From New York’s underground dance scene comes one of its hardest working members: DJ, label boss and manager Mike Simonetti. Founder of the post-punk/indie rock label Troubleman Unlimited, Simonetti started Troubleman’s dance-oriented offshoot, Italians Do It Better, in 2006 to foster Italo-disco inspired projects like Glass Candy, Desire and Chromatics.
 
Simonetti came of age in New York’s 80s, CBGBs heyday. He played in bands and got his first job in the music biz as a promoter at Mars club. An avid collector of funk, rare groove and punk, he began DJing for friends. In the late 90s, while a resident at Happy Birthday Hideout, a semi-regular loft party in Brooklyn, Simonetti launched Contort Yourself, a small party in the basement of the Knitting Factory where he played disco, funk and old school.
 
Simonetti founded Troubleman Unlimited Records, based in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1993. Troubleman began as an offshoot of Simonetti’s fanzine – Wanna Communicate? – and released mostly 7 inch singles in the beginning. The label grew significantly in the early 2000s, when it began releasing full-length albums regularly. Simonetti recently started the dance label, Italians Do It Better, with Johnny Jewel of Glass Candy, as an offshoot of Troubleman. 
 
> vivaitalians.blogspot.com
> myspace.com/troubleman
 
Appearances:
> CTM.10 > ITALIANS DO IT BETTER