Few DJs wake up each morning with the nagging dilemma of ‘Will I lose the Golden Ear’? Welcome to DJ Louie DeVito’s early morning crisis.
While most euro clubbers are fans of Oakenfold, Tiesto and Erik Morillo (the other mega DJs) — Louie DeVito has become a superstar among an entirely different audiences around the globe.
His N.Y.C. Underground Party, released on his own independent Elastik label, sold 450,000 copies. That may pale in comparison to CD sales of pop stars like Kelly Clarkson who sell in the millions, but it was enough to land Louie DeVito in the Guinness record books for all-time best-selling DJ mix compilation. Paul Oakenfold (listed in Guinness as the most successful DJ of all time) sold a mere 222,000 copies of his best-selling album to date, Tranceport (Kinetic).
“I called it 'New York City Underground Party,'" explains DeVito, "but I’m the first to admit that for the hard clubber, there's nothing underground about it. You have to define who you're asking. For your average mainstream dance fan, it’s very underground."
In spite of all the success, or perhaps because of it, there is one thing DeVito claims has eluded him in his music career – respect. He’s aware that many of his DJ peers consider him a sell out. DeVito inverted the hallowed DJ success paradigm, the one that clearly states that a DJ shall only release a CD (and then to generally modest success) after years of begging gigs at tiny clubs and working to headline at larger ones. DeVito was a Billboard success story before the club cognoscenti knew who he was.
DeVito, however, is unapologetic. "A lot of DJs in the club industry think that to be legit, you have to play hard, dark trance beats. I don’t subscribe to those edicts. As a DJ, I’m not playing for myself. I play what my crowd wants to hear.”
The music his crowd craves is an indulgent blend of radio-friendly club smashes, the sort of aerobicizing tracks where vocals are a prerequisite and the synth riffs are bigger than Yankee stadium. And though harder DJs may label his music ‘commercial’, it’s DeVito who is taking over the nation’s most prestigious booths. In addition to monstrous record sales, and because of them, he is being aggressively courted by the same clubs the trance DJs once believed was exclusive to them.
Case in point, DeVito released the much-anticipated Pacha CD (Pacha, for those outside of the club realm, is the crème de la crème of nightclub chains). There are Pachas in every major world city including New York, Rio De Janeiro, Madrid, and the party capital of the planet, Ibiza.
Landing the Pacha gig was a major coup for DeVito. It sent shock waves through a club community who despite his record sales, had misjudged DeVito’s viability in the scene. Now, no matter how they felt about his legitimacy, they could no longer deny Louie DeVito’s prominent position in the DJ hierarchy.
In support of the Pacha album, Louie DeVito will embark on an international Pacha tour. He will play every Pacha nightclub in the world, and spin the harder beats than what his American fans might be used to.
Due to the success of DeVito’s first Pacha CD including a June 07 and encore appearance at Pacha Ibiza, the fate of Louie’s craft has been embraced. A respectful second”Pacha NY“ double CD has been released on Ultra Records throughout the US and a remixed UK import on Pacha Recordings.
Today Louie continues to take his craft and skills to the next level with more focus on producing his own original material for future CD projects.
“I’ve built my career on what peers consider ‘mainstream driven’ music,” he says. “I don’t really care what DJs may say about me. I’m not playing for them. My only concern is giving a kick ass party. That’s what I’m about.”