Just a few weeks ago Los Angeles producer Jauz released his first ever tech/house compilation album “Jauz Presents: This Is Off The Deep End”, and that also came with the announcement of “The Dangerous Waters Tour” that is happening across the USA throughout January/February 2020, so we jumped at the chance to ask the man where it all began…
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“I’m pretty sure the first album I ever bought was No Strings Attached by N Sync, when I was about 7 or 8 years old. Before I got really into rap and metal in my teen years, I loved music just as much as I do now, but I was mainly into pop music which I feel is a pretty common thing for young kids. Specifically, I was completely enamored by the Boy Band craze that was so prevalent during my early years in the mid-90’s. I, like most kids my age in America, held N Sync above all other boy bands. For whatever reason, they were the cream of the crop. Ironically, while most boys wanted to be Justin Timberlake when they grew up, I always looked up to JC Chasez. I still don’t really know why, maybe because he wasn’t the “popular” one and it was more “cool” for me not to pick the same idol as everyone else, or maybe just because I thought his long hair was cool.
I remember waking up the morning No Strings Attached came out in stores, and running and waking my parents up like it was Christmas (or more realistically in our family, the first day of Hannukah.) My mom dragged herself out of bed in her pajamas, we hopped in the car and drove down to the closest Tower Records to our house. I think the whole process took about 30 seconds – I ran straight to the New Releases, grabbed what was I think the LAST copy of the album, and ran straight up to the counter. I remember feeling like I was so lucky there was still one copy left even though we had gotten to the store at 10 in the morning. I’m pretty sure I listened to every song on that album on repeat for the next 5 months.
I don’t really remember many of the songs other than the classics off the album, but every time I hear them it brings me back to the days when I started to realize just how important music was to me. I remember being in Chicago visiting family with my mom and telling her I was going to be in a boyband when I grew up, just like N Sync. She told me I needed to learn how to play the piano and maybe even take vocal lessons if I was really serious about it, and I passed on both of those because it “sounded lame.” Not long after that, I got into hip hop and wanted to be a rapper, which was VERY short lived, and then found my real outlet for creating music on the guitar and through rock and roll and metal. I may have ended up in a much different place than I started in my pursuit of music, but I still give credit to that first N Sync album for helping me realize that music is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.” – Jauz
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Let’s take a listen to the opening track off that NSYNC album ‘Bye Bye Bye’ just before we slide right into “Jauz Presents: This Is Off The Deep End”.
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