Jake Rudh was struggling.

Standing next to his car in the parking lot of Clubhouse Jäger, the DJ was wrestling with a heap of black bags, looking like a bellhop who had gotten in over his head. It was Wednesday, and Rudh needed to get inside the North Loop bar to prepare for his weekly dance night. In the bags? CDs. The 36-year-old prefers them over vinyl (and certainly over a laptop).

"I'm old-school, and not the sexy kind of old-school," Rudh said.

When you've DJed the same weekly night for 10 years, and it's as popular as ever, you can be whatever kind of old-school you want. Rudh's Wednesday juggernaut, Transmission, is an audio nexus where new wave, post-punk, indie, mod, glam and '80s electro meet. If David Bowie curated a dance night, it would sound like this.

To celebrate its decade run, Rudh is doing something risky: He's taking his intimate Transmission out of Club Jäger (capacity: 150) for one night only. This Friday, he'll try to fill the Mainroom at First Avenue with more than 1,500 of his regulars.

In a lot of ways, Rudh is a DJ stuck in time. And that's by choice. While his taste in music is centered around the new wave era, he lives in a midcentury-modern home furnished with enough vintage eBay and Craigslist accoutrements to make Don Draper swoon.

After Rudh wrangled all of his gear inside Club Jäger, he sat down with a glass of Grand Marnier and talked about his decade of DJing. He wore white pants, white loafers and a dark polo shirt, his hair styled like classic Cary Grant.

As he grew up, the Beatles and everything British became another obsession. When he was 21, he saw an ad in the back of Rolling Stone asking: "Would you like a British pen pal?" Rudh was stoked. "So I wrote a letter. And all these British girls sent me letters back and I narrowed it down to one. I went over there to meet her and we really didn't hit it off."

He discovered DJing while trying to become a pilot as a college student in Grand Forks, N.D. After returning to the Twin Cities without a pilot license, Rudh started DJing at bars that appreciated his old-school sensibilities. He eventually transformed gigs at the Chatterbox and the Imperial Room into the night that would define his next 10 years. He named it Transmission, after a Joy Division song.

After bouncing from bar to bar, Transmission eventually landed at Club Jäger in 2007, where Rudh's formula (and audience) really began to jell. The night has been around long enough that several married couples count it as their matchmaker, and the first Transmission baby was born three years ago, Rudh said.

On this particular Wednesday, Transmission's reputation as one of the Twin Cities' truly cross-generational dance nights was on full display. The crowd was a mix of aging hipsters in skinny ties and twentysomethings wearing sunglasses (ironically, of course).

"Hipster. It's such a dirty word, isn't it?" Rudh said. I ask him how he would describe his crowd. "Inquisitive music lovers," he said. "Everyone that comes to Transmission loves music." While the night's bedrock is Brit-centric (Bowie, Joy Division, New Order), Rudh routinely ventures off into a diverse swath of '80s pop (Hall & Oates, Genesis, Ratt, Def Leppard).

Marieka Heinlen, 38, illustrates children's books by day, but spends most Wednesday nights on the dance floor at Jäger. Transmission brings her back to high school. "I was never invited to prom," she said, "so every time I come it's like going to prom."

The music is so potent for some regulars that it's worth driving across the state. In the crowd this night were Jenny Pond and Arik Williams, who drove for four hours from just outside Fargo. They make the trip every few months, driving home right afterward. "All the dance nights in Fargo are country," said Pond, 28.

In the DJ booth, Rudh's technical setup sticks with his old-school vibe. He plays CDs on a Numark CDMix-1, basically an embellished CD player with a cross-fader.

"Ironically, tomorrow I'm going to buy a MacBook Pro," he told me. "I'm stepping up my game. I'm entering into the future -- or rather, the present."

Rudh said he'll use the laptop for wedding and corporate gigs, but when he DJs at Transmission, he'll always use CDs. "There's a charm to it," he said. "I've never taken myself that seriously as a DJ and I think that's why the night is so successful."

The house lived up to Rudh's retro reputation. "Some people think it's hideous," Rudh said as we toured rooms full of shag carpet, Danish-designed furniture and a den filled with dozens of transistor radios from the 1960s Space Age.

"This is my time capsule," he says.

Rudh's life seems nostalgically content, like a 1950s sitcom. But it was only four years ago that it came to a shattering halt. In 2007, he was laid off from his job at Best Buy's corporate headquarters. Then in August of that year, his longtime girlfriend, Mercedes, was driving over the Interstate 35W bridge when it collapsed. Her car fell six stories into the tangled mess below, breaking her legs and back.

"Maybe it sounds a little cliché, but be thankful for the things you have and embrace life," Rudh said. "You always hear those things. But I never thought I was going to get a phone call from my fiancée who could have been minutes away from death. She called me when she was pinned in the car and they needed to have the Jaws of Life sent down to her. She's the strongest woman I know."

As time passed, Mercedes got out of her wheelchair and went back to work in human resources at Best Buy. They were married in the fall of 2008. Around that time, Rudh started DJing full-time and his gigs began piling up. His wedding business continues to grow, and he's now the go-to guy for museum parties at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Walker Art Center. He also has a more casual music-listening night, titled simply Music, on the first Tuesday of every month at Kings Wine Bar.

"Nothing. I enjoy all modern conveniences," he joked. "But I am a history buff -- in life and in music. I love seeing how a certain band was formed, who they were influenced by and what influenced their influences. I just dig that. I dig that family tree. And I just keep going back."