DJ Leon Lamont

It is said that the number one regret that people have on their death beds is as follows.  "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

The second was-"I wish I hadn't worked so hard"

The third was, "I wish I had the courage to express my feelings". 

I won't be saying any of this if I'm lucky enough to go out peacefully on a death bed.  Hopefully, you won't end up saying any of this either. 

Happy New Year!

Later, and don't be a hater.

L

I’m often asked how I became a DJ.My short answer is, “Accidentally”.The long answer goes as follows.




A lifetime ago, in the days before smart phones and Facebook, I was practicing drums at a rehearsal/event space in St. Louis, MO.One of the owners of the space asked me if I wanted to DJ an event they had coming up.Even though I told him I was a producer/musician and not a DJ, he still offered me a couple hundred bucks to come out and do it anyway.The owner was really lax about the whole thing.“Yeah, just bring along some vinyl, CDs or whatever it is that you use.We have a DJ booth, two turntables, two CD decks and a mixer already set up.Just come and play whatever you want.There’s no pressure to make people dance because it’s a daytime swap meet.I’ll pay you in cash when it’s done.”It was too sweet of a deal to pass up, so at that moment I instantly became a professional DJ.It would be my first DJ gig ever.I kept in mind that being called a professional doesn’t mean that you’re good…

There are hundreds of sad comic nerds today, and I’m one of them.I’m not the collecting, cardboard back, plastic cover sealed comic book geek that I once was, but it still stings to hear about the death of Stan Lee.When I was a kid, some of Stan Lee’s characters were the only thing close to friends that I had and his comics were a much neededform of escapism.While I no longer collect first issues and what not, I catch as many Marvel movies on the big screen as I can and get genuinely thrilled when they do the characters justice.Thanks to comics, I excelled at reading and comprehension at an early age.The web is going to be crawling with long winded blogs about Stan Lee and the effect he had on people’s lives, so I’ll keep mine short and sweet.Stan Lee…wow!Excelsior!

I started my journey to officially being a musician as a violinist with my grade school string section.   The good part was that I was officially a part of a musical group of people.  The bad part was that I was officially the worse at what I did.  I was last chair violinist.  It’s somewhat of a humbling feeling to look to your right, see nothing there and realize that you are the least skilled musician in your section.  First chair represents the most talented musician in your section and last chair represent the polar opposite.





Being last chair violinist didn’t really phase me all that much because I was just so excited to be handpicked to leave my fourth grade classroom a few times a week to assemble with this group of people that, joined together, made this amazing sound.  I had zero aspirations to be first chair or even second or third chair violinist because being in the orchestra at all was satisfactory enough for me.  Before being asked to join the orchestra I wasn’t connect…