Charlie Wild’s lifelong love affair with music began at just four years old, with thunderous Led Zeppelin riffs that rattled the speakers of his older brother’s ’72 Camaro. 

“My brother had this ’72 Camaro and he always had Led Zeppelin on every time we were in it,” Wild said. “I remember looking at the speaker rattling in the door, I was probably about four years old, and I just said, I don’t know what that is, but that’s what I’m gonna do with my life.”

Already a performer as a child, his journey to becoming a multi-faceted audio engineer and DJ began in the unlikeliest of places — on the set of the coming-of-age comedy, “The Wonder Years.” 

“I always had love for the ’60s and the show was based in the ’60s,” he said. “Now I’m into ’60s ska and ’70s reggae, so I find it funny that life came full circle in that way.”

From 1988 to 1992, Wild worked as a background actor on the iconic show. He often body-doubled for Michael Tricario, who played Randy, and immersed himself in a world behind the curtain.

“Because my dad was on the crew, I spent a lot of time on the set, and I got more interested in the behind the scenes — cameras, lights, sound, stuff like that,” Wild said. “But I was also passionate about music and picked up a bass with some of my acting money, so I was teaching myself the bass.”

Determined to pursue music professionally, Wild enrolled in a musician’s institute. However, a diagnosis of tendonitis in his left hand led him to switch majors to audio engineering. 

After graduating in 1998 with an associate’s degree in recording arts technologies from Full Sail University in Florida, Wild returned to Los Angeles and dove into the Hollywood music scene. 

 “By the fifth day (in LA) I was doing my first big Hollywood rock and roll show (as a stagehand). It was Everclear, Marcy Playground and Fastball at the Hollywood Palladium and it was just bonkers,” he said. “I wanted to ultimately become a studio engineer, but live sound is sort of the gateway drug into that, so I started paying my dues, loading semis, building stages and setting up sound systems.”

Wild’s career as an audio engineer took him far — within six months he became a “white glove” audio engineer and no longer had to “pay his dues.” He toured with the band Skeletones, started a recording studio and became a professor at the Los Angeles Recording School, where he taught for a decade before the school merged with the LA Film School in 2014.

He then relocated to what he thought was a mountain town — Denver — to reconnect with nature in 2015. 

“My friend from Glenwood Springs, actually, who left probably 30 years ago, was like, just go to Colorado, because it’s a nice, easy, slow pace of life,” Wild said. “Ever since my first Montana trip, I had been dying to get to the mountains….So stupid me, I thought Denver was a mountain town.”

Wild moved to Denver with a tub of clothes and his truck, crashed on a friend’s couch, found a job and immersed himself in the city’s reggae scene. He bounced from Colorado — eventually relocating to Aspen then Boulder — to Los Angeles and played his first show as a DJ at Dia De Los Puercos in LA’s Pomona Arts Colony about a month before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Wild then retreated to Montana, where he embraced live-streaming DJ sets and played occasional live shows. 

“You can play 1,000 shows in the bedroom, but one show in front of people is worth 10 times that experience,” Wild said. “You can play in the bedroom forever, but once you get out there and X factors start popping up and the externalities start popping up, it really throws you and helps you grow much quicker as a DJ.” 

With his background as both an actor and an audio engineer, Wild found his transition to DJing seamless.

“I think I fell into it naturally due in part to the fact that I was an actor and I was used to being on the spot and the center of attention, I had played a couple of little garage bands and stuff like that,” Wild said. “(Dia De Los Puercos) was a dark venue, I was kind of off to the side, but it was the right place, it was the right crowd and everybody was just feeling it.”

Wild eventually returned to the Roaring Fork Valley and ultimately settled in Glenwood Springs.

“The cool thing about LA is the night you want to go to exists. You want to go to a punk show? Pick one. You want to go to a reggae night? There’s a million,” Wild said. “When I got to Denver, I was fortunate because I linked up with the reggae crew out there.

“When it came to the valley, the thing that sucked is nothing like that existed,” he added. “Basically, I got into DJing because the night I wanted to go to did not exist here, so I had to invent it.”

Though Wild is known for his old-time reggae and ska DJ persona, his musical range includes punk, soul, pop and country.

It’s the infectious rhythms, stellar sound quality and laid-back vibes that drew him to classic reggae and ska. 

“There’s an inverse correlation between (music) technology and the quality,” Wild said. “So I think that’s why when I came to this valley and I wanted to start the night I wanted to go to, I had to focus on the older music because you just can’t replicate it. Nobody’s doing anything like that anymore.”

Now, Wild, known by his DJ name Selecta 007, is leaving  his mark on the Glenwood Springs music scene — often while rocking a full suit and oxfords. 

In November, Wild joined the local group The Know Bodies Band, where he adds dub siren and sampler to their multifaceted tracks, blending reggae and ska influences with the band’s distinct sound.

“It’s a very unique band. For one thing, everyone brings a completely different influence, but it works. I like that a lot,” Wild said. “Everybody’s a master of their instrument, which is great too, because one of the rules in music is play with people who are better than you, and I’m certainly the least musical in the whole band.

“That helps step up my game,” he added. “Everyone gets along and it’s a good vibe.”

See DJ Selecta 007 perform at Mountain Heart Brewing, 132 Midland Ave. Ste. 1, Basalt, on Saturday, April 26. Time is TBA.