Good Gig, Bad Gig.

[TrebleBassDJ]

There were requests for things I didn't have, or that wouldn't be suitable... but I learned a lot tonight by listening to what people wanted. I got request after request for Beyonce - Drunk In Love.. I didn't know it, but knew I'd bought it so had a listen. Nah, I can't play that, I thought. More requests came in for it... hmmm.. and more... jees they've got like 30 people to ask me to play it.. There were also requests to play stuff off Youtube, but I just said I can't. Not legal to play YT in public, or "hotel wifi's not good enough".. & they swallowed it. I probably could if pushed, play from YT.. but nah.

I use the same excuse when it comes to playing music from youtube, blame with wifi and have done with it, when I tell people its illegal they just reply with "doesnt matter no body will know", well it matters to me.
If someone wants music from a phone its a flat out no, inless its the birthday girl etc then I sometimes make an exception. You can never get a smooth transition from VDJ to iPhone plus the quality could be poor which makes you look a fool.

[Excalibur]

Another prom tonight.. a local comprehensive school leavers party with 160 lads & lasses all baying for a good dance.

.

Mine ran along similar lines. The behaviour wasn't that different, either. They were really up for a party, and very well behaved. After the three gruellers I've had lately, this was a welcome boost. Dunno about an 11pm finish though, mine was 1am!

I had requests for a lot of standard party fare, some of which I got on, but classic R & B seemed to be most populat, with a bit of D & B as well. Good job I had the full PA out.

Unloading/loading for this was " interesting ". You have to bounce up a high kerb, and park on the pavement next to a very busy trunk road!

Hen party Saturday, if I survive, I'll tell ( almost ? ) all.

[Nakatomi]

Mine ran along similar lines. The behaviour wasn't that different, either. They were really up for a party, and very well behaved. After the three gruellers I've had lately, this was a welcome boost. Dunno about an 11pm finish though, mine was 1am!

I had requests for a lot of standard party fare, some of which I got on, but classic R & B seemed to be most populat, with a bit of D & B as well. Good job I had the full PA out.

Unloading/loading for this was " interesting ". You have to bounce up a high kerb, and park on the pavement next to a very busy trunk road!

Hen party Saturday, if I survive, I'll tell ( almost ? ) all.

This time I had my Mackies in a different place. Normally there are tables all across the back but last night I got em well back, almost against the wall. It didn't half improve the bass response & I barely had to touch 0dB out of the mixer all night. Don't get me wrong I still think I need a sub, but that's not a decision I'm rushing into (as in WHICH sub).

[Excalibur]

. Don't get me wrong I still think I need a sub, but that's not a decision I'm rushing into (as in WHICH sub).

I had mine with me last night, and the earth ( or my part of the stage at least ) was definitely moving!
It's rare that I take those blighters out now, it's usually either the one Alto, or nothing. The more I use 12" cabs on their own, the more I wish I had a pair of 15".

[funktions]

bridezilla time for us .. great venue, really nice, ruined by the sound limiter screwed onto a wooden beam, hit the beam lightly and meter shoots up, great for any low frequencies. but we kept it under the 92db limit and never tripped out so we were happy, BUT.. that period where you set up, they are wandering around, you play some background type music just to play something as no one is interested in dancing or anything like it for the next hour. head bridesmaid comes up, the bride is worried you don't have any of the songs requested, we advised her yes we have every single one she pre requested "vast range of genres" explained we will be playing them later once the first dance has been done etc, ok she says wanders off. 2 mins later shes back, well the bride wants you to play the list you were given, that sinking feeling when you realize your just a very expensive ipod.
so playing stuff from the list and expanding from it slightly as you do we were off and running, not much interest, one of the brides wants was no cheese, or sing along songs.. so play the first dance, all good second song must be mr Brightside, funnily enough bit of a sing along that one.. eventually managed to get the ipod list into some sort of semblance of workability, ended up full dance floor for the next 2.5 hours even though we wandered off the list a lot, groom was a top bloke and said it was awesome, everyone enjoyed it, bride wanted to know why we didn't play what she ordered, we played every song on the 3 sheets of a4 she "ordered", well it was her night and she got what she wanted...
oh and all the "suppliers" had to be dressed in black, its only 22 degrees that's fine we will happily cook away, even the organizer said she was a bit of a primadonna but that's the fun of weddings right ??

[Imagine]

Scorchio time for me last night.

I was in a conservatory on the back of a posh hotel for a 40th birthday. Don't get me wrong, lovely venue (although the conservatory was tiny to say the least), but....it's nothing more than a big greenhouse and as it had been up to 30 degrees here yesterday.....

Got there early because I guessed it was going to be hot. I wasn't wrong and needed every additional minute to get in and get set up (it's a complete swine to get the gear into). Was absolutely drenched by the time I switched the music on (I actually got through something like 4 litres of water last night).

Now, this conservatory opens out onto a nice patio and a floodlit lake - really nice to look at, and unfortunately that's where the majority of the guests spent the evening. I had the speakers turned that way at one point and plugged on with the playlist I'd been given, which wasn't actually too bad if I'm honest and covered a big mix of different genres.

10pm, the venue manager insists I kill the volume and the bass (we're in a residential area). You could actually hear the guests talking over it! Why do these places hire out for discos knowing that they can't actually do them with proper noise levels? To make matters worse, they also insisted that all doors and windows were now kept closed (it's still like an oven at this point!)

Luckily, the Procetto (at £8 a glass!!!!) kicked in at around 10:30, and going well off the birthday girl's playlist I managed to fill the floor with some good old fashioned 70's classics, followed by a 90's club set (yes....at low volume).

Finished off with a massive group sing-a-long and hugs to the Beatles "All You Need Is Love" as requested - applause, thanks and time to de-rig. Even at midnight it was sickly hot and clearing out was absolute hell in that heat. It was one of those where it was nice to be heading home in the van just to get fresh air streaming into the windows.

Next week - kid's Karaoke on Friday and an all-day village feast type event on Saturday. Let's hope it's a LOT cooler!

[Excalibur]

Hot one for me in more ways than one. Hen party in a local Golf Club, so I was expecting the usual arduous load in. I stopped in town for fish and chips, and as soon as the airflow through the van stopped, it was absolutely sweltering. Surprisingly good news on arrival, drive the van right up to the patio outside the function room, and just a few steps up.
Not a large dance area, made smaller by the buffet tables at the far side and about a dozen tables and fifty chairs stacked up round me at my side.
The ladies were a tad risqué at times ( and that's being diplomatic ) but very well behaved otherwise, and we had a lively dancefloor all night, until the last half hour, when all of a sudden everybody seemed to just switch off. I was effectively playing background music for that time, as folk cleared up the debris.
An evening with a notable first, I played The Vengabus five times, and actually ended with it. Coupled with playing it on Thursday, that's six times in two outings.

[Nakatomi]

Last nights wedding was cancelled, by which I mean I wasn't required. The couple had brought a mate of theirs along, with way too much gear for the room & way too loud a PA too. There weren't many dancers either by all accounts from the staff today.
It'd have been nice finding out before 3pm yesterday that I wasn't going in but hey.

So that left me with the all day 50s & 60s tunes for a classic car show kind of gig today. I rolled up at 9am, set up my gazebo (Nowt flash, ALDI special but I figured it'd keep enough rain off things for a spell should a downpour happen) .

PA set up next after I made the outdoor bar extension leads safer, with an RCD & plugged my own into there & taped everything down nicely.

I'd previously tested my mc2000 with my radio mic & found it sounded great last week but today for some reason it was awful, so I brought out my little mixer & ran the controller & mic into that and the PA from there. Sounded nice.

I couldn't get my speaker stands very high, darn gazebo but enough sound was reaching the places it needed to.

Music wise, I almost had dancing breaking out on the lawns.. Plenty of feet were tapping away & I had loads of comments about how good the music was. Even without cards to hand out I've got 3 bookings for parties out of it in theory. I was told by one woman how she saw me with a laptop & feared the worst. Isn't it nice to give people a pleasant surprise now & again? Not that it takes an awful lot of nouse to put Chuck Berry 'Sweet sixteen' next to The Beach Boys 'Surfin USA' like!

The weather was superb all day & even managed to beat the forecast.

And then, somebody I recognised from a gig a while ago rolled up. He had a car in the show as it happened & was there with his wife. I'd DJd their gothic wedding. We had a brief matter before I had to go back to curating the music. They thanked me for my set before they left too.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the day, especially getting to flex different musical muscles to the usual current day fayre. I love rock & roll & a lot of sixties music. Genuinely not enough call for it where I work & it was refreshing to be able to get it all out.

[Nakatomi]

Last night I had a wedding (what a surprise) at my residency, and wow what a cluster mess it turned out to be but it came good in the end.

First of all, I showed up nice & early to have a non-sweaty leisurely setup.. I was just putting my speakers on stands when a glamorous young woman & her dad showed up. She was the piano/guitar singer. News to me. So, we agreed how we were going to share the space and were almost set up when 3 guys came in the room. One of them was swearing a lot.. and I mean a lot about how much of a surprise me & the singer being there was.

Anyhoo, ever the pro (hey, why can't we all just get along? The Elvis man & the piano lady's dad really didn't have anything nice to say about each other at all) I acted as mediator & ensured we all had sufficient space to set our gear up. Piano guitar singer lady was off of that telly talent thingy apparently and was very good. She was over & out of the room by 8pm & I discreetly moved my stands around to their usual positions.

The Elvis impersonator with his Freddie Mercury tribute sidekick on the other hand... Whoah deary me. The F-bomb was dropped on way too many occasions & his working men's club routine was going down like a fart in a space suit resulting in about 100 people out of a crowd of 120 leaving the room. At 8.45 I announced the buffet was open between Elvis/Freddie numbers which encouraged the ire of the Elvis guy... and as people ate the turn went into a few instrumental numbers like Apache & Riders In The Sky. Fair enough.. I was outside having a sly cig when I heard 'Riders in the sky' come on.. with a severely detuned guitar. I was laughing out loud, thinking it was done for comedic effect but the duration of it told me otherwise. Oh very dear. Then the next few songs, still with the detuned guitar.. nah that just wasn't funny.

Elvis & Freddie men had a break, implying they'd be back for another hour but after me playing 20 minutes of background Elvis man told me they were sacking the other half of their set. Time by this point had marched on to 10pm & the cake cut couldn't happen until the 'band' had taken their gear down.

That done, it was 10.25 by then & we finally had a cut cake & the first dance was out of the way. Attempts to tempt the remaining crowd did okay but people still preferred to stay outside til around 11pm when somebody asked for 'House at the weekend' which (amazingly, I thought) got a few people up. At some point I decided it might be fun to ape Fatboy Slim & slip in the intro to 'Bounce' by Calvin Harris, replacing the word 'bounce' with 'BITCH' played from my sample rack a few times before going into another tune.. And then some wise guy told me if I played 90s dance tunes the floor would fill to capacity. By this point I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt & what did you know but... cheers & an absolutely rammed dancefloor. So, out came the 90s club classics - sandy B make the world go round (CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!), Wink's Consciousness, Born Slippy, Insomnia, Professional Widow, Let The Beat Hit 'Em... For An Angel which morphed nicely into JPS 'Lover'.. and then a real gem.. SL2 On A Ragga Tip.. and we finished the night with The Warrior.

I was taking the gear down & I swear my hand was going to drop off it was being shaken so much by the guests. An amazing end to a gig I thought was going to have to be penned as 'one of those' where too many cooks spoiled everything.

The bride & groom came back as I was loading the car, said they wished the disco'd been able to start earlier & thanked me for the last hour which they said was amazing. No problem I said.

Observations about the other PA I played alongside.. the piano lady had all Yamaha.. 12" active tops (no subs) & they sounded [b]lovely[b] - very musical.. not that much low end but what there was was well defined & the high end didn't 'fizz' at all.. it was restrained & very pleasant. The 'band' had 2 15" FBT active subs & 14" (!) active FBT tops. I'd honestly have expected much better bass. It wasn't very punchy at all - though a little louder than my mackies the bass didn't seem that much better. Maybe it's something to do with the FBT subs being bandpass designs (aka 'one note bass' in some circles). I sneaked a look at their desk's EQ.. and it was flat on all but the vocal channels so I thought it should've been much better. Meh. Not worth the money or the hassle (of lugging 2 subs around) based on that performance..

[Shakermaker Promotions]

Last night I was in a nice big hall with a stage around 5 minutes drive away from my house providing a Disco, Uplighting and Projection for a 21st birthday.
It wasn't just a 21st birthday though and ended up being a surprise engagement party (once she'd said "Yes"). Of course, I knew about the proposal all along. It was only me and the boyfriend (who'd booked me) that knew. He hadn't told anyone else at all.

I was originally booked for another function but the date got moved to later in the year. This booking came in around a month ago and then something else came in so Daryll covered that one for me (thanks Daryll).

I have to say that it is a kind of relief that it is done and dusted now as it has been quite stressful. The guy also booked a photo booth via one of my contacts. The booking was going through me but I was let down for a number of reasons. I've networked with the supplier many times so it was a bit strange and out of character for him to not contact me and go on the 'missing list' for weeks. I'd like to thank Darren who tried to source a replacement. In the end there wasn't a photo booth at last night's party. I'd confirmed with the guy that despite many calls I couldn't find a replacement and he was surprisingly (in my opinion) chilled out about it. He said it would have been a nice extra but nevermind.

So, I arrive at the venue as agreed at 2.00pm. Access is relatively easy....Back up the van to the doors behind the stage and then a short walk.
The van was full up so I knew it would take me a while to set up and test everything and I was determined not to end up a sweaty mess but I still did.
Uplighting was first on the agenda and I got that done pretty quickly (Purple and Green). Then it was the Disco and then finally the projection (2 x projectors linked together with 2 screens). I took another laptop and also a combo amplifier so that the sound from the slideshow went through the amplifier when the time came (all will be revealed in a moment). It took me just under 2 hours to set the whole thing up.

I have to say that the customer did a brilliant job with the slideshows he created. He originally did them as powerpoint presentations but I advised that they'd be better as movie files (rightly or wrongly, I just prefer using them and find them easier). Over the past few weeks we'd been communicating regularly and coming up with ideas and he was really appreciative. One slideshow was full of facts relating to her birth date and photos and the other was a full on build up to the surprise proposal with photos and words with Bruno Mars - Marry You as the soundtrack - It was very good.

So, I am booked from 7.30pm - 11.30pm with a strict 11.30pm cut off for the music and everyone out by Midnight. I'd chatted with the caretaker during the week and told him that it would be a miracle if I was out by Midnight but I'd do my best and he was fine. Again, he appreciated the fact that I was taking the time to contact him to let him know the score. 100 guests expected but I'd say there were about 60, possibly 70 at the most and mainly very nice young ladies who weren't wearing much. I didn't have a request list but was told that they liked current music. At 8.00pm the place was relatively busy but it was very bright. The skylight windows didn't have black out curtains and it was pointless having the disco lights on really. The birthday girl turned up with a large crowd of her friends at around 8.30pm and went straight on to the dance floor which was encouraging. People liked the slideshow that was playing and you could see people pointing and laughing and talking (which is why I liked doing them really). Buffet came out at 9.00pm and as people ate and danced, the guy came up and we worked out when he would do his thing. I don't think I have ever seen anyone so nervous before.

When it got to 10.00pm and the light outside had now disappeared, the venue looked great. The uplighting was vibrant (strange choice of colours in my opinion - reminded me of that childrens show Barney the Dinosaur), and the dance floor was quite busy. The guy was up on stage with me out of everybody's view getting changed into a suit and getting himself prepared. I told him all would be fine and then made the announcement. I asked for everybody's attention and asked the birthday girl to come right to the front. Every single person in the venue was looking at the screens. She stood at the front with her friends surrounding her and I simply said "Ladies & Gents, watch the screens!". As soon as the music started I could see that a number of people had guessed what was happening. I found it quite amusing when I heard one of the birthday girls friends shout "Oh my god, he isn't is he?" and there was a look of confusion on the birthday girls face. I seriously think she didn't have a clue what was happening in front of her. As the slideshow was coming to the end I shook hands with the guy and said "go for it". He made his way off the stage and when everybody saw him they clapped and cheered. His timing couldn't have been better because as the song finished and the screens showed a big question mark, he knelt down in front of his girlfriend. I got on the mic and said "Everybody, listen" and it went dead quiet within a second. He asked her and she screamed "Yes!!!!" and the place went mad. I got everyone to cheer them and congratulated them over the mic and also said "You came here tonight for your 21st birthday party and you're going to go home engaged" and everyone cheered again. She looked up at me and gave me the thumbs up and I could see the tears rolling down her face. It was a lovely moment.

After that though it was a bit of an anti climax. It was very hot in the venue and people would dance to 1 or 2 songs and then go outside. A lot of people left around 10.30pm and I thought it was dragging on a bit. I'd said to the guy beforehand that I'd start preparing stuff for break down where possible to reduce the time in packing up and in between songs I managed to pack away the screens and projectors and various other bits. I even got lots of stuff by the back doors ready to load in the van when I'd finished. Nobody could see me as I was up on the stage. This really helped a lot because once I'd played the last song of the night at 11.30pm and the lights went up, there seemed to be a mad rush with those that were left in packing away everything so that they were all out by Midnight.
I was once again a sweaty mess as I rushed about getting the Uplighting units and breaking down everything else and I don't know how I did it but when I was just putting the last bits in the van I checked the time and it was 10 past Midnight. Lots of thank you's and a couple of cards given out and a couple of hugs from the newly engaged couple.

I was hot and was looking forward to getting home and getting an ice cold beer down my neck but I'd have to wait for that. For some reason my van wouldn't start?
Called the missus who was still up and got my jump leads to do the job once she'd finally found the venue. As I got parked up I turned the engine off and thought I'd start it again to see if it was ok and it wouldn't start again so I've had that on my mind all night and have had an hour's kip at the most. Busy week coming up and I need to get it sorted.....Aaargggh!!