Mighty in the House

By Allison Gaudet Yarrow September 14, 2010

Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards featured a Jewish house DJ. Joel Zimmerman is the given name of the Toronto-based artist who got his start in his basement and now performs as DeadMau5 (pronounced dead mouse, not dead mao 5). His stage name is no allusion to Art Spiegelman’s opus. The name came organically, when a Zimmerman found an actual rodent that had crawled into his computer and died. Ack. His internet compadres started calling him “that dead mouse guy,” so Zimmerman began spinning under the moniker.

He has a neck tattoo of a cat’s paw that says “meowski,” but it’s often covered up by his showpiece: a mouse head that’s two parts Mickey, one part disco ball. In fact, a quick google search will return a frightening number of different mouse heads that this guy owns. He is currently touring. Here are dates.

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