bizmuth

Bob Bizmuth aka Bob DeYager has had a love of music since an early age. His parents always had music on at home so he grew up listening to tons of Oldies, '60s Rock, and '70s singers and songwriters. When he reached age 12, and through his early teenage years, he started getting into the more modern sounds of the early 1990s; namely grunge, alternative, rap and hip-hop. With his Walkman constantly in his hand, and cassette tapes crammed in every pocket, he sat in class each day with his headphones hidden in the hood of his jacket, scribbling on his notebooks. The teachers thought he was taking notes, but he was listening to everything from Nirvana to A Tribe Called Quest. In the mid-1990's, he noticed rap music morphing into a parody of itself, with terrible artists and flashy pendants replacing head-bobbing beats and intellectual rhyme flows. He soon switched his radio dial from the pop stations only to find (to his delight) the local college stations. He rarely looked back. Becoming overwhelmed with the amazing sounds of underground hip-hop, and the DJ's who would infrequently spout a tracklist way too quickly to write down, he recorded radio shows by the dozen on his paint-flecked Panasonic. Blahzay-Blahzay, LMNO, Heltah-Skeltah, the list went on and on. The hunt for new tracks was a constant urge that him and a few close friends shared. Swapping tapes and playing them for each other, seeing who had discovered the best hidden gem. Where did these DJs find such raw and beautiful music? How did they do what they do? The sound of the record being scratched was always perplexing. Bob then graduated high school and enrolled in a SUNY school. He only lasted there a semester and a half before being kicked out, but he met some interesting people during that time, one of whom was a DJ. Bob would watch as his friend scratched and mixed records, and began to understand the mechanics of the DJ, and the more intense and layered sounds of electronic music. He had a few opportunities to tentatively step behind the decks himself, which only served to deepen the urge to become fluent. With college coming and going so quickly, Bob started working full-time at a car dealership. He saved up enough money to buy his first set of turntables within six months, and the rest is history. That was in 2001.