Any of you guys ever heard of Marshall Jefferson?

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Semper Fidelis

2 Timothy 2:24-25
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http://www.thedjlist.com/djs/MARSHALL_JEFFERSON/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Jefferson

I landed in Brisbane, Australia on 29 June 2007 on my way to Rockhampton and got in line to Customs. I was standing next to this guy and struck up a conversation with him asking him what he did. Found out he was a DJ. The customs line took an hour to get through so we had a pretty long conversation.

We got to talking about what he did. He liked that I was a Marine but I was more interested in his job. He was on tour in Australia after touring Tokyo.

I guess this guy is one of a handful of legendary DJ's out there. Shows my ignorance of that genre unfortunately but I wondered if any of you knew him.

He noted that all the famous DJ's are, like him, "old" guys (he's 48 according to his bio) because new DJ's are so numerous that it's hard to get famous anymore. There is also a trend for clubs to be focused on one kind of music. I'm, again, completely ignorant of that fact because I never go and never went to dance clubs.

Anyhow, I asked him how he got into it and this was an interesting story. I hope I can relate the story accurately.

He was working at the Post Office at the time and went to the Guitar Center in Chicago (his home town). He was just tagging along with a friend who wanted to buy an electric bass guitar. Anyway, the salesman started telling them about this cool new device called a sequencer. His friend lost interest immediately after he saw the price tag but Marshall was interested. The salesman found out he worked at the Post Office and immediately approved him for a $10,000 line of credit.

Marshall wanted the sequencer and then the salesman noted that a sequencer doesn't do you any good unless you have a keyboard. So he bought the keyboard. What good is just having a keyboard unless you have a drum machine so he bought one of those too. What good was all of this if you couldn't lay down multiple tracks so he bought a multiple track recorder. Remember, kids, this is the days before digital music and this stuff was not cheap. Now you can do everything on a computer - hence the saturation in the market.

He brought all the stuff home and his friends thought he was crazy. Marshall didn't even really play any of the instruments. Three weeks later he released his first hit.

I wondered how he managed if he didn't really play the piano. He explained that he played at 40 beats per minute - a pace he could keep up with. I thought that was funny.

I wonder what his friends think now. Obviously this guy has some talent.

He was a really nice guy and thanked me for his service. I think he was actually more impressed that I was a Marine than he was with himself at being a DJ. Very self-effacing and a pleasant individual. I shook his hand as we parted at Customs and said: "Hey, what's your name so I can mention that I met a famous DJ?"
 
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