Lucas Rambousek

Annual Host and D.J.

Every year in late September, Lucas Rambousek would invite his friends to his parents' vacation house in the woods in Pennsylvania. They slept in tents or in a trailer, ate junk food all day, and at night Mr. Rambousek would spin dance records.

The party was called Junkfest, and it grew out of the parties that Mr. Rambousek, who would have turned 28 today, had at his parents' house in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, just about every Friday. "It was the best thing," said Jesica Vilett, his longtime friend and sometime girlfriend. "Five or 10 people in the apartment and Luke in the bedroom with his turntables."

Mr. Rambousek, who was working as a computer temp at Cantor Fitzgerald on Sept. 11, was obsessed with what his mother, Jindra Rambousek, calls "that crazy music" — techno, trance, anything with a huge beat. He once worked as a quality-control checker for a record-pressing company, listening to CD's all day long.

Junkfest 2001 was scheduled for Sept. 28. Mr. Rambousek's father decided it should go on, as a tribute to him. A big bottle of dandelion wine, made by father and son, sat on a table in the trailer. "We were all sitting around the fire and I went into the trailer and got 12 cups out," Ms. Vilett said. "We all packed into this little trailer and we all did a little toast to Luke. It was good. The wine messes you up. It's got a bitter aftertaste."