The Journal

Issue date: 4/5/07 Section: LifeStyle

Media Credit: Jennifer Wenger Justin Foster, a Webster alumnus, spins his vinyl records in his apartment Feb. 1. Foster performs as a DJ in St. Louis and has been the opening act for numerous notable DJs.

Webster alumnus Justin Foster gets paid to rave - or at the very least, he gets paid to furnish the music for raves. A former audio production major, Foster's longtime love of electronic music has led him to become a disc jockey, spinning records in clubs throughout St. Louis.


Foster, 27, attributes his early love for electronic music to Nintendo video games, whose soundtracks often featured techno songs and C + C Music Factory, a pop group that dominated the dance/club charts in the early '90s. He even taught himself to dance to electronic music, stealing moves from his favorite artists' music videos.


When he was 13, Foster stumbled upon a compilation of electronic music titled "Rave 'til Dawn" while perusing his older brother's CD collection. Unlike anything Foster had heard before, the songs on the album received little commercial attention.


"I fell in love with this new music that wasn't played on the radio or TV, but felt perfectly natural to me," Foster said. "This music was growing on me, and I had no idea where to find it."


The quest for more of his favorite music led Foster from his hometown of Lake of the Ozarks, Mo., to St. Louis, where his appetite for video games and electronic music was satiated by the city's wealth of arcades and weekend raves.


"By the time I was 16 and had a license, I was driving to St. Louis every other weekend to go to raves and record shops," Foster said.


No longer content with merely listening to electronic music, Foster bought a set of turntables and began to create his own. He "practiced like mad" in his parents' basement for the next several years. For Foster, deejaying was a way to channel his adolescent energies into something creative.


"When I started, I wanted to play the hardest, banging acid-techno I could find," Foster said. "After all, I was a hyperactive teenager."


Still, Foster said he didn't think his love for deejaying could ever be anything more than a hobby.


"I remember being a teenage DJ with the impression that there was no career or money in it," Foster said.

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