Steadily rewindin’

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

By Ben Cannon

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Slowly picking away at a bowl of ravioli in tomato and heavy cream, Mike Sagan blamed his squelched appetite on interview nerves. Though it was happy hour at the Brew Pub, when most people begin relaxing evening rituals, Sagan, better known by his DJ name, Mikey Thunder, had only begun his day.

“It’s kind of hard to eat this for breakfast,” he said, setting down his fork in defeat.
Over the last few weeks, Thunder, who leads what he called a nocturnal life, has been burning the midnight oil a little more productively than usual. Along with the five or six gigs he plays every week, the DJ has been working on his first full-length remix album, “Boom Four the Mental,” a collection of 11 heavily remixed tracks.

At 32, Thunder feels a sense of urgency to reconcile his professional obligations as a gig DJ with his desires to produce original work and create a unique sound, transforming himself into a performer who can play what he wants.
“I’m caught between being an artist and an entertainer,” he said.

Spinning weekly at 43 North, the Stagecoach and elsewhere, he has become known as one of the valley’s most popular DJs, mixing older hip-hop and recent club hits with electronic music.

Born and raised in Springfield, Mass., a depressed mid-sized industrial town along the Connecticut River (it was also the home of Dr. Seuss), Thunder was heavily influenced by the zeitgeist of the early-to-mid 1990s, namely the hip-hop music and video games of that era. (His DJ name is an obscure reference to the Mortal Combat arcade game that spawned a movie franchise.) He brought his childhood friend from home to Jackson, Tim Cannon, aka “Jersey,” nicknamed for his penchant for wearing ribbed muscle tees under open, Oxford-style shirts. Usually, wherever Thunder is spinning, there is Jersey, facing the crowd, a non-alcoholic drink in hand, smiling.

On “Boom Four…” Thunder samples ACDC, Run DMC, The Roots, A Tribe Called Quest, Spearhead, Lou Reed and many others to create his frenetic confluence of hip-hop and electronic music. Thunder acknowledged that while the album is chock-full of rhythms and often “chopped up” with beats laid faster than normal, it was not necessarily created for the dance floor.

And while the album tends to stay on the lighter side, Thunder does address his life as a DJ, which these days is a job more and more parallel to that of a “rock star.”
One track, an extended interlude that samples from the Rob and Big MTV show, confesses, “I’m always searching for a good girl but a dirty girl just keeps stepping in front.”

Thunder said that track gave him a rather new feeling – artistic release.
“It just made me feel better about the situation,” he said.

Mikey Thunder will celebrate the release of “Boom Four the Mental” beginning at 9 p.m. Friday at 43 North. Fellow Four 4 Productions deejays Vert One, Kenny and Rich E. Beats will join in the festivities.

Photo by ANDREW WYATT
DJ Mikey Thunder spins some for his guests.

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Steadily rewindin’ | Planet JH News Article: General Music Arts and Culture

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