DJ Jerome Farley

Without hesitation, Jerome Farley pronounces that his passion in life is music. With that passion comes an astonishing gift for the art of playing music as a disc jockey. Having amassed already over 5,000 records by the time he moved to New York City at the age of 19 to attend graduate school at Columbia University, Jerome became enthralled by the legendary DJ Junior Vasquez at New York’s original Sound Factory. By recreating the magic he heard in the clubs in his NYC loft in between his ivy league obligations, Jerome quickly became noticed by movers and shakers of the finicky club scene and landed his first weekly DJ residency at Save the Robots on NYC’s lower east side. His uncanny ability for selecting music and reconstructing it before a packed house each week produced many additional offers to perform, and to his idol’s chagrin, Farley replaced Vasquez as resident DJ at NYC’s Tunnel (Vasquez went on to Arena at Palladium), and played to a packed house of 3,000 pundits every Saturday. He honed his skills as early as 1998 at NYC’s Twilo and as recently as last summer at Miami’s Twilo. To date, Farley’s record collection includes 75,000 meticulously organized vinyl singles and at least another 100,000 digital tracks. His music collection is the envy of any dj or dance music aficionado.
Farley hit the ground running as a music entrepreneur when he founded and operated Tantrum Recordings. His homespun label’s debut release launched the production careers of both John Creamer and Razor & Guido, all of whom went on to great commercial success. His business savvy was noticed immediately by one of the most influential and successful worldwide heavyweights of dance music, Eightball Records. Eightball chairman Alex Kaplan lamented having overlooked Creamer’s single on Jerome Farley’s Tantrum imprint, particularly since Creamer ran the retail wing of Eightball Records. Jerome was quickly installed as first the Director of A&R and soon thereafter as CEO of Eightball Records and its subsidiaries, Empire State Records and Flatiron Records. Under Farley’s tenure, he was responsible for hits by a bevy of individuals that showed his finesse for identifying talent: Victor Calderone, Junior Vasquez, That Kid Chris, Tim Rex, John Creamer, Peter Bailey, Richie Santana and others. Farley also produced and released his first album, “Work Hard.” It remains a seminal collection of dance music tracks.
In a bizarre turn of events while wearing a different hat as CEO of Eightball, DJ Junior Vasquez and Farley grew close, and by the turn of the millennium, the two had allied themselves. Farley is credited for having reignited Vasquez’s prowess for nine years.
This year struck out on his own as a solo artist and disc jockey with acclaimed performances in Miami, Toronto, DC, San Francisco and New York City, as well as an acclaimed debut performance in Spain and a forthcoming radio show in multiple markets.
The DJ-turned-manager-turned-dj Jerome has an unmistakable presence and control over his dancefloors in NYC and well beyond. About the apparent full circle of his career, he remarks, “I’ve never stopped being a dj. My former partnership provided me with a great deal of access from which no other dj has benefited, and along the way I have sharpened my programming and technical skills, and I did everything I could for my old client.” He likens the experience to earning a second Ph.D. and says with unmistakable confidence, “I am ready.”
Already with what many would consider an already envious list of accomplishments, Jerome sees his best days ahead. He feels the pulse of music on a worldwide scale beating in Spain and quite debilitated in the once-thriving island of Manhattan, and coupled with his once-oddball academic background in Castilian culture and fluency in Spanish and Catalan, DJ Jerome Farley moved his homebass to Barcelona, Spain. On a roll already in Barcelona, busy in the studio with a brilliant team of musician and engineer partners, and building new alliances in Spain and Europe, "things are good". Breaking a sweat in the dj booth, working every record inside out, remains the drive of this man and his team.