DJ Alex Rodriguez has managed to turn his passion for music into a career and parlayed that into bigger opportunities.
The 44-year-old served as the opening act on the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival main stage for Weekend 1 of the festival before returning to the record store on the festival grounds.
He is listed as Record Safari on the lineup, a name similar to his brick-and-mortar store in Los Angeles. He’ll perform again for Weekend 2 but had to modify his plans due to projected weather.
“I was on Friday for Weekend 1 but I asked to move to Saturday because the weather app said the wind was going to be 20 mph,” Rodriguez said. “I’m playing records and it will pick up my needle and make it bounce around and skip. The weather was only going to be 5 mph winds on Saturday.”
Rodriguez has been DJing since 2012 and still has an appreciation for the excitement and challenges that come with being on stage.
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“The only challenge is ‘what do I spin this year,’” he said. “The crowds are changing and the music taste is changing so something I was playing 12 years ago wouldn’t fly today.
“I was spinning a lot of 60s and 70s stuff. … but now I am playing more house music or hip hop because the younger crowd identifies with that more.”
His upcoming performance lands on National Record Store Day.
“It’s cool that it’s basically a holiday,” Rodriguez said. “It serves as a reminder that records do exist. … It’s good that it helps boost the awareness of records.”
His store in Los Angeles featured a 25% discount and a free tote bag that helped draw a crowd of customers in as early as 9 a.m.
The record store at the festival grounds won’t feature any special deals but was restocked with “a couple thousand records” following a strong turnout from the Weekend 1 crowd.
Rodriguez still finds it rewarding that there’s such an interest in buying records and having a collection in a digital age where most of the records could be streamed or found on a platform like YouTube.
“It’s really cool that people want to have something physical, especially younger people,” the DJ said. “If you’re in your early 20s or younger then you grew up in a very digital age and this is actually something kind of new to you. … I heard someone say ‘I don’t like CDs because they are old, I collect records,’ with the thinking that records came after CDs.”