072 What did you want to be when you were little? When I was little, I wanted to be a doctor like my father. I dreamed of studying medicine, but in the Netherlands, we have a lottery system to study medicine with fixed numbers where only 1500 students are admitted. Unfortunately, I was number 4200, so I had no chance of becoming a doctor. I decided to study law and started DJing as a hobby and to earn some money, you know. You said you started DJing as a hobby. Can you explain the process until you made a living out of it? I started DJing in 1996 and was paid 60 guilders, which is now 20 euros, for 7 hours each week, and had to clean the bathrooms afterward. But I loved it, and I was also producing. The club where I started was very small. I think it was only this room, and itsmaximum capacity was about 100 people, meaning it was full. That was it; that’s how I learned to DJ. If you play at a party with 1000 people who know your name and music, they get very excited. But when you play in a half-empty club, with people who don’t dance, that’s when you learn how to entertain the audience. So, I am very happy. And during those nights, I was also testing my new music. I was already a producer, and I wasmakingmy first tracks that I played inmyDJ sessions to see if people liked them. And that’s how I started releasing my music on small labels in Amsterdam and my hometown, Leiden. The tracks became more and more successful, and that’s how I’m sitting here right now.
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