20 questions about the ’90s rave scene, DJ Dan, and more

You can’t talk about the history of West Coast dance music without mentioning Dr. Martin.

Born Martin Mendoza in San Francisco, the artist started his career on vinyl and helped define the rave scene in the early ’90s, when he relocated to Los Angeles. Here, he not only became a stalwart of the scene alongside Southern California comrades like DJ Dan and Marques Wyatt, but also something of an archivist, recording house, acid house, techno, and other sounds he heard and played underground on wax and cassettes, then launching his own label Sublevel to digitize them on CD.

Thirty years later, the marks are still as strong as Martin himself. Martin, who spoke to Billboard via Zoom from his home in Oceanside, Calif., is preparing for a summer road trip that includes last weekend’s Homme Records Retreat, a campout celebrating the label’s 30th anniversary in San Francisco. He’ll play an all-vinyl set at Flash in Washington, D.C., on July 11th, then return to Southern California the following weekend for the Love Long Beach Festival 2026, before heading north to beloved Shambala in British Columbia before crossing the Atlantic to take part in England’s Houghton Festival.

He says he promised himself a long time ago that if he lost his passion for this peripatetic lifestyle and the music he shared with it, he would quit. Talking to him now, his enthusiasm shows no signs of waning. Here he talks about the 90’s raves where he opened for Deee-lite and his recently deceased friend DJ Dan.

1. Where in the world are you now? What is your environment like?

I’m in Oceanside, California, where it’s 70 degrees year-round and right on the beach less than two miles from the ocean.

2. What was the first album or piece of music you bought for yourself and what was its medium?

Oh, that’s difficult. Probably a 7 inch record. It was in the 70’s, so I think it was “Boogie Oogie Oogie” by A Taste Of Honey.

3. Where did your parents make a living when you were a child, and what do they think or have they thought about what you do now for a living?

That’s nice. My mother was Vidal Sassoon and Paul Mitchell’s hairdresser, taught at his school, and sang backup for several local bands like Paul Revere and the Raiders in San Francisco. My father was an upholsterer and unfortunately passed away, but up until five years ago my mother was still in the “when am I going to get a real job?” mode. After 35 years, it seems like she is finally seeing the light.

4. When you started making money as an artist, what was the first thing you bought for yourself other than gear?

Probably a car. I bought a GS300 when Lexus had just come out. After that, it was all Toyota. I realized it wasn’t worth spending a lot of money on.

5. If you had to recommend one album to someone interested in electronic music, which one would it be?

I think it was the first Future Sound of London record. [1992’s Accelerator.]

6. What was the last song you listened to?

I think your last album was “The English Beat’s Live at US Festival ’82 & ’83.” I listen to tons of promos every day, and my friend Harry Romero did a remix of DHS’s “House of God.” That was probably the last song I really got into. People like Harry Romero and Maceo Plex are making pirated versions just for us to play. There are three or four people who have it, so it’s terrible for everyone else, but it’s great for us.

7. What gig are you most looking forward to on your summer schedule?

I’m going to be in England for the whole of August and I’m definitely looking forward to Houghton Festival. This is my 4th time here and it’s always great. I’ll be going to Berlin again for the great club Heidegruen, as well as Notting Hill Carnival in London and Shambala in Canada. A lot of good things happened this year. I really can’t complain. I always look forward to San Francisco.

8. There are a lot of legends about the Los Angeles dance scene in the ’90s. How was it actually?

The underground was really rebellious in many ways. There were a lot of warehouse parties back then because the warehouse district was huge, and I think a lot of warehouse owners really needed to make money, so they had huge basements for homegrown spaces. There will be a lot of artists coming from the UK as well. At the beginning of ’86, I was still in San Francisco, booking people like Inner City, Liz Torres, D Mob, and it was just a crazy time.

The clubs in LA were also great. There was a club known as the Brat Pack where celebrities met people. At my first show in Los Angeles, I looked back. [and] Nicolas Cage, Charlie Sheen and James Spader were also in the booth with me. And there were so many different people and styles that made 90s LA really pop. There will be gothic people, people dressed like rockabilly next to punks, and regular college kids. It got really interesting.

9. Was it as fun and epic as everyone thought?

It was difficult in many ways because people like us were using our own money to do it. It is not made by any legal entity. When holding theme parties, people actually made the props themselves. A lot of love and effort went into it and that made things really special. When I went out, it was opening and closing time for the night so I didn’t want to miss anything.

10. When did you feel like things started to change?

I think it was from the mid to late 90’s. From 1990 to 1994, things were really good. I think people realized that this could be profitable and investors started coming in. We were playing shows at places like The Palladium, which is a big club. [in Los Angeles] It has a seating capacity of around 2,500 people. This wasn’t a bad thing, but corporations were involved. We did a 10,000-person party in downtown LA for a movie called Strange Days, and Deee-Lite performed live, Aphex Twin DJed, and I DJed, which was great, and after that show, I became Deee-Lite’s tour DJ.

11. What was it like being a Deee-Lite tour DJ?

It was a surprise for me because we got along really well and were on the same wavelength. I also got to see all of America from a tour bus, which I would never have been able to do any other way. Coming out of the LA scene and being able to see all of America and even Canada was a really good growing experience for me as a DJ…that gig was kind of like a baptism of fire. Because even though I was with all the heavyweights at the time, I was thrown right in the middle and right in the middle of the lineup. I didn’t open it, so I was like, “Okay, I’m here.”

12. What did you learn from that experience?

What a good sound system can do for a crowd. I don’t think it was my first time playing on such an expensive sound system, and I was just a kid in a candy store. I was so excited and happy. I wouldn’t have cared if there were two people dancing or 1,500 people dancing. That was incredible to me.

13. You’ve been doing this for a long time. What is the reason for your longevity?

I told myself that as soon as I lost energy or became complacent, I would give up. Because it’s really unfair to pay to see you. I’m still a music fanatic. I listen to music for 3 hours every day. I am surrounded by it and immersed in it. People ask, “What are your hobbies?” I was like, “Well, this is it.”

14. Having dedicated your life to music, what does music do for you?

I love how other people feel when I’m playing certain songs that I believe in and stand for. And there’s that connection between you and the audience. It’s like the most addictive drug.

15. What do you think is the biggest issue facing dance music today?

It’s so saturated now that many people are going the social media route rather than spending more time in the studio. Perhaps not every record you make needs to be released in its current state. I’m going to keep it for 6 months and come back and finish it. I completed the remix, which took almost a year and a half.

We are on a very fast timeline. One minute things are going and the next minute they’re gone. People are always looking for the next big thing. There is very little nurturing of the music or development of the artists at the label. It’s really difficult. Labels end up signing someone with a million followers instead of a super talented guy with a few thousand followers. With our label, I tend to go in the opposite direction. Because at the end of the day, memorable music is what matters, and for someone with a million followers, most of the time their records aren’t memorable.

16. If you weren’t a DJ or producer, what would you do?

Before I started music, I trained to be a chef and worked in a very high volume restaurant. To be honest, it was very stressful. Especially 4 and 5 star fine dining restaurants. Everything had to be perfect, everyone was dissatisfied with every dish, the head chef was constantly yelling at me, and working 200 dishes in a shift was exhausting. That was insane to me. If this happens [music career] It just so happens that I’ve always been into music, so even though I wasn’t DJing much, I had a record collection and bought everything from reggae to underground new wave to early hip-hop, so it was a natural fit. God, it worked.

17. What is the best business decision you have made in your career so far?

I have a label called Sublevel, I have nighties, I have a clothing line. Perhaps the best decision was to start a monthly party in Los Angeles, inviting unsung heroes to a different venue each month. We had Craig Richards, we had Josh Wink, we brought in members of Secret Sundays from England…I kind of isolated myself from the international DJ circuit. [for awhile] In doing so, I was able to help foster a different kind of scene here in Los Angeles. That was great. I had just returned from England where I was stationed at Fabric, and the music I heard there wasn’t played here and I thought that was a real shame. There was so much great music coming out of Berlin, London and Japan, but it was never played.

I thought, “Let’s experiment and do a night that focuses on all of this, along with American music that isn’t played in America.” I really liked that. I think when you go somewhere, you’re welcomed, there’s food, sweets, free water, coffee, and people are like, “Don’t drive home like that.” Putting that kind of care into an event helps people feel like they’re a part of something.

18. The West Coast scene lost a legend this year with the passing of DJ Dan in March. did you know him?

In fact, I did. The past year and a half has brought us really close in many ways. We talked on the phone for hours. And as I was sorting myself out with my label, with press relations and all that stuff, I was trying to help him as well. Because it felt like he was in a place he didn’t want to be in anymore. He wanted to get promoted. This is what I thought. “You have a reputation and a following. All you need is a few tweaks here and there.” We talked about this for hours and exchanged ideas. I went to his house and played. we were best friends.

19. I am so sorry that your friend passed away. Want to tell the great Dan story?

The last festival we did together was in a remote part of Alaska, where we shared a house. It was probably one of the most enjoyable weekends we’ve both had in a long time. We sat on the couch almost every day and talked for hours, exchanging stories and memories with each other. It was a very special time for us and we hadn’t seen each other in years so we needed some bonding. We were on separate touring schedules while we were focused on other places like Europe and New York.

We hadn’t seen each other so it was nice to get back to each other. We had never talked and never been there. It was a good time to get back together, especially at that point in our careers.

20. What is one piece of advice you would give your younger self?

Try to block out more noise and stay focused. My advice to other DJs is to always let your personality shine through your music. Don’t hide yourself from anyone.