Remembering DJ AM

Hollywood // community // EDIT

 I never met the late DJ AM.  I only knew him from his parties I attended when I first moved to Los Angeles.  I remember the first one I went to at the LAX, a club in Hollywood in October ‘08.  I caught the bus there, intent on going "Stupid-Doo-Doo-Dumb" (dancing recklessly, yet rhythmically) at the venue.  I went so dumb that I didn’t even really connect the dots that the DJ AM (born Adam Goldstein) who spun at that party was the same man who survived a plane crash only weeks before.

It was that very dedication to his passion of music and DJ’ing that over 500 of his friends, family, and supporters remembered him for at the Palladium, where he was memorialized last night (Thursday, Sept. 3rd).  The stage at the venue, in which AM christened on it’s opening night with Jay-Z, had a Serato DJ booth setup with two pairs of crisp Nikes hanging from a laptop, as though it was a telephone wire.  It was in front of this alter that his closest friends and family members remembered Goldstein’s passion for music, his infatuation with sneakers, and his battle with sobriety, which he lost to PTSD after surviving the crash.

I would learn that the party I attended was just the beginning of the DJ’s battle to cope with PTSD.  He buried himself in his work and never really took time to mentally recover from the tragedy in which he and Blink 182 drummer, Travis Barker survived, but lost some of his closest friends.  He sacrificed his own well being for partygoers, like myself, who sought escape from their own issues.  While I admit that all the music he played fit into my taste, the fact that in a DJ AM set you could hear a mix of artists such as Too Short, Daft Punk, and Aerosmith was a testament to his ability to make sure that everyone in the room can get their party on at some point.

Now that the party called life must continue and it is unclear how the void Goldstein left in the music world will be filled, I am definitely glad to have had several opportunities to go "Stupid-Doo-Doo-Dumb" at DJ AM functions.

DJ AM’s Michael Jackson Tribute at Rain in Las Vegas, NV

Footage of Breakers getting down at a DJ AM party