Particularly valuable in this book are vital technical aspects of DJing that must be learned on the job and wouldn't just normally occur to a DJ. For instance, the 'Beatmixing 101' section is invaluable to the new DJ about how to link outgoing and incoming songs (mixing), appropriate and inappropriate songs to link together, and other technical must and should knows. Considering the topic, the book is appropriately written in a very colloquial, humourous tone, although there are enough spelling errors to detract from the book's professionalism somewhat.

Consider the multitude of music styles born in the last 50 years and the many different occasions for playing that music publicly or privately. In trying to authoritatively advise in so many areas of music, I think Chuck Fresh has bitten off way more than he can chew, despite his many years of experience in DJing. As other reviewers have mentioned, Chuck certainly is an authority on DJ/MCing weddings and private parties. In fact, I highly recommend this book to anyone planning a wedding or Bar/Bat Mitzvah just for that section because Fresh offers many insights into how a DJ/MC can make the DJed portion truly memorable, not just because it's hitched to a rite of passage.

However, when Fresh talks about DJing in a Club/Bar, my overall impression was he was pretty out of touch with that scene, at least that in Toronto, Canada. Certainly his technical insights seem to be accurate and valuable: knowing audio equipment, working with vinyl, maintaining lighting/sound systems, etc. Fresh's suggested playlists for bygone music genres seem pretty useful. But most of the things he suggests for stirring up the crowd seem silly, contrived, and often embarrassing. I think part of the reason is that Fresh wrote this book after many years of DJing, and club/popular music increasingly became a chore for him, not only to listen for and find but to have to shell out money for. Consequently, the closer you get to the present, the less he seems to be in touch with what's what musically. Hence, Fresh's many suggestions on using hype rather than music for generating excitement in a crowd. I've been to dozens of clubs regularly for about 8 years now, and very rarely does the DJ make a peep except to mention last calls for alcohol, much less offer banter between songs or outrageous contests. Granted, socially speaking Canadians are more conservative than Americans, and so maybe these tactics actually help American DJs. I also venture a contentious claim that the average Canadian is more intelligent than the average American, and so lowbrow banter which might delight the average American frat head wouldn't really appeal to the equivalent type of Canadian.

There is so much music out there, so many genres (past, present and emerging) and so much music within those genres that one absolutely CAN'T be a jack of all music trades and expect to speak with much credibility on many of them. For instance, Fresh gives only a passing, derogatory reference to Electronic music's significance. He says, "We accurately predicated that Latin music was going to be the next "big thing" over a couple years ago when everyone else was all wrapped up in that "electronica" thing that ended up fizzling quickly". This is bogus because time has proven Latin music to be just as ephemeral as electronic music, at least in the public spotlight. His statement also ignores that Electronic music is not a recent phenomena; it began with artists like Kraftwerk and Jean Michel Jarre in the 70's, has continually branched into subgenres since then, and many Electronic artists are now ignored who continue to put out the same quality of music that came out when Electronica was "hot" with groups like The Prodigy and Chemical Brothers "breaking" electronica to the mainstream.

I think a DJ will be losing most of the time, whether they know it or not, if they try to play the game of continually pandering to the audience, trying to play whatever genre or song seems to be `hot' and not playing (or knowing) songs solely for their merits. I recently heard Carlos Santana succinctly say a lot about musicians and the creative process: "If you don't feel it, they won't feel it". Over years of personal experience a true aficionado of a genre will unearth the gems in that genre the mainstream usually overlooked, and when that DJ plays those songs (many actually familiar to the club patrons) by and large I think the audience will feel and enjoy the music as much as the DJs. At the same time, if a DJ imposes heavily on a crowd with his own favorites, he must keep alert to crowd reactions, and Fresh gives several ways of recognizing attitudes to music in club patrons.

One thing I would have loved to have seen in the book or at least been given direction to is insight into the large question of how music affects people. For instance, how can a DJ develop a style, a pattern, a technique, which satisfies both audience and DJ? How could you effectively control a given crowd's energy over a 5 hour period (eg. 9PM to 2AM)? To do that, what sort of emotions would you want to evoke, when, and for how long, and how to fit that in with the rest of the programming? These sorts of questions are not addressed at all in the book, and although I'm sure most DJs have a few insights about this they keep to themselves, I'm betting that systematic inquiry about this sort of thing is virtually uncharted territory.