11: Wow. So dance in the late ‘90s, when did you start DJing? DJA: I started DJing [around] 2000. We’d been DJing Lola’s Room for a minute, then at the Fez [Ballroom]. That all started in 2002. In 2004, I [was] taking The Kid to India for his first trip. At Powell’s, they let you take a leave of absence every three years up to six months, and you get your job back. So it’s great if you want to travel. I was just a few months shy of three years and the store manager was like, “Yeah, I’ll approve it, Anj. We wouldn’t want to lose you!” Then the corporate person was like, “Denied.” I was like, “Fuck it, I am going anyway. Going to India is more important to me right now.” I came back and I was broke as fuck. A couple months later, we came back and I was so broke, but I was like, “I’m gonna be a DJ.” 11: When you were in India, did you have any club experiences, or was it more of a meditative, self-reflecting time? DJA: That 2004 trip was my first trip back without my mom. It was like my first “you’re on your own” [trip], sink or swim. It all comes back to the language and everything, from going so many times as a kid. When you go with your family, your trip is so protected. Whoever the native speaker is that’s with you, they take care of everything, so you’re sheltered when you go with your family. Most Indian families are not going to let you explore whatever neighborhood you want. So it was liberating in that way to go on my own. I have to go back a little. Our first club gig was at Lola’s Room. We’d been playing at the Blackbird and [other small venues]. We played these little free parties, and then you do your first club in Lola’s Room. It’s 300 people. We each get a check for almost a thousand each or whatever, and I was like, “Cha-ching!” And Stephen is like, “You can’t rely on it.” It was a couple years later, in 2004, and I was really, really broke for a long time. But I was like, “I don’t care. I don’t want a boss.” I know that people love what we do. It was old Portland, my rent was couple hundred bucks. 11: Right. It was a very different time. DJA: I could sell my book collection or record collection if worse comes to worst, which I definitely did. Culled through that shit so many times. 11: So getting back from India, you decided to pursue being a full time DJ? DJA: I did go back to Powell’s super part-time, like one day a week, and then later just on-call. 11: I’ve got a two-part question. How did you source music back then, and how has that changed from how you source music now?
DJA: It’s so different. Back in the day [I would] go to the west suburbs, to the Indian grocery stores, and that’s where they had CDs and tapes. We would go to New York, and then we would go to San Francisco, sometimes Berkeley. We would go to Surrey, BC a lot because we weren’t as busy with gigs back then, so we’d be like, “We have a weekend off! Let’s go to Canada!” and road trip. We’d come home with boxes of CDs. We did play Bollywood that we could find here because they would have the new Bollywood stuff. But if it was UK Bhangra, that was harder to find. 11: When you’re shopping in BC, do you know what artists you’re looking for, or is it guesswork? DJA: It’s both. We do have a vintage Bollywood vinyl store though in Surrey where there were all these shops. I don’t know if you’ve been to Vancouver, BC, but there’s Main Street which is in Vancouver, and that’s the Little India. It’s like Little Punjab in the suburbs. We knew all the store owners and we’d go in and check out their CD selections. Then, one day, there were some records on the wall and I was like, “Can I look at those?” They’re old, I don’t know if they’re Bollywood or Punjabi, but I was like, “Yeah, I’m gonna buy these.” He was like, “You want more of this stuff?” And I was like, “Yeah!” He calls up some old Punjabi uncle, and he’s like, “Yeah, they’re gonna come over right now.” We went down the street to some massive suburban mansion. Punjabi uncle invites us in, the front room is his music room and his vinyl is immaculate. I don’t think he played very many of his records, [they were] kept in plastic,
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