Andy Goodtimes
18-12-2010, 08:55 AM
What a nightmare last night; arrived at the Manchester Airport Hilton and no sooner than I arrived and was unloading the snow came down pretty heavy, anyway got set-up in the main room for their Christmas party night, did the sound check and just as I was waiting for the guests to enter the room the Manager came up and asked did I know any Manchester based DJs as the hotel had forgot to book a DJ for the overspill in the JFK suite. I gave him some numbers but none of them were available so he managed to find someone by ringing round etc.
My guests came in and then he came back again and said that the DJ he had found couldn’t make It till about 8.30pm so could I do anything to help re back-ground music during the meal. I put a pair of RCF322s in there on a Carlsbrough wireless link and just let them have exactly the same as I was playing for my room which worked well. Next thing was he came back again at about 9pm just as the puddings were going out to say the DJ had had a bump in the snow and was road-side with the Police and it didn’t look as if he could make it at all. I ended up putting in a stand with 2 Impossableds and an arch made out of 6 visio bars and 2 visio curved corner bars…TBH it all looked pretty good and it all worked out surprisingly well. The plan was that at about midnight we would be able to pull both parties together in the big room as folk drifted off but it never happened. Both rooms stayed full till the end and not one person complained about the lack of a proper DJ in the overspill room. Both rooms had totally packed dance floors all night and they even had to push some tables closer together and add extra dance floor panels in the main room at about 11pm…What an atmosphere! People were drifting between the 2 rooms and mixing with each other well, no one went early even though the snow was getting pretty serious and I was playing them off with each other seeing which room could out cheer the other and so on.
Didn’t stop playing till about 1.15am and with having to clear both rooms it was after 2.30am when we left and due to the snow it was just turned 4am when we got back here…journey should have taken about 45 minutes or even less in the early hours.
Dunno what to charge them, they said just to put my invoice in, I got quite a few free drinks and thought about £200 would do as it prob wasn’t fair to charge the full rate.
Oh…got a new claim to fame now too :D one of the parties was about 80 staff from St Winifred’s school and several of them were from the original choir, one of the ladies sang “I’m only a poor little sparrow”, it was a good laugh, she was obviously used to doing it in public and got them all singing along and rapturous applauds, even a few autograph hunters…lol.
My guests came in and then he came back again and said that the DJ he had found couldn’t make It till about 8.30pm so could I do anything to help re back-ground music during the meal. I put a pair of RCF322s in there on a Carlsbrough wireless link and just let them have exactly the same as I was playing for my room which worked well. Next thing was he came back again at about 9pm just as the puddings were going out to say the DJ had had a bump in the snow and was road-side with the Police and it didn’t look as if he could make it at all. I ended up putting in a stand with 2 Impossableds and an arch made out of 6 visio bars and 2 visio curved corner bars…TBH it all looked pretty good and it all worked out surprisingly well. The plan was that at about midnight we would be able to pull both parties together in the big room as folk drifted off but it never happened. Both rooms stayed full till the end and not one person complained about the lack of a proper DJ in the overspill room. Both rooms had totally packed dance floors all night and they even had to push some tables closer together and add extra dance floor panels in the main room at about 11pm…What an atmosphere! People were drifting between the 2 rooms and mixing with each other well, no one went early even though the snow was getting pretty serious and I was playing them off with each other seeing which room could out cheer the other and so on.
Didn’t stop playing till about 1.15am and with having to clear both rooms it was after 2.30am when we left and due to the snow it was just turned 4am when we got back here…journey should have taken about 45 minutes or even less in the early hours.
Dunno what to charge them, they said just to put my invoice in, I got quite a few free drinks and thought about £200 would do as it prob wasn’t fair to charge the full rate.
Oh…got a new claim to fame now too :D one of the parties was about 80 staff from St Winifred’s school and several of them were from the original choir, one of the ladies sang “I’m only a poor little sparrow”, it was a good laugh, she was obviously used to doing it in public and got them all singing along and rapturous applauds, even a few autograph hunters…lol.