Mix Master Mike cooking up 'a sonic assault of amazing stew' for Colorado | John Moore

Mix Master Mike has spun some pretty solid credentials in his lifetime.

He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 alongside the Beastie Boys. He was called “the world’s greatest DJ” by USA Today. He’s turned his tables at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and 2014 Emmy Awards.

But he’d be fine if his résumé listed just one credit: He elicited an Obama head bop.

In 2013, Mix Master Mike became the first turntablist to perform at the presidential Kennedy Center Honors when he performed "Rockit" in tribute to Herbie Hancock.

You want a bio? That’s a bio.

“Oh, man, I can't even tell you how incredible that was,” he said. “I mean, they announce your name, and you look up and you see Billy Joel, Carlos Santana and everybody else out in the audience … I mean, to watch Barack and Michelle Obama bop their heads while you're performing is really, really surreal. Coming from where I come from? It was like, ‘Oh, wow.’ I was saying to myself, ‘Damn, you came a long way, Mike. I don’t know how this happened to me.’”

Michael Schwartz has come a very long way from discovering his uncle’s extensive funk record collection as a kid in 1970s San Francisco to winning a 1998 Grammy Award for his work on the Beastie Boys’ “Hello Nasty” to performing for the Obamas in Washington D.C. as Mix Master Mike.

That was a full-circle moment. Young Michael was first inspired to become a DJ at age 13 when he heard Hancock play his 1983 earworm hit “Rockit” on the radio. “I was like, ‘Wow. What instrument was that?’” he said of the song’s signature synth scratch. “I was so dumbfounded by how that was done.”

And when he saw Hancock performing “Rockit” at the 1984 Grammy Awards with Grand Mixer DXT on the turntable, “that blew my mind,” he said. (Side note: Mine was blown by the fact it was John Denver introducing the performance at the Grammys. But back to Mix Master Mike.)

“It was like when I first watched Jimi Hendrix, except this guy was using the turntable,” he said. “I immediately knew what I wanted to be. I was like, ‘I want to do that.’”

Mix Master Mike has been doing “that” all over the world for 30 years. And while what “that” is exactly has evolved through the years, Mike is best known for his intricate scratch routines and heavy-hitting bass. He is often credited with inventing the Tweak Scratch – an effect achieved by moving the record back and forth after the platter motor is stopped.

He’s been coming to Colorado to feed his twin passions of DJing and snowboarding since at least 2000.

“I do love Colorado,” he said. “I can't even recall how many times I've been up to Vail, Aspen, Denver. I love it. I love the snow. I just love being out there. I’m not a big fan of the altitude sometimes, but it is an amazing way to just focus, bundle up and do what I do for the beautiful culture of snowboarding.”

The Mix Masterer will be back on Feb. 25 headlining the free Winter Dew Tour all-ages concert at Copper Mountain, 80 miles due west of Denver in Frisco. The Winter Dew Tour is a gathering of the world’s best ski and snowboarders in superpipe and streetstyle along with a whole bunch of free, fun fan activities. Mix Master Mike will perform at 6:30 p.m. on a special outdoor concert stage at the base of the mountain in Center Village.

“We're going to rage,” he said. “It’s going to be an unpredictable set with a bunch of exclusives and amazing remixes and live performance art. It is going to be a sonic assault of amazing stew. That’s what it is, it's a stew. We’re going to be cooking it up there, and it's going to be amazing.”

Mix Master Mike long ago earned his status as a pioneer in the hip-hop and DJ communities. “He is not only a descendant of the DJs who influenced us, he also birthed an offspring of DJs and scratchers who to this day borrow many of the techniques he cultivated,” said his friend, DJ Rob Swift.

Now 52, Mike finds himself still squarely in the center of the turntablist game. He just came off a worldwide tour opening for Godsmack, which was the best kind of gig there is – because he never had to leave his own basement. “Yeah, so I performed a (recorded) 4K, 10-minute intro that they played on the big screen before Godsmack came out, which was pretty groundbreaking because I didn't have to physically be there,” he said. “I don't think it's ever been done before.”

Mike clearly has no interest in stepping away from the turntable at this stage of his life. I asked him what it feels like to have reached an age where he can say he’s done what he loves most for his entire adult life – spinning wax into millions of kids' dreams.

“I would say gratifying,” he said. “When you reach the mountain you're trying to achieve, there’s not so much pressure (anymore). Instead you’re like, OK, what's left? So everything else in my career has become just confetti. It's just a bonus. Now it's all about using the platform for the greater good. I want to help change people's lives while being as creative and innovative as I ever could be before. It’s all just a blessing, and I'm going to throw my faith in there: I'm a product of God, and I'm his instrument at the end of the day.”

The Beastie Boys formed in 1978 as a hardcore punk band that fully transitioned to hardcore hip hop by 1983. The musical feel of the band substantially shifted in 1998 with the addition of Mix Master Mike, who stayed with the band until it effectively ended in 2012 with the death of founding member Adam "MCA" Yauch at age 47 from a rare form of cancer.

Ten years has been long enough to put some distance between the sadness and indulge in a bit of sentiment and nostalgia. In 2017, there was a Spike Jonze documentary called "Beastie Boys Story" and accompanying book looking back on 40 years of friendship between founding members Yauch, "Mike D" Diamond and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz. I asked Mix Master Mike if he’s been able to find some closure – if that is even possible when it was death that stepped in and prevented the group from ending things on its own terms.

“Yeah, well, you don't ever find any closure,” he said. “But I got to tell you this: One thing I'm working on right now is (my own) book and a documentary. And it’s going to explain a lot of what went on behind the scenes and what happened through my journey in life – which is an awesome story that I can't wait to share with the world.”

I’d be a terrible journalist if I didn’t ask him to spill at least one thing that will be coming out with that story.

“One thing I’ll say is that I'm a survivor in every sense of the word,” he said.

But first, there is his return to Colorado next weekend. He says he never tires of these mountain snowboarding spectacles.

“It's always good to come back and revisit old friends and see whole new generations of kids who aren’t really kids anymore,” said Mike, who is always on the lookout for the next wave of rebels waiting to have their minds exploded.

“Yeah, there is always a new society of kids coming up, and so you’ve just got to hammer that generation in the head with some dope new (bleep).”