At the end of the year 2024, I wrote a tribute page in memory of the most talented nightclub DJ that I’ve heard in all my life, the deceased Mr. Massimo “Massimino” Riva. When I heard him playing live at the nightclub, in the year 1985, I was amazed by the excellence of his performances. Alas, he was a heroin abuser, and heroin stole his life a small number of years later. Before the dramatic event, I have noticed that the excellence of performances abandoned Mr. Riva, only one year after my evaluation of the above, in the year 1986. Well, it’s true that, luckily, not all nightclub DJs are drugs abusers, but their talents are all the way extremely fragile, and subject to losses or changes. Some of my readers might think that the talent of a nightclub DJ is not big, because the DJs don’t do much more than press play. However, are you sure to have the ability to press play exactly at the right moment? More, can you match a second track to a previous one, for making them sound together at the same rhythm? More, can you avoid a doubling of the output level when the two tracks are playing together? More, do you know how to make your mix sounding fluid and enjoyable? More, can you give to your series of mixes a coherence and enough of attractiveness? Well, I have listed only 5 crucial questions, the simplest and most intuitive, but, in reality, the questions that a professional nightclub DJ should answer are many more, various hundred. This is the main reason why the talent of a professional nightclub DJ is not a banal thing, easily accessible to anyone. When you keep the explanation of the above in your mind, you might comprehend that heroin abuse is a serious obstacle to the excellence of a DJ performance, because it reduces mental faculties and attention.
The page you’re reading is dedicated to another nightclub DJ, recently dead. He was a friend during my adolescence, and a good person. He never abused drugs, on the contrary, he was very committed, and had a high level of professional rectitude. The name was Mr. Antonio Caranci, known as DJ Tony Caranci. His talent was big, one of the biggest that I’ve appreciated. More precisely, as a teenager and starting from the year 1980, he was the excellent resident DJ at the Caravel discotheque in Mantua. Despite, a pair of years later his performances notably fell down. One of the reasons of the loss was the change of the reference model. In effect, in the year 1979 Mr. Caranci was undoubtedly a disciple of a superstar DJ from the US, Mr. Tom Savarese, who was the resident DJ of the Caravel disco before Mr. Caranci himself, in the summer of the cited year. A pair of years later, DJ Tony Caranci was heavily influenced by the DJs of the so-called “Afro-Cosmic” movement, who, for sure, don’t have the same respect for music of a superstar pioneer DJ of the Big Apple. Well, I have enough criticized and mocked the “Afro-Cosmic” DJs in the blog, and I don’t want to repeat myself. To say the truth, the loss of talent of DJ Tony Caranci had also a more serious, and valid reason, hearing problems, something very common and largely spread among professional nightclub DJs.
You need to know that human hearing apparatus is sensible and delicate. Experts say that hearing damages depend on the length of the exposure to elevate sound pressures. They also say that at a sound pressure of 85 dB, after some hour you might suffer from permanent damages to hearing apparatus. Consider that at nightclubs the average sound pressure varies from 100 to 120 dB, and the exposure to that might cause permanent hearing damages after 10-5 minutes. In the early 80’s, I visited many times the original Caravel (today it’s named “Mascara Club”), and I can assure you that the audio system was powerful, and the music was very loud. I can add that the cited system was not planned appropriately, for the following reasons: the DJ booth was close to 4 of the loudspeaker systems of the principal dance floor; there was a series of big sub-woofers (useless for a proper reproduction of disco music, and sources of heavy distortion); there were two series of super-tweeters (only useful to damage hearing apparatuses of dancers); and so on. Briefly, anything loud and expensive is not necessarily well-sounding, and suitable to disco dancing. Now, you can easily understand what caused the loss of talent of DJ Tony Caranci. More clearly, tinnitus and frequencies losses.
The conclusion, obviously, is equal to the title of the page. The mini-mix of the page is dedicated to the memory of the earliest DJ Tony Caranci. It includes the very first two tracks that DJ Tony Caranci mixed well during a night of the year 1980, Orlando Riva Sound – body to body boogie, and Claudja Barry – love for the sake of love. There also are the three tracks produced by Caranci himself during his lifetime (the last three in the short mix). The remaining 9 tracks have never been played by DJ Tony Caranci. They are beautiful songs slower than 95 BPM, that the teenager Tony Caranci would have played at the best.
File “Max Look’s mini-mix, DJ’s talent comes and goes (end of June 2026)”, length about 16’ and 27”, contains excerpts of 14 tracks, bound to the lifetime of DJ Tony Caranci (RIP), or not bound to it, but suitable to the level of his earliest performances.
DJ’s talent, the playlist:
Youssou N’Dour feat. Neneh Cherry – 7 seconds
Elisa – luce
Oleta Adams – rhythm of life
Orlando Riva Sound – body to body boogie
Claudja Barry – love for the sake of love
Rae & Christian feat. Veba – spellbound
Irene Nonis – recogn-eyez
Tears for Fears – head over heels
Marina Rei feat Neffa – t’innamoremix
Maxwell – ascension (don’t ever wonder)
St. Germain – sure thing
B. B. Bonsai – prince of the night
Meek Rabbit – sweetheart in England
Aleph – in your eyes
