Waxyjax

Hi everyone! I'm moderating a Google Talk on the Music Industry and Technology on May 16. If you'd like to know more please hit me up via the contact info provided at the very bottom of this page

...or you can also follow my non-sequitors on twitter

oh and....

hi, i'm Jacky Tran. you may only meet one of us in your life, but you'll encounter many on Google, including this guy. let it be known we're not the same person.

interestingly enough, if you google "amish rave dj," this homepage you're reading now--PLUS my myspace page--does hit at the top of the search results. i'm sure the amish would find this equally unsettling (good thing they won't even know).

other than corrupting youth at rumspringa i'm known to keep myself well-traveled, well-fed, and socially stimulated.

i've even dabbled in music. check out "The Ceasing Now" by Parts & Labor. the band selected samples submitted by their friends (or in my case, friends of friends) and a recording of me clipping my fingernails happened to make the cut (i just noticed the pun and i'm not gonna do anything about it). here's NPR's story on the album and sample concept behind it. my speaking voice has appeared on other tracks by other artists, but i don't like hearing myself speak and will therefore not share any further details here--sorry!

i do many other things--making my own website look pretty is not one of them.

my latest project is developing my own production company--Quiz Bowl Productions. the site is under construction, but i am actually working on making it look nice

I produced a music video for The Walkmen's"Orange Sunday". Directed by Bruno Levy, shot in Buff Bay, Jamaica. As exotic as it sounds, it was a bare-bones shoot. I had to secure some local fishermen to help us out big time with this one. However the end product and love we got from such respected publications, like Pitchfork, were well worth the effort.
I produced and ran PR for Sweatshoppe's The Landing, a revolutionary (I'm not exagerrating, it's the first of its kind) digital/light graffiti piece that got love in such esteemed blogs as Wooster Collective and Babelgum.
The music video I produced for Modeselektor's track Deboutonner. Directed by Bruno Levy, shot in Nepal using stop motion and in-camera effects! It won a Metropolis Art Prize Special Mention award and was screened in Times Square on Thursday, December 17, 2009. Isabella Rossellini was hosting!
The music video for Udachi & Jubilee's single "Smoke Rings" on the great Jason Forrest's label Nighthifters. We got love from URB and T-Pain, plus it got featured on Dailymotion's music page.
I produced the 2009 NYC Budgetball Championships event. 4 teams battled for the top title at the world's first-ever Budgetball tournament at Coles Sports Center in New York. The geniuses at game design studio Area Code designed Budgetball in collaboration with Parsons PetLab and The National Academy of Public Administration. NPR was all over it.
Backchannel, my first project with Area Code to produce this multi-player game synched with real-time broadcasts of MTV's The Hills. Creativity Magazine loved it.
The Corona Beach, interactive micro-site for Corona Beer that i co-produced with Jason Merenda while at Big Spaceship. it won lots of awards.
Glaceau, overhaul of website and digital branding of Glaceau and its sub-brands, including the venerable Vitaminwater. it also won lots of awards.
50's Calling, promo site for Formula 50, 50 Cent's Vitaminwater flavor--send friends a personal shout-out from 50 himself.
lots of production coordinator/associate/assistant work at MTV on my resume, Yahoo!TV and Fancast list some of the shows i've worked on. once i figure out how they found me i'll have them list everything else i've done.

First Warm Night, in collaboration with ComplacentNation (now known as theDanger) and a laundry list of other djs, activists, artists and promoters--a moving street/subway event to celebrate the first warm night of 2005. drawing a couple thousand attendees we started the night off in LES, then on the subway, then through Red Hook as marching bands and vehicles tricked out with soundsystems blasted their way to the waterfront. the cops were cool until this dude who had swum the English Channel decided to get naked and jump in the East River.
Green Party, a subway party also in collaboration with ComplacentNation. Gawker called it 'Disturbingly similar to what a previous generation would have called a "flash mob,"' but honestly, it was a rowsing way to bring people together. more than a thousand revelers dressed in green met up at a dive bar by the Bowling Green subway stop and then flooded into the 4/5, covered the interior in green, drank green jello shots, crowded surfed and sang while zipping around town and ended up at a bowling alley deep in Brooklyn to end the night. as location scout, i was one of the two only people who knew how to get to the bowling alley and grand marshalled the marching band, baton twirlers and crowd through the streets of East Flatbush. Richard the manager was gracious enough to close the alley's doors to the public and let us party all night long--and even ordered everyone chinese food!
Lunatarium, i was Promotional Director and also produced several one-off events. the 18,000 sq ft, top floor of a warehouse building overlooking the East River, the Manhattan skyline and 4 bridges, which required use of the freight elevator, was tough to fill but we pulled it off. Run DMC played one of their last shows here before Jam Master Jay's death. check out the NYPress award for "Best Warehouse Fire Waiting to Happen," which pretty much sums up the atmosphere of the venue.