Harder Better Faster Stronger

In the last couple of weeks I have come to a chilling realisation. The music library I use for DJing is in desperate need of overhaul.

As a veteran user of CDJ units, I have long been in possession of an unwieldy yet manageable 400-disc wallet which has the original set of CDs made for me by my first boss, Josh, at the front. There are 8 mix CDs at the back in case of emergencies, or doing clubs where I can get away with sticking one on for the first hour. And in between are the many CDs I burned myself to update and expand the collection in order to keep up with new music and expand into areas that might get me more work. After the latest update, made for my first ever paid New Years Eve gig, the wallet is full. It's in an order not even I myself fully understand. For the last year or so my song selection strategy has usually involved flipping through the wallet in either direction simply looking for something that mixes with what's playing on whatever discs share a page with the one that's playing.

So, with no more room to expand, the time has come for the first full-on revamp of the library I have ever done. I've done a partial revamp before, but I believe it's now time to jettison those old, scratched, battered CDs from my glory days at Fat Poppadaddys in favour of a completely new set. It's a gargantuan task, involving re-evaluating every song in that book (about 3,500 songs by my estimate) for relevance, utility and indeed whether I can bloody well stand to hear some of them ever again.

In the process, I will be faced with the dilemma of songs I really like but never play, songs I hate but are inexplicably popular with my audiences, and generally preserving a body of work that can get me comfortably through a possible 6 hour set, through multiple genres, and retain enough variety to avoid playing entirely the same set every week. It begins with a torturous slog through my iTunes library in alphabetical order, followed by a second sweep for songs that I play regularly but forget the name of, and then a third and final run through spotify and the iTunes store for new releases and zeitgeist defining music that I've yet to get my hands on.

After all that, I will then be faced with splitting the results by genre, making sure that iTunes put them in alphabetical order properly. Then each genre gets split up into 80 minute playlists to fit onto CDs. And then I can burn two copies of each, type up and print the track listings onto CD sized bits of paper, label everything up and put them into a new wallet. The whole process, which I began yesterday afternoon, will probably take me the best part of a month around my other commitments. By the end of it I will hate all music that's ever been made and be ready to quit my job. Good times.

Anyhoo, I'm open to suggestions of possible inclusions in the new set. Rules are relatively simple. Keep things reasonably dancefloor friendly (i.e. nothing to depressing, down-tempo or shouty). And pick from things you could reasonably fit into any of the following genres:

Indie (Arctic Monkeys to Vampire Weekend type stuff)
Britpop (Blur, Oasis, Pulp etc)
Guitar-driven stuff (anything from Rolling Stones to The Clash etc)
Funk & Soul (James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye etc)
Neo Funk & Soul (Quantic Soul Orchestra, Amy Winehouse, Belleruche)
Hip-hop (Nothing too Gangsta, i'm thinking golden age stuff like Tribe Called Quest, J5, De La Soul)
Commercial Dance/Breakbeat (Chemical Brothers, Basement Jaxx, Prodigy, Daft Punk etc)
Reggae, Ska and Dub (Bob Marley, Chaka Diemus and Pliers, Mr Vegas, The Specials, Desmond Dekker, NOT Shaggy)
Commercial Drum & Bass (Roni Size, Pendulum, Shy FX & T-Power, nothing too filthy)
Mashups (i.e. two songs spliced together)

Nothing too obscure please. Doesn't have to be a massive hit, but helpful if it's a single, or been on an advert or soundtrack.

Finally, I'd really like some suggestions for good mix CDs. At the moment I have Andy Smith's Document III for hip-hop/funk soul crossover, an NME compilation for nu-rave, indie-dance stuff, and DJ Yoda's How To Cut And Paste Volume I. That leaves at least 5 empty spots. Lay them on me.