“It's fun to put the jigsaw pieces together. Sometimes it goes terribly wrong, but 98% of the time, we’re good”: Music on the Rocks with Maurice Alexander

 Maurice Alexander playing a set at The Little Scarlet Door on Friday, the 21st of March 2025.

There is no doubt that DJs hold London’s nightlife on their shoulders. Flowing cocktails, good company and flashing lights can only do so much to make the “going out” experience exciting, but the magic that DJs provide is a crucial element of any memorable evening. Maurice Alexander is one of these masterful artists, and although he is not a mainstream name, his sets at London’s most famous clubs and bars keep folks itching for more, week after week. Despite being a father of two incredibly cool kids and balancing daily performances at locations all throughout London, Alexander manages to remain cool, calm and collected– and perhaps just slightly sleep deprived.  In this episode of Music on the Rocks hosted at The Little Scarlet Door, Alexander goes into the nuance of standing on business despite his love for the craft.

Frequent club-goers are probably well aware of your work, but, as many DJs are, you as a being is a mystery to most. Who are you?

MA: Professionally?

However you would like to be considered.

MA: My name is Maurice Alexander and I play other people’s music, and some of my own, for a living.

How long are we talking?

MA: You’re killing me. I’m going to give away my age here… my first gig was about 26 years ago? In school I used to DJ the high school dances. I used to have a fantastic CD wallet and I used to rent it out to people. That’s something weird to think about. I never think about the humble beginnings. Then, I started to buy records. Someone I really look up to said that “DJing is just about showing off what records you’ve got”, so then I learned how to mix with those. Now I DJ most nights of the week. It’s paid the bills for quite a long time.

How did you get your start in the industry?

MA: I never wanted to be a DJ. I just wanted to collect music. I am a music fan first, then a DJ. But, I lived with a prolific and kind of a “big-name” DJ. He told me, “you’ve got great taste, you should do this radio show with me”. I was never really into putting it out there, but then I thought, “hey, this is a lot of fun…”. Then I did my first ever public DJing on radio. 

You have regularly played sets at world renowned venues like The Box and Soho House in London– was that always the plan?

MA: Kind of… I have never looked for work, work has always just sort of found me. I have a knack for people coming up to me. If I had £1 for every person who came up to me asking for my details because they want me to do something for them, I’d be a rich, rich man. I’ll give my phone number out, or a business card, or my Instagram and it amounts to zero, but I’ve done some very cool stuff off it.

So did those venues come to you first?

MA: For The Box, my old housemate used to DJ there, and it’s known to be the hardest club to DJ in London. But I was like, “I’ll have a go at it! I smash every other gig I do, so it can’t be that hard”. It was quite a learning curve, but I figured it out. I’ve had really good sets, and it’s a lot of fun there. I’ve done some crazy gigs. 

The Little Scarlet Door, who is so kind as to host us today, finds any excuse to rave about you on a daily basis– they know your sets to have a general sound/flow, but, depending on the venue, do you find you have more or less control over what exactly you play? 

MA: In this particular venue, I have to play things that people know, but I also have to fit it within a remit of 80% what they want and what they’ve told me I’m allowed to play and 20% I have freedom to do things that may work for the crowd. I don’t play requests, and if someone’s requesting a song that I’m about to play, that’s divine timing and I resent playing it because they’ll think I’m playing it for them. If I play one, then I’ve opened the door to play one hundred. If there’s three hundred people in the venue and everyone wants a song, I’ve only got six hours. I’d be here all day. So, I only play what I feel is best. I’ve done it for a long time so I think I know what’s best. At Scarlet, it’s “nostalgic classics that people know”. It’s stifling. Everything has to be before 2012.

So at other places, do they do something similar? 

MA: No.

So you get more freedom?

MA: In The Box, I get to play a lot of House music, which I really like. It’s a lot of new House, so it keeps me on my toes. I like Dancehall and Afrobeats. But Pop… I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or negative towards it, because there’s a lot of music that I have a lot of fun playing. I have a routine with Black Eyed Peas, Backstreet Boys, Vanessa Carlton, Gwen Stefani, Natasha Bedingfield, Toploader, Estelle, then probably Mark Ronson after that. That all usually lasts ten minutes and gets the crowd going nuts. I’m showing off my mixing abilities. It’s quite fun because it jumps from, say, 90 BPM to 130 BPM in ten minutes. There’s word plays in it and all sorts of tricks, but I’ve done it so many times… the way I have to think of it is “these people are seeing it for the first time”. But, also, it turns out they’re not! They come every week for it!

House music usually needs drugs. In [The Little Scarlet Door] I think it’s ketamine, because they’re all zombies. It’s like, you need pills, but no one’s coming to a club to take pills ‘til 3 AM. So the big clubs that are open until 6 AM play House. If you’re just drinking, you don’t want House.

It’s like they need lyrics?

MA: My friend comes and watches me at one of the venues, and if they don’t know the first note of the song, it’s out. Six hours of that is exhausting. As much as 90% of the set is a skeleton where I just have to press play, but even then it’s exhausting. It’s never the same set twice, because sometimes they aren’t ready for certain songs or certain energies, so I have to filter it a bit. But, it’s still exhausting.

And then they all come back the next Friday?

MA: Yep, they come in the next Friday and do the same thing all over again, but they’re so pissed that they don’t even notice if I do the same thing every night.

The Little Scarlet Door staff may notice it, but they still love it. They tell their customers Friday is the best night to book because you play classics, but it’s easy to tell that you like the music you play and put effort into designing your set.

MA: I know the staff notices it because they’ve seen me for so long. I think about how I started here, and then how it is now, and it’s a totally different beast. It’s a monster now.

Staff will say it’s turned into a club rather than just a bar and customers are looking for more than just Pop hits– they want Reggaeton and Afrobeats.

MA: Yeah, but I’ve been told specifically not to play Reggaeton. I can even show you the brief. When I started, they said strictly no R&B. I did it, though, when it was open for only two months, and said “I will play, but let me do my thing”. It was Justin Timberlake and Beyonce… they liked it, and then changed the entire business model off what I did. Now, [other DJ] plays Gasolina six times a night. 

What’s the fun in doing this job where you should be challenging people and giving them more music. No one ever asks me about [the song playing], but I’ll see them Shazaming it. Like, good luck! Start a conversation with me. Don’t come up to me and say, “can you play this?”. Say, “hey, how are you doing? I really like your music, can I buy you a drink?”. I don’t drink, but that would be cool. There are people who come here every week and we’ll chat, but the people who usually come here and just shove their phone in my face are so rude.

At my Thursday gig and when I’m at The Box every other Wednesday, I’ve got security on me at all times. I’ve been specifically told, “if someone requests, you say you want ten grand and you can have five of it, the rest goes to the club”. The amount of times I’ve been given £1,000 to play a song… people there will just throw money at me and say “you’re doing a great job” as though I’m doing this for free. But, it’s nice! Sorry, I ramble…

Not a problem! Would you like to talk about Covid?

MA: Absolutely. Covid ruined my life.

Alright, then: since the pandemic, it seems as though the entire service industry has had to alter itself based on new customer needs. From a DJ perspective, have things changed much for you, specifically, over the past six years?

MA: Covid changed everything. It actually ruined my life. In 2020, there were six weeks of freedom where the bars were open. It was July 4th, and I was DJing, but no one was allowed to dance. It was cool, because I got to invoice for this, but I didn’t get paid until December 2022. I made up so much money that I really got paid in December 2022, but then I gave it all to the tax man.

There were some DJs who just left it and sat there and did nothing. That was me for the most part. I just studied music then. When we came out of it, I DJed probably ten times in one week. It was like, “F**k, I’m out of practice!”. DJing changed because no one had attention spans anymore. We were looking at the charts, but for 18 months everyone was just looking at TikTok. I played Burna Boy’s Last Last the day it came out. It samples Tony Braxton. It’s a f**king amazing song, but it flopped so hard. But then, six months later, it became one of the biggest songs in the world. You have to give people time to learn the words. It brought old songs back. You have to be up on the trends. If you’re aware of the trends, you can smash a crowd but it might piss the venue off, and vice versa. You might be able to please the venue, but let the crowd down. There’s a fine balance. With TikTok post-Covid, it has been challenging. I’ve DJed more, but have enjoyed it less. I’ve DJed on TikTok. It’s boring and it’s weird because you don’t have a crowd to interact with and you can’t feed off it. I can’t just look in one corner and go “let’s see if I can get these guys to move”. It's fun to put the jigsaw pieces together. Sometimes it goes terribly wrong, but 98% of the time, we’re good.

Final question, what is your biggest pet peeve about DJing, no matter where you are?

MA: This may be a weird way to answer, but I’ve been employed to provide the music. Now, I’m in control of the music for the duration of the night. Don’t try to put your agenda on me. If you want me to DJ your birthday, book me for your birthday. Don’t come to a venue where you aren’t paying me and try to take control of me just because it’s your birthday or special occasion. If they approached me in a different way, I might be more understanding, but the fact that people think they own me is not going to fly with me. I’m angry with people. The lack of manners that people have…if you went to the bar and asked for a drink, I’d hope you’d say please and thank you. So why wouldn’t you say it to me?

People want to touch the decks… I’m sat there thinking about the next six songs. I’m not thinking about what’s happening now. Yet I have to watch and I have to be a security guard, or this and that. I’ve not got the capacity to deal with that. I just have to make sure everyone’s dancing.

If you’ve got a song that says “half past twelve”, play it at half past twelve. “Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)” has to be played after midnight. If I play it before midnight, that’s bad. “Get Down Friday Nite” has to be played on Friday night. You cannot play that on Saturday night. Uptown Funk is such a big song, but it says Saturday night. This Is How We Do It by Montel Jordan is Friday.

Oh, and don’t get me started on other DJs… people try to mix vocals on vocals and it doesn’t work. It just sounds sloppy. Be better. Learn how to DJ before you start doing it in front of people. Then, maybe, we won’t have such a bad time and maybe rates will go up. DJ rates are atrocious at the minute. TikTok DJs have ruined it because they get a following, but they can only DJ for fifteen seconds. Anyone can do a really cool transition for fifteen seconds and make it look cool, but try doing that for ten hours with all of those transitions. People say I’m a good DJ, but I learned how to DJ before I even dreamt about performing, and now that’s lost. Also, buy the equipment before you come into another venue and break it. My DJ setup is f**king expensive. It’s like ten grand. I really look after it. Haven’t touched it in about six months, but I look after my equipment. So don’t come to a venue and just slam the cover down and mess with the buttons.

I mainly just wish that the customers would take better care of me. I don’t mean to sound so pessimistic, but I wish that there was a bit of respect for the DJ because we make or break your night. That’s all.

Well, thank you very much for your time. Good luck with your set tonight!

MA: Thank you very much for having me!