Who is Rob Savickis and why am I doing this?

This must be the first question in anyone's mind who doesn't know me already. Where did this guy come from and why is he creating this website?

First off, as a kid ( I am now 44 years old) I think my parents instilled in me indirectly an appreciation of polka music. I was in a Latvian dance troupe called “Jandals” in St. Catharines Ontario Canada from the age of 5 till the end of high school where as with many European dance groups the primary dance step was the polka. At many of the functions of which we were a part the djs played a significant number of polkas. Although I at the time did not know what bands were playing those songs I could dance a good “power polka” with the girls.

In 1984 I went off to University at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Much like Minneapolis/St. Paul or Dallas/Ft. Worth, Kitchener/Waterloo is pretty much one city and every October Kitchener hosts the largest German Oktoberfest celebration outside of Germany. The celebrations are huge, are held both in the German clubs and major auditoriums and polka music plays a significant part. Every year I went to at least one of the events, some years more. I don't know if the beer helped (LOL) but I really enjoyed Oktoberfest.

While at University I also started a MOBILE DJ service, which soon enough became known as RHYTHM ROB'S DJ SERVICE. After university I specialized predominantly in corporate functions and weddings. Admittedly, polka played a small part of my repertoire and when I was called on to play polkas the majority of polkas that I played were by 2 artists, Walter Ostanek (who is huge in Ontario) and Frankie Yankovik and I pretty much played the standards, Beer Barrel Polka, Pennsylvania Polka, She's Too Fat For Me and so forth. For 7 years, the start of 1996 till the end of 2002 I ran full time a store (RHYTHM ROB'S PRO DJ) which sold music and equipment to Djs. Although I don't run it anymore, a variant of the store I founded (RR PRO SOUND & LIGHT) is still in existence in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. It was at this time that I started producing cds as well at www.djcompanionrecords.com . By the end of 2003 5 cds had been released, a background piano cd, a jazz cd, a new age cd and a ballroom cd and a background showtunes cd. (no polka yet). The main purpose of these cds was for background music applications for mobile Djs though I did get a number of calls from the general public who had heard djs play the cds and wanted their own copy.

Having dual Canadian/American citizenship (since my mother is American) in 1998 I expanded operations in the US under the name Rhythm Rob's DJ Companion Products (which I still own and operate). In 2003 I took on a job at a casino in Niagara Falls NY (Seneca Niagara Casino) and still work there to this day. I had put much of my record producing on hiatus until 2007 when Al Bachmann (who appeared on some of my previous cds) gave me some of his former LPs and suggested I transfer them to cd and market them. Al Bachmann was the leader of a German Band in Ontario for years, but had also recorded with 2 well known singers in the area, Elizabeth Stein and Fern Viola. He had created a lot of German music with Elizabeth Stein which I released as “GERMAN OKTOBERFEST” and Italian music “ITALIAN FESTIVAL” with Fern Viola.

German Oktoberfest had a number of polkas on it, so I did a search on the internet to see where I could market this music and one of the places I encountered was www.247polkaheaven.com. I emailed to 12 of the ijs at the station whose music sub-genre was listed as either “German or Variety” and 8 of them responded back that yes, they would be interested in receiving a reviewing a copy of the cd. With one ij in particular, Wild Wilson, I had developed a dialogue and when I had won a contest he was holding for a free cd (I PICKED THE LYNN MARIE cd) he had sent me a few of his shows and I ended up creating a cd for him with his comedy and different drops (and yes a few polkas too).

Anyway, to create Wild Wilson's cd, I listened to a good number of his shows from 2002 till today and a funny thing happened. I fell in love with polka music. This falling in love with polka music happened listening to a number of polka shows from other ijs too. Although many of you know this genre has been shrinking, I was absolutely floored by the amount of GREAT polka music that is out there (both from yesterday and today). The more I listened to it the more I liked it and this journey continues to this very day. I am exploring new polka music and discovering new (to me) polka bands every week.

In this whole process, I was invited to a polka chat that was at www.polkavideos.com by Wild Wilson, and it was there that I first got to chat with JohnZ. Well, a couple of weeks after joining the chat I saw a notice at polkavideos that the site was ending as of the end of the year. I wanted the chat to continue so I started a chat at my own website www.djcompanionrecords.com. I would invite anyone who is reading this to come visit the chats on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday nights as well as during Wild Wilson's show 5-6 pm on Sunday afternoons. I am also at the current time serving at the Polka America Corporation as awards/AV director and look forward to doing whatever I can to promote polka.