Sometime in late 2007, Adam Goldstein, aka DJ AM, entered into an agreement with Interscope records and Jimmy Iovine to do a DJ mix cd. I was brought in on the deal to be the executive producer of the mix and to work with Interscope & Adam on what songs needed to be cleared. Adam’s wishes were for a timeless, classic mixtape that had everything from Michael Jackson to Guns N Roses to Madonna on it. He wanted to showcase all of his classic mix routines and was unwilling to compromise on the music selections, he felt that if we used current music it would sound dated almost immediately. I agreed 100% with his viewpoint on the project but I knew we were facing an uphill battle for legal clearances. It proved to be simply impossible from a budget standpoint to get approval on the artists Adam wanted on the mix. The project stalled and was eventually shelved. During the development phase of the project, Adam was asked to record live mixes from his gigs and send them to me. I was then asked to tracklist the mixes and group together mix sets that were candidates for the Interscope project. Over a month period in early 2008, Adam sent me several live mixes from various parties he did and I tracklisted them and sent the info to Interscope.
By this time, DJ AM was a national superstar in the club music scene. He was signed to a very lucrative contract to be a weekly resident at Pure Nightclub on the Las Vegas strip. As Jonathan Shecter, aka Shecky Green, pointed out in his excellent article on DJ AM entitled “Scenes From A Life,” his deal at Pure changed the game. It was a deal for 1 million dollars per year for working once per week. No other open format DJ had ever approached this kind of money for spinning commercial tunes. I remember after he signed the deal officially, he called me and expressed his excitement at reaching this new plateau. He told me he kissed the ground and thanked God after the deal was official, he finally felt he had reached the success he was striving for. The following live recording is from his Pure Nightclub residency. It was recorded on January 25, 2008. After some googling, I discovered that it was a party for the 34th birthday celebration of Tiffani Amber Thiessen of Saved By The Bell & Beverly Hills 90210 fame. You’ll notice there is one minute of dead air around the 49 minute mark, this is when the Pussycat Dolls brought out Tiffani’s birthday cake and sang happy birthday to her. Check out the event flyer below and notice how small DJ AM’s name is on it:
