was ready to dance once again.  We couldn't even hear music from the wheel.  At one point I asked the sound guys if I can start, only to get a blank stare as a response.  So I raised the slider, hit play, and off we went!  All I could see from the booth were heads bobbing up and down and people clapping in unison from the second I dropped the first beat.  The idea for my set was to play happy, feel good house music with a very "stars and moon" vibe to it.  Some of it included "It's A Fine Day" by Opus III, "Throw" by Paperclip People, "Stella" by Jam & Spoon and "Follow Me" by Aly-Us.  By far, this was the biggest crowd I have ever played for.  The pier was rocking...Literally!  I stepped off the wiggling stage to get a sip of water, only to realize the pier itself was moving.  I thought it was just the stage!  At one point the crowd was even chanting "RA UL RA UL RA UL...."

Raul in the mix @ Glow

The time now is around 1:30am and I decided to drop "World Hold On" by Bob Sinclar.  This was a no brainer to me, but no means did i think it'd be the end of my set.  I mixed into it and the crowd recognized the hit immediately!  It gave me such a warm and fuzzy feeling hearing the crowd singing along to every word.  As the chorus kicked in I dropped out the volume completely and the crowd kept singing.   I felt the goosebumps immediately.  By now, we're in overdrive.

I looked over my shoulder and standing behind me were a couple of pier officials and members of SMPD's finest!  I've seen the look many times in the many years of DJing....  It was not good.  I was instructed to shut down the music.  At that moment, I started thinking riot.  "Are you kidding me?!?!" I asked the officials.  "They're gonna start throwing things at us if we do that!"  Luckily, it was a peaceful dissemination of the crowd, but I was a little worried at the time.

Pier official shutting down the music

The biggest bummer for me was not being able to hear Jeremy Sole spin, who was scheduled to play from 2-4am.  He's definitely one of my favorite DJs to watch and listen to.  After they stopped my set short, we got the bad news that the music would not resume and that would be it for the dance area.  But fear not, you can still catch Jeremy spinning every Thursday night at Afrofunke.  If you haven't been, do yourself a favor and get down there, but don't forget your dancing shoes!

Raul giving Jeremy the bad news

We'll see if the pier will Glow once again in the future.  I hear there's already talk for 2010!

Another Latin Alternative Music Conference has come and gone.  It's hard to believe that next year they'll be celebrating the 10 Year Anniversary for this amazing conference.  I'm still trying to catch up from all the madness and networking that took place last week in the big apple!  Running around back and forth is becoming much more comfortable now that I've hosted this event the past 2 years.  It's a huge honor to be asked to handle the duties of introducing panels, concerts and events during the entire LAMC, but it does put one through the ringer.  So it's fair to say, sleep's a little over rated the few days of the conference.  I figured I could catch up on my zzzzz's when I'd return home... yeah right!  And here's a little tip if you're a thrill ride connoisseur.  Next time you're in the land of cabs and you happen to be in one of them, just tell the driver you're in a hurry and to step on it.  You'll see people running off the streets and leaping for safety onto sidewalks as the cabbies lay their hands on the horn constantly!  Magic Mountain ain't got anything on the thrill rides of Manhattan!  After a while I started telling all them, even if I wasn't in a hurry...what a blast!

I also really have to thank Nic Harcourt, Ariana Morgenstern and Andrew Mittleman at Sound Generation Studios for making it possible to broadcast my radio program from NYC.  It's a great facility to work at and the staff is on point.  I even had the honor of having a couple guests on my show.  On Thursday's edition of the program Francisca Valenzuela stopped by after her performance at the LAMC acoustic showcase, which took place at SOB's.  She is one took look out for in the future.  She knows how to rock it with a full band, but it really blew me away to see her perform her songs as stripped down versions with just a piano and her lovely voice.  On Friday, turntable wizard DJ Bitman stopped by after one of his many sets during the conference.  This guy can really tear things up on the one's and two's.

A couple of the many highlights for me were DJ'ing at Central Park between the sets of Julieta Venegas, Plastilina Mosh and DJ Bitman as part of the annual Summerstage Concert Series and spinning a set at the closing party later that night with Tony Touch, Toy Selectah, Bitman and others.   Central Park is always wonderful!  It's a free concert series that happens in the park every year.  During the conference they coordinate with LAMC and book some great Latin Alternative talent.  This year the weather was perfect on what normally is super hot and humid.  We were blessed with fairly dry mid 80's temp.  As you could imagine, this made it very easy for the 6000+ to fill the open air location.  DJ Bitman warmed things up with an electrifying set and then Plastilina Mosh rocked the house.  If there was a roof on the park, it would've been blown off!  But I could tell from the beginning of the afternoon, most were there to see the beautiful songstress Julieta Venegas.  As always, she was just amazing!  I'm totally looking forward to when she comes to LA in a few weeks.  And a little side note to Central Park, it's even crazier when immediately following the Summerstage concert, there's a Bon Jovi concert.  I heard the amount of people trying to get in to the concert was around 60,000...and those were just the ticket holders!

Congratulations go out to Rachel Reynolds, music publicist at KCRW, for coordinating a very cool showcase during the days of LAMC featuring Tally Hall, Little Jackie and Salt & Samovar.  It was a very cool and eclectic representation of some great up and coming bands.  Knitting Factory in New York has a slightly different vibe than the location in Hollywood, but both locations share the same kind of enthusiasm for fresh talent.  The audience gets it there.  Everybody stuck around for all 3 bands, eventhough all were quite different in styles.  It just goes to show the void and need for a station like KCRW to present shows of bands that wouldn't normally get the hype and promotion they truly deserve!  As always, you can check out www.kcrw.com to see the full list of shows that KCRW and KCRW.com is presenting in southern California and beyond. 

As much as I love Latin Alternative music, while I'm in New York I have to make some time to check out some of the great house clubs that pump the music til the wee hours of the morning.  On Friday night, after Brazilian Girls tore it up at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, I had to opportunity to meet up with DJ/Producer and long time friend, Jon Cutler.  We met up at his brownstone where DJ Smash was working on a remix in his basement studio.  Surreal, right?  We hung out and after a couple of beverages, hit a couple of hot spots.  We rolled up Cielo, Apt and The Sullivan Room.  It was a pleasure to see that Marques Wyatt (Deep, Los Angeles) was holding down his monthly residency at the same time LAMC was going on.  And on Saturday night, after the LAMC closing party, we hopped over to Los Amigos Invisibles member, DJ Afro's party. There we heard everything from House to Brazilian to classics from peeps like Michael Jackson and Magazine 60.  I gotta say, nightlife in NY is like no other.  Now I know why cabs rule the streets and people don't drive much.  After the club, long time road dawg Jose Jimenez and I went back to the hotel.  I packed my bags, took a shower, and went back downstairs where the cab was ready to take me to JFK airport!  Did I mention sleep's over rated?  See you next year in the city that never sleeps!       

So a couple weeks back, Moby was in town.  I got to hang with the guy during an interview he was doing on the rooftop of his hotel room.  He's definitely one of the most open and down to earth people around.  Understand that Moby's been very influential in the creation of my path and career, if one can call it that.  I remember the first time I saw him come into the basement for a performance on Morning Becomes Eclectic with Nic.  I was beside myself with excitement.  It was the first time I met him and had to chance to tell him thanks for everything that he's done, even back then.  Fast forward more than 5 years and I'm still his biggest fan!

Moby is coming to LA?  He's Latino?  Check out the video!

I look forward to the Angel gala each and every year since I've started at KCRW.  It's always a wonderful night of music, art and getting to meet many subscribers of the station.  This year was no different as it was at the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles this past Wednesday.  It also gave me a reason to play dress up and get out of the jeans and t-shirts that I normally wear.  Every year, many of the station DJs provide the soundtrack to the night.  This time around I was asked to open up, which allowed me to hang out for the remainder of the evening to enjoy the exhibits inside the museum, eat, drink and hang out with my dates...my parents!  Here we are chillin' out with Nic Harcourt!

Nic Harcourt and my folks

Being the procrastinator that I am and always running late for everything, it was great to be first on the decks because I was forced to get there early and therefore had the chance to enjoy the sets of Chris Douridas, Nic Harcourt, Anne Litt, Tom Schnabel, Jason Bentley and Garth Trinidad.  It was a gorgeous night and the music sounded beautiful bouncing off the walls of MOCA's courtyard.  As you can see below, the party was pumping pretty much immediately!  I think I was playing Heaven by The Rolling Stones when I snapped this one...

IMG_1481

With everyone always being so busy, it's rare when we all get to come together to do an event.  And it's great to get the opportunity to give back to some of the people that give so generously to this wonderful station.  The gala is growing each and every year so hopefully we'll get to see you too if we've missed you in the past.  We're all here because of our extreme passion that we have for the programming whether it's music, news, entertainment or cultural commentary.  It's all one big happy family at KCRW. Special thanks go to all the people that make it all happen each and every year including Liz MacDonald, Candace Moyer, Connie Alvarez and the hundreds of volunteers that offer countless hours for such a great event.