DJ Johnny Ice

THE BREAKDOWN
Born and raised in the Chicagoland suburbs, DJ Johnny Ice was destined to embrace the sounds of house music sooner or later. At the age of 10, he became a loyal fan of the 80’s fad of breakdancing, that accompanied the sounds of electronic funk and breaks. Johnny followed the Chicago suburb “B-Boy” crews to the concrete entrances of the Woodfield Mall and the Stratford Square Mall. His efforts to learn the style of breakdancing, along with hours of practice finally paid off after he was accepted as a member of a juvenile B-Boy crew at the age of 11.
Johnny stayed with the crew for one year after performing with the crew every weekend at mall entrances and at three schools in Bloomingdale, two schools in Carol Stream and a school in Addison. The fad of breakdancing was starting to fade and local police would no longer allow public performances on private property in 1986. Johnny stayed busy and graduated from grade school in 1988…and the music found him again.
HOUSE NATION
In 1988, house music in Chicago had began to take a serious hold on Chicago radio stations like WBMX and WBBM-FM. Johnny found a new groove that was called Hip-House, a genre crossover between Hip-Hop and House Music. In 1989, he began collecting mix tapes and attending the suburb teen nightclubs. Johnny became a regular at the teen nightclubs, Toto’s, Dilligaff’s and Discovery. He followed hip-house throughout the 90’s while embracing the sounds of techno. Both of these music genres dominated the Chicago nightclubs. In 1991, Johnny got his first pair of turntables, attempting to copy the styles and techniques of his favorite DJs, Bad Boy Bill and Julian “Jumpin” Perez.
His first set of equipment was extremely difficult to work with, yet his determination to learn the skill of DJ mixing and blending never faltered. His mixer board was held together by electrical tape and his turntables were a mismatched set that included a Gemini deck and Technic deck. He was proud of the set after purchasing it at a swap meet in Elgin for $400.00. Between 1991 and 1994, Johnny’s main priority was vinyl. He worked afterschool at a grocery store and a video store, making about $40.00 a week and every one of his checks went to one thing. Records.
He named himself Techno Boy and played a few house parties in Woodstock, Marengo, Elgin, Crystal Lake and Schaumburg. He made a few extra bucks at the parties and used them all to buy himself more records. Johnny practiced on his decks day and night, hoping for one thing. He told a friend his ultimate goal while he practiced, “One day, you’re gonna see my mix CD on the same shelf as Bad Boy Bill.” He met many performers during his time in the club scene. Johnny met club icons like Lidell Townsell, Smart-E’s, DJ Attack, Kevin Halstead, Kool Rocksteady, Alex Peace, Mike Dunn, Too Kool Chris, The Outhere Brothers, DJ Sluggo, DJ Hyperactive, Julian Perez, Bobby D and…Bad Boy Bill.
In 1995 he saved enough money to buy a brand new set of Technic 1200s and a new mixer with an equalizer that really worked. Johnny changed his name to DJ Matrix and began recording his own hard house mixtapes. He handed out his mixes for free at the teen dance clubs, the Paladrome in Palatine and the Galaxy Club in Des Plaines.
GETTING COLD
In 1997, he changed his name again to DJ Friction and he attempted to gain DJ residency at a nightclub. He was hired as a resident at Club Bang in Sandwich, Illinois. He stayed there until 1998 after the club changed owners. Johnny stepped off his decks, returned to college and earned a degree in Law Enforcement. The club scene found him again in 1999 in Dekalb, Illinois. He became a regular the Palace, showing off his old school B-Boy moves to the sounds of progressive house and trance for the crowds to enjoy. The owner of the club hired Johnny as Director of Club Security later that year.
During Johnny’s time at the Palace, he was able to meet and observe the new Chicago suburb headline DJs, Mixin’ Marc, Billy The Kid, DJ Irene and DJ Loverboy. On his days off from the Palace, he would head to The Mission in Elgin, meeting other strong DJs from the suburbs. In 2000, Johnny changed his name again to DJ Kartoon, focusing his mix styles to include the genres of progressive house, tech-house and hard house. He also added black “warpaint” under his eyes when he would spin live. The NIU would refer to him as “the crazy DJ with the baseball eye black”. His first CD, “Sweatin’ Ink & Paint” was accepted at five mix consignment shops in the suburbs. Johnny’s dream had finally become a reality. His mix CD was on the same shelf as Bad Boy Bill’s. Johnny’s first Kartoon CD became extremely popular on the campus of Northern Illinois University in Dekalb.
He gave out free copies and never took a dime from any of the consignment shops. When it came time to collect at the shops, Johnny would give the owners a fresh stack of CDs and say, “You can keep all the money, please just keep my CD on that shelf, okay?” He wanted everyone to know that money wasn’t his goal. His only goal was making the mixes for the people to enjoy and hearing it play in a dorm room hallway or a car stereo driving by. The college campus enjoyed the sounds of DJ Kartoon, and he enjoyed making them happy. Johnny was invited to play house parties for fraternities and sororities soon after his CD became popular.
After meeting many new fans and friends in Dekalb, Johnny was asked to host a weekly house party at a closed frat house on NIU campus that was later nicknamed, “The Blue Light” in 2001. The party earned the secret name after a member of the house put a blue light bulb in the entrance light fixture to serve as an underground code, “When the light is blue, you know what to do”. The house would be packed with over 150 people soon after the blue light was turned .. playing weekend after weekend, Johnny shared the spotlight with all the DJs he knew in Elgin, Dekalb and Aurora. He shared his decks with the talents of DJ WizzKidd Walter (currently a resident at Club Rain), DJ Aladdin, Brian “Breakdown” B, DJ Structure, Chris B., DJ Phanta-C, DJ MJB, DJ Confusion (now known as the Crobar resident, Nathan Scott), DJ Insomnia, and DJ Dropout.
Johnny continued to make mix CDs under the name of DJ Kartoon until 2002. Four of the mix consignment shops shut down within that time and Johnny’s CDs were taken off the shelf along with Bad Boy Bill’s CDs. Shortly after, he stepped away from his decks again, got married and had three kids. In late 2006, Johnny felt the itch to make another CD. He went out to all of the record stores in Naperville, Arlington Heights and Chicago and found out that they all were closed down and DJ style of vinyl was long gone. The digital world had taken over, along with CD DJ decks. Johnny didn’t have the right equipment and he didn’t have the music he needed. But he did have a few things on his side…his skill, his style, his experience and the talent to edit music. He was introduced to a music editing program called Cool Edit Pro in 2000 when he finished his first CD and he worked with it until he mastered it.
THE COLD FRONT
Johnny jumped on digital music websites like beatport.com and djdownload.com and began finding the best music. He found a new genre called electro house and was hooked instantly. Johnny went and bought himself Pioneer CDJ-1000 decks and a 4 channel Numark mixer. He called his old friends, Mike Dunn and The Outhere Brothers to assist him with vocal voiceovers drops for his new mixes, and he was ready to enter the digital world under his new DJ name, Johnny Ice.
He finished his first mix CD, “On The Rocks” and he entered it on the DJ promotion network, mixupload.com. He joined the site in February 2007 and listeners from around the globe embraced his first mix and they begged for more. Johnny made three more electro house mixes, two old school house mixes and a tribute mix for Bad Boy Bill before the end of 2007. Within one year his mixupload profile page received over 6,500 hits. He was invited to assist the owner of the site with popular promotions and was given the DJ status as an “ePromoter”. As an ePromoter, he is able to assist novice DJs with mix quality and mixing techniques as well as unlimited mix uploads.
Thanks to his popularity on mixupload, other music websites like transmissionfm.com, thefreshpage.com, clubradiousa.net, stream-fm.com and chicagohousedj.com invited Johnny to join them and share his talents with other listeners around the world.
In 2008, Johnny made two more electro house mixes for mixupload and they both shot to the top of the site’s 2008 MIX CHART at the 1 and 2 positions, thanks to votes from his loyal listeners. To Johnny, this was a huge accomplishment because his mixes surpassed the top electro house DJ on the site, DJ Kolesky, a DJ producer from France that dominated the electro house genre on mixupload since 2005.
Recently, Johnny has been asked to show off his talents live and will be travelling to nightclubs in Las Vegas, Calgary and Athens in the summer of 2008.
SO WHAT MAKES HIM DIFFERENT FROM THE REST?
Johnny Ice does not blend tracks the way every other DJ does. He uses a technique called “stacking”. Basically, he uses three CDJ-1000s and stacks three tracks over the other. You may think to yourself, “So?” “That’s not that hard.” “Mixing with digital is easy nowadays.” Here’s the real trick. Johnny buys all of the top club tracks from the electro house genre, remixes them himself in his studio and burns each separate track to a CD before he performs. When the crowd hears the well known track “reflipped and tweaked” over two other tracks that are flipped and edited the same way, the end result is obvious. He leaves the listeners shocked and asking themselves…
Maintained at temperatures below zero by:
Jake D.
Cold Front Sounds
"On The Rocks 7"
.. .. .. .. .."Chicago VS Philly"
.. .. .. .. .."Electro Hero 1"
.. .. .. .. .."On The Rocks 6"
"Cold School 2"
"Electro Junkies"
"On The Rocks 5"
"Meltdown"
"On The Rocks 4"
.. .. .. .. .."On The Rocks 3"
.. .. .. .. .."On The Rocks 2"
.. .. .. .. .."Cold School"
.. .. .. .. .."On The Rocks"