I started djing back in 1990 with just cd players. My dad got me a cd boom box for my birthday one day, and I started messing around with that. Plain and simple, play a track of a cd and record on the tape player then by hitting pause on the tape player change the cd to a different track with almost the same beat to make a cool mix, or a remix.
I started to make my own remixes, and then till one day my friend bought himself the same boom box. We connected the two together, speaker to speaker, and started playing music without any dead air.
After a while I got in to this djing stuff by listening to the station called, Killer B96. They had the best djs, Bad Boy Bill, Julian Jumping Perez, Brian Middleton and Tim Spinning Schommer. These djs knew how to spin and spun well. I found out they were using turntables; I had to get some. But to improve the smooth cross fader effect I had to get a mixer. So I got one. After a while got my first turntable, which was made, by Sony, that thing was old, no pitch or nothing. The other one I got was a turntable from a TV + radio combo thing that looked like a dresser. I took it apart and made my own case for it. I wasn't djing just jet, I didn't have many records to dj with, and most of them were the ones I found in the attic from 1950's. So I started record shopping. Bough a lot of house music and hip - house vinyl as I knew from the radio and form the dance parties, that was in.
I got my Gemini tables that were belt driven. I started on those babies and I became on fire. I did a quite a few parties on those tables.
Well as you know, then came the 1200, a must for a dj. Once on 1200's I was practicing every day for like 4 hours. But the music was changing; the djs on the radio were putting out the best-edited mixes that were impossible to do live. So I learned, it's a simple thing called sampler and 4-track recorder, thanks to Dj Markski 4 the info. Time went by and I was getting better, I even recorded 2 tapes that I sold in few local music stores. Dj Illusion D Mix # 1 and 2, back in 1995. They sold out pretty quick, just to bad I only made 100 copies each.
Time when on and I met more djs at different clubs and frat parties like the one in Chicago, De Paul. My name was floating around the city, as I was known as Dj Illusion. I even went to college to become a professional broadcaster. I took some other classes like, club management and the dj class that though you how to do a professional dj job at a wedding, and it was all about the format. But I just wanted to play the newest dance music, clubs, so the hell with that, passed the class with an A any way.
When I talked more to Markski, he introduced me to euro music. Than I had something new to spin besides, house, hip-house, techno and underground. He got me in. I was a guest dj on a college radio station, Energy 88.7 FM for few nights, and that helped me more with getting my name out in to the public. (Thanks 2 JD to.)
ChicagOs very own DJ iLLuSiOn
as heard on: Energy 88.7 FM, Club Mix 98.3 FM, DDance.fm, Puredj.com, 1996-1998 Resident @ Sluggers ChicagO, odu.fm,1dance.fm, Columbia college, DePaul, Norhtwestern University, Spirit of ChicagO and more...
www.djillusion.net
