EXTENDED

Back in high school I was pretty big into the 'alternative' scene and frequented clubs around the Bay Area including Five Foot Tongue, Blacklight, Face to Face, Club X, One Step Beyond events, etc. Friends Brian Schey, Rob Pollacek, Nate, and I was the drummer and sound designer (synthesizer dude) in an alternative rock garage band which went through an assortment of names, finally ending at Reformation. We were really into bands like The Cult, The Mission UK, The Cure, Jesus and Mary Chain, Siouxsie, etc. Time passed and I transitioned into a rock incorporating electronic garage band with high school and coffee shop friends Mark Choo (still waiting on my guitar...), and Jason Boyer. We were influenced by Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Electronic and others - we won some competitions and bombed some others. We had a pretty sizeable setup, filling up the majority of a two-car garage - each of us with our own individual rigs running Opcode Studio Vision. (yeah, I'm OG like that)

I was hanging out with Brian one day at Rainbow Records in 1989 and he turned me onto a mixtape called House Hallucinates. This album, a style which I later found out to be (Chicago) acid house, completely changed my perspective on music. One day after practice we decided to go check out a new electronic music night in downtown San Jose. They were playing music we were familiar with in a totally different way - mentally taking notes. Some friends Jen Adash, Chris Lozowicki took me out to an event at the Concourse Exhibition Center in San Francisco called The Gathering. This was my de-virginization and bold step into the San Francisco rave scene.

I started working with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop back in 1990 with some help from my friends Gus Lanzas and Joel Hornbeck at Computer Generation (CG), a desktop publishing house across from DeAnza College, neighboring Coffee Society. Out of CG rolled the infamous IF t-shirt line and my first hands-on exposure working with a brand. The sizable CG crew started setting up vending booths at raves selling shirts... designing some pretty advanced booths in the process.

Soon after, in 1991, and with help from Carin Nunes and the CG crew, I officially founded Journees. In the first year I was primarily selling assortments of concessions (blow-pops, etc) and custom novelty tees (Journees brand on variations of detergent boxes, ice cream kids, and other pop culture icons). We soon phased out the concessions and dove deeper into design. We soon launched a line themed around eastern philosophy that Gus and I designed. This was an instant hit, tying in with the techno shaman movement then incorporated into the electronic dance scene. We soon got orders from San Francisco's (Mark) Ameba, NY and Untitled in Chicago. After that we decided to run a small campaign of ads in fanzines such as Massive Magazine and it really started to spread faster than I could comprehend.

At this point I had already taken up the dj hobby and had a small residency in Los Gatos with friends Michael Persons and Rob Curley at a place called Waves, owned by our friend Joel, who also operated the So Bad Record Pool. Waves has since moved into Downtown San Jose. This was great and a place where we met people like Adam and Thad 'Hak' Jones. I got some gigs pretty soon after, including a couple at UC Santa Cruz in their auditoriums where my girlfriend at the time, Dara Papo, was doing her undergrad. At one of these parties I met Shilo Maggi and his (not yet wife) Michele. He was rocking a Charlie Brown shirt and all. Good times.

Soon after I met Sason Perry on Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue and played at their first Cool World massive in 1991... yes, all this happened in a very short time period. The event had an attendance of 17,000 and got that stage fright thing out of the way right away. By this time I was making replicated promo mixtapes with printed, color covers (thanks to Mark and Tao at Sonic Images in Willow Glen) - additionally the t-shirt line and respective sales were growing tremendously. Around this time Shilo came on board with me and helped me expand the brand.

In addition to a diverse campaign of zines we ran more ads in places like URB Magazine (Raymond Roker is a pimp), BPM Culture (Dave Ireland and Rob), D'Vox, Vice, XLR8R, Paper, Sportswear International, M8 (UK), and various publications nationwide, in Asian and beyond. The next big step was trade events - exhibiting at Action Sports Retailer (ASR), MAGIC (Las Vegas), Boutique Show (NY), 432F (San Diego), Look and more. We even sold at places such as the Whole Life Expo in San Francisco, the place where I met Los Angeles event promoter, keynote speaker and friend Tef Foo - that's a whole other story.

After a certain threshold was passed we felt the need to better define the brand, and ultimately splitting the music and fashion segments. The decision was emphasized after several failed lawsuits from companies including Lego, the Journey's footwear retail chain, etc. Shilo and I sat at the US Patent and Trademark office for hours before registering something so obvious - REMIX. Our clothing orders kept expanding and did a line extension into cut & sew to keep up with our rapid, organic growth. We made some great partnerships with sewing and manufacturing houses in Los Angeles, including Bijan and his organization Delavid Jeans in Los Angeles by friends in the industry including super designer Rich Hansen (Werner) and Atousa (A Liquid Affair), Shelly Bomb (Antigravity, Peace Bomb). With help from Chris Tran we expanded from manufacturing in Los Angeles to Mexico and ultimately China.

In 1995 I released my first promotional mix cd which we sent out with clothing orders and passed out at local shows - this only increased the speed and intensity to the success I would reach in a relatively short time. I was fortunate, extensively traveling the US and internationally as a performing artist under the name DJ LIQUID from the mid 1990's into the first half of the next decade with my management, Sherry and Amanda Pearl from Hands on Deck (HOD) where I often toured with roster mates Timo Maas, Adam Freeland, Nick Warren (Way Out West), and many more heavy hitters.

To meet demand I began to compile, license and release an onslaught of licensed mix cds. Of course production soon followed and helped by associates such as Matt Mau, Lucas Rodenbush (EBE Audio), and Nick Terranova. Journees Music was enjoying exponential growth rapidly, quickly moving into pressing vinyl and larger compilation projects. A Journees Music record store was opened in Seattle's Capitol Hill district in the late 1990's by Matt Mau. The company expanded into sublabels including the White Label Group, Fierce Records, and Shotcallers Recordings.

I started to plot a record store with former associate Bryan Deleon. Early that summer, after a lot of planning, love and additional sweat equity from Matt Mau, Tyler Saucedo and other friends, the vision became reality with the fruits of our labor resulting in the birth of the Remix Records retail store in downtown San Mateo, about 10 minutes south of the San Francisco International Airport. In 2000 I founded Silicon Valley Holdings^tm, an umbrella corporation which housed my various business ventures and investments. We went through an acquisition rampage - gobbling up competitors such as Compound Records (SF), Harmonics (Santa Rosa) and others. Overall the store was another incredible experience. Four years later the boutique was sold so I could return to school and focus on real estate and other investments. I completed my undergraduate degree in Business Administration with a focus on Marketing at San Jose State University (SJSU) where I also earned a minor in Environmental Studies with an Energy concentration.

I am now taking graduate courses in the Masters of Urban and Regional Planning and Development (MURP) program, also at SJSU. I plan to continue operating in real estate (commercial and housing) but expanding into the green building and sustainable development sectors. And here we are... and what a long, strange trip it's been.