My Daughter lil'Ms.Vig

Biography of Daniel "Dust One" Vigil

Dust One's love for music began at an early age while listening to his father sing, record him self playing the guitar, bass along with some Drum Drop vinyl records as well as hearing his mother's extensive Latin record collection blasting throughout the house. In the 3rd grade, he took up the violin which he loved to play. However, the next 2-3 years is where he started to really pay attention to a new type of music and dance, coming in like a whirlwind; Hip-Hop and B-Boy'ing.

In 1982 at the age of eleven while listening to the infamous KSOL 107.7 FM, he caught a segment of DJ Michael Erickson mixing and scratching two identical records together, Egyptian Lovers Egypt Egypt. He was hooked and started scratching records with his parents home stereo. After his father witnessed him doing this strange thing with his record player, he finally bought him 2 turntables and a mixer for a present. He would practice day and night and would spend his whole allowance on records every 2 weeks until he had enough records to perform at parties. The rest is history!

Sometime in 1984 Dust One broke out of the Bedroom DJ environment and started DJ'ing at parties with MC Vicious Lee. Dust One would provide the beat, by moving or scratching a records bass and snare drum sound back and forth or mixing two identical records together looping the same beat pattern. MC Vicious Lee would rap on top of the beat, they were a hit.

Later Dust One hooked up with best friend DJ L.O.C., the human beat box. They put together a group with Milo's friend Hershel and started creating a demo for Smiley and Friends, a music production company out of the San Francisco Bay Area;their hometown. Once they submitted the demo for a potential record deal, the production house said we would not make it because we were not from New York. However, they were willing to use Hershel in someway and offered him a record deal and left Dust One and L.O.C. empty handed.

While in High school, Dust One put together a rap group with 3 friends and produced their first demo; the Alphabet Rap. He hooked up with the infamous Cool Raul (DJ EFX) in his home studio in the San Francisco mission district. However, the 3 rappers were not serious with the project, so Dust One called the session off and they parted ways. Dust One later worked with DJ EFX for a mix-tape record, but at 16 years old it was hard to come up with the funds, or justify it to his parents to produce and distribute the record.

Dust One officially retired from DJ'ing in 1990 after his record collection was ruined (Long Story), so he concentrated on writing music. He got together with long time friend Kai (Kaizmind Entertainment Network), who knew someone with a studio that could help him record his record. They got together in Alameda, California at DJ Glen Aure's (San Francisco 106 KMEL) house and started recording a track called Dusty's Groove. However, "life" happened and he was not able to complete his project.

It wasn't until one day as he was surfing the internet and was searching for DJ's when he noticed some fellow Bay Area DJ's, that were still on the cut and made successful careers out of what we did as a hobby as teenagers. DJ Quest, DJ Disk, DJ Apollo, DJ Qbert, just to name a few... Shortly after reading about their careers, he received a voice message from Kai marked urgent, he needed to talk to me ASAP. When I called him back he didn't even say hello, he just played some music... It sounded very familiar and then it clicked. He then said, I found it, I found it my brother! While spring cleaning his house, he found a box with a bunch of cassettes, one of them being my studio recording of Dusty's Groove! This was a sign.

Here is where it starts all over again!

In 2001, Eleven years after "retiring", he got the bug again… However instead of being a DJ, he wanted to produce music. He purchased a software package called Reason after playing around with a evaluation copy along with a ProTools setup and after work would spend hours, like he did in 1982 but this time, making beats and remaking Dusty's Groove. His wife saw that he had such a passion for this and talked so much about his DJ days, that she surprised him with two new technics turntables and a mixer for his birthday. This really motivated him to start getting serious about his re-discovered passion. However, he was not sure if she thought it was a good idea after she noticed he started spending his weekends crate digging and came home once from Maryland with one thousand records of vinyl in the trunk of his Jeep...

Dust One was visiting his family in San Francisco in November of 2006 for Thanksgiving. He read in the paper that a Gurp City show was going on that Friday night, so he headed down to see Eddie K, Dj Quest with LiveHuman perform. Before the show started he met up with Quest which led to him asking Dust One to submit some beats for a upcoming project. Dust One sent Quest a couple beats and one really struck Quest's interest enough to ask Dust One to be on his Questolous Album.

A week later Dust working from the basement of his home on the East Coast and Quest from the San Francisco started working on the track. It was Modern Day Technology at it's best... Two different platforms, Dust on a PC Laptop (now a MacBook), Quest on a Mac, two different versions of ProTools and e-mailing samples back and forth as well as regular mail until they had a finished product; Recognize (Track 6 on Questolous).

This is Dust One's official come back, although the L.O.C said that Dust One did not ever go anywhere to come back from... ;) So don't call it a come back, he's been here for years!

Since Dust One has rediscovered his love for hip hop music, he's performed (Scratched) with DJ Quest, DJ Flare, DJ Sniper, DJ Marz, DJ ALF of Hip Hop Slam, just to name a few. He has also performed a live remix of Recognize with DJ Quest on KFJC 89.7 FM and KZSU 90.1, both in the Bay Area and performed an 80's Electro set in on WFMU 90.1 in Jersey City, NJ.

Dust One also produces and hosts a weekly internet radio program called Nocturnal Elements the Scratch-Cast from the WEBR studios in the Washington, DC metro area, where is pays special tribute to the elements of hip hop with a emphasis on the DJ and when ever possible the scratch DJ.

On a production front, Dust One is working on a new project collab'ing with San Francisco's legendary DJ EFX, the infamous DJ Quest (Space Travellers/Live Human), Tha L.O.C. and Maryland's Party Rocker Toney Parka just to name a few on a project called "Find the Cure". Dust One is bring together a fusion experimental with elements of Hip Hop (DJ'ing, MC'ing and BeatBoxing) and R&B. One hundred percent of the proceeds are being donated to charity in honor his mother who lost her battle with cancer in March of 2008 and his father to other illnesses in June 2002.

When he is not on the air ways, in the studio making beats or mixing records, you can always find Dust One trying to learn the true meaning of the hip hop culture. He has the utmost respect to the pioneers of hip hop and to those who are trying to preserve and always put hip hop as a culture first!

There is more to come from Dust One and the Vigco Entertainment Group camp, so stay tuned, there is more to come!