It all began in approximately 2001. It's hard to figure out exact dates, because most of the websites that I use now didn't exist at the time. Back then, even sites that we now think of as the OG's of the internet just didn't exist. In 2001, the internet was still a pretty wild place, without a lot of robust infrastructure. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter hadn't been invented yet. The only major sites that I can remember from back then were MySpace, AOL, eBay, and PayPal. Amazon existed, but for most of us, the thought of buying something on the internet was revolutionary (and dangerous). The popular apps that I can remember from back then were things like Usenet, ICQ, mIRC, WinAmp, and Napster.
One night, I was in my studio, having drinks with two of my good friends: Drew Dudley and Marc Carnes. We were listening to music, probably trying to sort out things that needed to be done for Conduct Becoming, and having some Jack Daniels & Corona on the side.
That particular night, we were talking about some potential upcoming shows for Marc. Marc was a well-known DJ in the Maritimes at that point, and had played at a number of parties in Halifax, Moncton, and Saint John. We were discussing how to get Marc booked at more shows, because it was very difficult at the time to get booked as a DJ. Marc was working full-time and was quite busy, so he wasn't sure that he had much of a future in DJ'ing. Trying to self-promote or stand out from the crowd was very challenging and time-consuming. He was a great DJ, but the promotional side of the equation was the problem. My suggestion was to build an online presence.
The next three hours turned into a free-wheeling discussion about how that could be done: The pros and cons of setting up a website, the technical challenges involved, and how to promote. I was saying it would be easy, Drew was looking at me with a raised eyebrow wondering exactly how I would go about everything, and Marc was playing the Devil's Advocate.
At some point in the argument, I said something along the lines of, "I bet that if you gave me five years, I could turn ANYONE with some basic talent into a world-famous international DJ and recognized name brand." This, of course, was a bold statement. Drew agreed to take on my bet, and we decided that it would basically be a gentleman's wager, but we'd put a bottle of Jack Daniels on the line for the winner.
Marc wasn't convinced that he wanted to be a guinea pig for this project, so I said that I would be the subject of the bet. I had already been DJ'ing for a number of years, but mostly at small parties around the university campus, or at the local campus Pub. I was able to beat-mix vinyl records, although my skills were only at a hobby level at that point. However, I had the equipment and records, and I knew how to hand-code websites in HTML. My tree planting website, Replant.ca, had already been online for a couple years at that point, so I was pretty confident that what I didn't know, I could figure out. I was the manager of the local campus nightclub at this point, and I also did all the updates and coding maintenance on that website.
Once the bet had been established, my first challenge was what to use as a stage name. I didn't want to use my own name. I'm not sure why. I think it was because I didn't want my name associated with this endeavour, in case it turned out to be a complete disaster. In retrospect, this was a terrible decision. I should have used my own name. Incidentally, I've considered changing my stage name to my real name at several points in the last few years, but it would be difficult to do that, since my web presence and online real estate is already so well established.
So I needed a stage name, and the bourbon & beer helped inspire me to take the process very seriously. When I had named my dog (Dakota) several years before, I had gone through the same sort of challenge. With Dakota, I had gone through several sets of lists, coming up with different ideas. For instance, I went through a number of international cities. Baghad was a strong choice for a while (thinking back to the Gulf War) but then I decided that it sounded too similar to "Bad Dog" and the dog might develop an inferiority complex. With Dakota, I eventually moved from city names to US states, and when I got to North Dakota, I realized that Dakota was a great name.
Using the same concept that I had taken to figure out the dog's name, we eventually started going through countries in South America. When we got to Bolivia, we thought, "Hey, this might work."
Before we had started considering various names, we had come up with a short list of qualifications. This was that list:
1. It had to be a name/word that was fairly well known to English speakers.
2. It should also be a name/word that would be recognizable to Spanish speakers, if possible, since I spoke basic Spanish. This requirement was designed to increase global marketability.
3. The stage name had to be a single word, not a pair or words or phrase. The logic behind this rule was that a lot of famous musicians were known by a single name: Prince, Madonna, Bono, Cher, Sting, etc.
4. The name had to roll off the tongue, and sound easy to produce. It had to sound relatively cool.
5. A good domain name had to be available, not a URL that was already taken.
6. Most importantly, it had to be a stage name that did not appear to be in use yet. I didn't want to be confused with an existing performer, nor to have an existing performer serve me a cease-and-desist order to stop using the name. I had to make sure that I'd be able to put enough information on the internet to establish a "first use" precedent, to protect my stage name.
We ran "Bolivia" through that list of six rules, and it seemed to fit perfectly. I ran into some minor problems when I tried to check for domain availability. It's not possible to register any country's name as a domain name, so "bolivia.com" was not available. The builders of the internet were smart like that, thinking about preventing domain-squatting. After some discussion, we decided that "djbolivia.com" was adequate, because at least it clarified the purpose of the site.
Most importantly, at that time, there wasn't anybody using "DJ Bolivia" that I could find when I did searches on Google or Yahoo. Incidentally, a year or so later, I discovered a "DJ Bolivia" from California who had an account on MySpace before I did, but my main website was established before his MySpace account, so I didn't worry about this "imposter."
We tried to think of any other reason why Bolivia wouldn't be a good stage name. I realized that Bolivia was a country that I really wanted to visit, and that I probably wouldn't find a better choice. That decided it. I said, "It's official. I have five years, and I'm going to win this bet."
So basically, that's the entire story of where "DJ Bolivia" came from. I started working on a website almost immediately. I also started practicing more diligently, with at least 2-3 hours on the decks several nights each week. And I tried to figure out ways to distinguish myself from other DJ's.
My online presence really made a difference. All of this happened at a perfect time. The internet was just starting to explode in growth. I decided to record some demo mixes and try to share them online. At the time, there were literally NO websites or services that allowed a person to do this. I did some research about the legality of it all, and discovered that under Canadian law, it seemed to be legal to share mixes if three conditions were met:
1. The mix had to be free, non-commercial, and not creating any monetary gain for myself.
2. There could be no full and complete isolated commercial songs in the download. By mixing at least 60 seconds at the beginning or end of each song with another song, I was able to meet that rule.
3. Any online distribution was not allowed to have a negative impact upon the distribution or sale of the original work. This is a complicated one, but essentially, nobody was going to refrain from buying a vinyl copy of any of the individual tracks on my demo mixes simply because they had a digital copy of my mix available. Remember, at the time, it was pretty much impossible to even buy digital copies of music. The only service that I think was trying to go into legitimate digital music for online sales was MP3.com - which went bankrupt. They were ahead of their time, unfortunately.
Putting demo mixes on my site was a game-changer. At the time, almost nobody had "fast" internet. I had just gotten one of the very first ADSL lines in New Brunswick a couple years before that. Cable and ADSL were really only being introduced to a wider public in Atlantic Canada right around that time, and throughout the early years of my website, the vast majority of Canadians went online using dialup, if they were able to go online at all. To download one of my earlier mixes, encoded as an MP3 that was only about 56 megabytes in size (128 kbps bit rate) often took people an entire hour hour.
At that point, almost nobody in the world had a site where it was legally possible to download a DJ mix. My own site wasn't quite a pioneer in that respect, but it was definitely in the "very early adopter" category. I built an audience of fans from around the world, just because almost nobody else was doing what I was doing. Some of those early fans (people like Dan Fernandez at MicroSoft, tProphet from 2600/Defcon, and half a dozen others) are still friends today. They've all helped my hobby DJ'ing career in various and sometimes unintended ways.
So that's the full story about the origins of "DJ Bolivia" and of my website. Drew graciously conceded defeat in our gentleman's bet after some gigs that I played at the San Jose Game Developer's Conference and a couple venues in Japan, even though that was technically more like six years after I had built my website, not five.
I'll leave you with a graphic that shows what the main page of my website first looked like back in 2002. What's funny is that this is an image file that is just 70 kilobytes in size, but at the time, that took 15-20 seconds to display on a dialup connection!
I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia. Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production? If so, visit:
If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:
Thanks so much for visit, and for your support! I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.
Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:
YouTube: youtube.com/djbolivia
SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/djbolivia
Blogger: djbolivia.blogspot.com
Main Site: www.djbolivia.ca
