Before there was Big Mike, there was Michael Carmona. A kid who grew up in a family that had generations of music dating back to the early 1900's. As far as I could remember there was music in the house, from home made talent shows to late night rehearsals with my dads bands.
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| I guess you can say that I found my musical talent late. In elementary school, I tried my first instrument, a trumpet in the school band. That didn’t last too long, I had other things on my mind, GIRLS. So we all know what I concentrated on back then, basically my trumpet career ended. My dad would always tell me that I had a musical gift inside, I just needed to look deep inside to find it and when I do, never be afraid to show it to the world. I was young then and didn’t really understand what he meant but I never forgot what he said. During the boring summer days, I would sit in front of the stereo and listen to the radio. My parents had this nice stereo set up and I used to love toying around with it. If there were songs I liked, I would call the radio station up and request songs so I could record them. After spending days on end in front of the radio, it hit me like a ton of bricks. This is what I wanted to do. |
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I wanted to be a DJ on the radio. Not a fireman, or a policeman, but a DJ. I didn’t care if they made pennies, this is what I wanted to do. One day I found this old tape recorder that was on its last mile. It had this speaker you could talk into and would record your voice. I used to talk over the songs I recorded trying to be like a real radio DJ. Then I learned how to use the fader on my parents stereo and would record songs off the radio and fade in and out to give me room to talk. That summer I must have made a hundred tapes. It wasn’t long before I started mixing these songs together and making my own mix tapes. Since needles cost a lot of money back then, according to my dad, I wasn’t able to use record player. So I started mixing live songs on the radio with double taped songs I recorded and put them together along with my voice. It was like my own little syndicated radio show. |
| It wasn’t long until my music collection grew faster than I did. People were noticing and whenever they needed new music or wanted some classic songs, they knew who to call. I must say, it wasn’t a bad way to make cash on the side either. After years of making tapes and CDs for people, I realized that I found my musical gift. |
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I grew up in the Bay Area, San Jose, California to be exact. Or like my brother would say “Streets of San Jo”. The radio stations out there had everything locked down. It was like they were more popular than the artists themselves. It was a dream of mine for the longest time to get into a radio station in the Bay Area. But as I got older, I realized I couldn’t jump into the 4th biggest radio station in the U.S. overnight. I had to make my name known to get into a smaller radio station and work my way up. |
That was the day “Big Mike” was born...
