DJ Dan

As far as I know, this is a very rare tape! I'm not sure if this was a one off tape or very limited. It's early DJ Dan and he's working a lot of DJ skills in this mix! This was a tape that Dan gave to his friend Keith Cody. Keith had put it in the glass case and gifted it back to Dan in the 90's.

This was given to me, on loan from Dan, for me to remaster when he handed me a large shoe box of his master tapes. It's in a framed glass case that reads "In case of emergency, break glass".

When he was still with us, I was going to shoot a video of me breaking the glass to get the tape out so that I could remaster it. After his passing, I can't bring myself to doing that. It's one of Dan's belongings that I will treasure forever. I was able to carefully remove the backing on the frame to access the tape.

A lot of classic Techno Breaks and House on this one! Enjoy! R.I.P. Dan. You are so missed. We love you!

Here is an unreleased mix from DJ Dan's mixtape collection. Dan recently sent a batch of CDR mixes for San Francisco Disco Preservation Society to remaster and serve up exclusively. This is a fun 1 hour mix! We're not sure which radio station this was for as it's not listed on the CDR. Enjoy! Rest In Power, Dan! You are greatly missed my friend.

DJ Dan and Jim Hopkins met while in their shared natural habitat of digging in the crates, and they quickly made a rave anthem together. Released in 1995, "Loose Caboose" by Electroliners outsold expectations, thrilled dancefloors around the world, and became a classic breakbeat song. It still sounds vital and alive more than 20 years later.

"Dan and I ran into each other at BPM Records, a [now defunct] DJ record store on Polk Street in San Francisco. We talked a bit in the store and then hung out the rest of the day, hit it off, and became friends."

At the time, Jim was running his own label, Twitch Records, which released a long series of now highly collectible remixes. He was well known for being a master of the reconstruction.

"We sat down, and he handed me records to sample things from. Once I had a bunch of samples saved, I started loading them into the sampler and sequencing them on my sequencing program. We were both groovin' on what was coming together."

"Once he returned, we were invited to a house party that DJ DRC was having. I had a copy in my pocket on cassette and threw it in DRC's cassette deck. Everyone at the party flipped out and started dancing to our track and asking us what it was. Right then and there, we knew we had a hit!"

Dan's roommate, DJ Dano, came up with "Loose Caboose," since the track had a train horn going through it. Jim went to the public library and checked out some books on trains — "I saw the name 'Electroliner,' which was a train line in the Midwest. I added an 's' on the end of it, and that became our band name."

Jim pressed up vinyl copies on Twitch Records and snail-mailed a demo cassette to Watts, a leading vinyl distributor. The buyer nearly drove her car off the road listening to it. He ended up selling 12,000 copies on Twitch — then licensed it to XL Recordings, who sold 5,000 more and licensed it to mix CDs worldwide.

"It's so cool to see how many people were moved and influenced by our record! I still hear from people that the track inspired them to get into music production or DJing. It's a great feeling."

I'm still trying to pull it together after the loss of my best friend DJ Dan. Hugs and love to all of his family and fans. ❤ ❤ ❤

Over the past few weeks, Dan and I were in the process of putting together a folder of all of his mixtapes that I have remastered for my San Francisco Disco Preservation Society archives. This is still in the works and I will let everyone know when it's available.

Dan was a major supporter of my archives and the preservation of DJ and nightclub history. He had given me a large shoe box full of his mixtape masters including a nice sized collection of unreleased mixes for me to add to the SFDPS archives.