Burning Down the House
It takes fast hands, a quick step, and arms of Shiva to be a mix-show radio DJ. On a Saturday night, Raul Campos blends a techy 10-inch by Emerald City into the flow, pulls the previous record off a turntable, turns, and then types the title into his PowerBook. He stays cool under the white-hot lights of "Studio 3" as the VU-meter needles bounce into the red. He tells his assistants to "stand by" as he opens up the mike and fades down the chugging beats. "You're tuned to Nocturna on 89.9 KCRW," he tells Los Angeles.
Campos grew up in East L.A.'s defunct Estrella projects, so he's the first to say he's in heaven spinning vinyl at one of the nation's most influential radio outlets. His weekly dance show has helped propel him to the top of the city's competitive house scene, with its few venues, intense infighting, and New York envy. Los Angeles does have a dubby, funky, and percussive house sound all its own, however, thanks to DJs Doc Martin, Marques Wyatt, and Eddie Amador. Campos's influences – the MAW and Sulfuric labels, the producers Deep Swing, Julius Papp, and the Groove Junkies, and New York tribal DJ Danny Tenaglia – fit right in. He shares top billing at Santa Monica club Sugar every Friday with fellow KCRW-FM DJ Liza Richardson. Nocturna's selection, including yet-to-be-released tracks, is a must-listen for "house heads," who often call in for song titles. Campos and his music are also needed reminders of the music's considerable Latino roots.
"I love that he can represent the Latino community," says Richardson, host of KCRW's The Drop, which segues into Nocturna. "He may be preserving some music in Los Angeles, but he's also constantly evolving. His ears continue to grow."
Campos is as mellow and kind as his twangy Eastside accent suggests, but a fire burns within. The 31-year-old went on a tenacious drive to take over the coveted reins of the Saturday-night mix-show airwaves, including his 9 p.m.-to-midnight slot at KCRW and once-a-month mixing duties at after-hours dance show Power Tools, which airs on top-rated KPWR-FM (105.9 mHz).
As a boy, Campos used to ask his mom to buy him 45s on her way back from the market. He still has them. Later, three big brothers flooded him with sounds, from disco to progressive rock. By the time he was a teenager, Campos was DJing at house parties. As an urban planning student at Cal Poly Pomona, he moonlighted at clubs in Montebello and South Gate. After college, he spun at the Eastside's Gotham Bar & Grill as often as six nights a week, holding a button-down career at bay. In 1995, however, the club closed, and he was forced to bust a move.
"In a way I'm very fortunate the club shut down and got turned into a Denny's," Campos says. "It forced me out of the Eastside and made me look around. I went to KPFK [90.7 FM], I went to KCRW, I went to Power Tools – to see what could happen."
That year, Power Tools aired a mix tape he submitted, and not long afterward Campos was hanging around the studio on Saturday nights. Soon he found himself hosting the show's "Community Calendar," and he later took over another segment, "Homegrown," which featured up-and-coming dance-music artists.
After volunteering in KCRW's front office in 1999, Campos was put on air as a fill-in jock for the station's array of dance and electronic music shows, but he quickly got his own slot Wednesday nights, which became a primetime weekend mix show last year. Each week, Nocturna presents a fresh musical journey because Campos mixes vinyl straight out of his white record box. There's no preconceived play list, but the station often posts his favorite tracks on its website, which he updates during the week as a part-time employee. Lately, Campos has been focused on music production, with remixes due out this month on Dirty Pink and house hero Amador's Mochico label.
"He runs to the deep side, and that's what's going on right now," Amador says. "Raul Campos has his hand on the pulse of the dance music underground."Published: 10/18/2007
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