I’m a former radio DJ from Italy, reborn after many years as an amateur web DJ. On radio I spoke Italian, although I tried to pay attention to the content of non-Italian songs, or of Italian songs sung in English. Today, my blog is almost entirely in English, except for the page titled “Lettori italiani”. I know that my English is not perfect, while my Italian is excellent. Despite, I’ve decided to abandon my native language, and I’m committed for a continual improvement of my English. I’m doing that for many reasons, one of which is putting myself into conditions vaguely recalling the ones of professional DJs. However, professional DJs are strictly constrained by legal and fiscal aspects, contractual obligations, context where they perform, expectations of their audience, necessity of building and maintaining a reputation, need to establish enough of professional relationships, and other commercial topics, including advertising. On the contrary, I’m more or less free of playing what I want, even if I’ve chosen the road of thematic, or significant, playlists, and I think to be able to offer a personal contribution, potentially useful to professional DJs. More clearly, the page aspires to propose some criteria for compiling playlists, appropriate and adequate to the purposes of each professional. I also want to criticize a wrong praxis, largely spread among Italian professional DJs.
The first observation, coming from experiences and musical knowledge, is equal to the title of the page. It means that, when you mix on the beat a song about a great boxer with a song about Ken Kesey’s magic bus, the technical perfection of the mix is irrelevant, and the result is comical, senseless, and demonstrates a scarce level of professionalism. Generally, professional DJs can’t ignore the content of songs, because playing the wrong song at the wrong place makes the performance grotesque and not acceptable. More, there are DJs hired for peculiar events, who should avoid anything not suitable to the event itself. For instance, can a wedding DJ play sex dwarf by the Soft Cell? No, because the song is dark, offensive, and completely out of context. More, there are special dance floors, that requires a certain musical genre. Consequently, at a festival dedicated to hardcore music, you can’t play the best of blues, or jazz, if you don’t want to be immediately fired. Is there any creative freedom for professional DJs, like for visual artists? The answer is that the creativity of DJs doesn’t reside in the compilation of their playlist, but in the ways they can make interesting and enjoyable the tracks that they are forced to play. A pair of examples. A house music DJ must play house music, at the requested rhythms, normally from 128 to 130 BPM. Commonly, the records should be recently released, not more than 3 months before. If the venue has contracts with record labels, the DJ should respect the contracts. Nevertheless, the same playlist can be played in myriads of different ways. For that, the second example is about three different ways of playing the tracks of the official playlists of DJ David Mancuso, a deceased pioneer DJ from NYC. David Mancuso himself was exclusively focused on high fidelity of sounds, and on the respect of tracks, that were maintained not married, in a single status. DJ Mrs. Colleen “Cosmo” Murphy operates quick, accurate, and melodic transitions between the tracks, and provokes perfect marriages between them. I’ve recorded two mixes of the preferred house music tunes of DJ Mancuso, and my interventions have been on “secret fantasies”, the structure of tracks. Betrayals of the tracks themselves have followed, although not of “public domain”, surprising, and a little bit exciting. Of course, even if the music is the same, the three types of recordings are radically different. Sorry, you can’t verify the second example, because, as my readers know, my recordings are only posted for a small number of months, and after that they are maintained strictly private.
An evidence of the absence of professionalism of me is that I’ve utilized around 60 classics of northern soul for thematic playlists, but extraneous to northern soul. Given the content of the page, I’ve decided to give back the appropriate place to 22 of those classics. It means that I’ve recorded a special mix of northern soul.
File “keep the faith, lost and gained back, by Max Look DJ (end of Aug 2026)”, 1 hour and 21’ of classics of northern soul, this time utilized appropriately.
Back to their place, the playlist:
Sister Sledge – love don’t go through no changes on me
Invitations – look on the good side
Darrell Banks – open the door to your heart
Supremes – stoned love
James Fountain – seven day lover
Four Below Zero – my baby’s got ESP
Jamo Thomas & his Party Soul Brothers – I spy for the FBI
Flaming Ember – Westbound #9
Originals – down to love town
Boogie Man Orchestra – lady, lady, lady
Terry Callier – ordinary Joe
First Choice – this is the house
Poets – she blew a good thing
Impressions – can’t satisfy
Coffee – Casanova
Robert Knight – love on a mountain top
Francine McGee – delirium
Jimmy Fraser – of hopes and dreams and tombstones
Exciters – blowing up my mind
Eddie Holman – this will be a night to remember
Booker T. & the M.G.’s – green onions
21st Creation – tailgate
