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Hi
At the Castle Hotel in Tamworth..Access was a lot better than i thought and even managed to get my 3 x 2 led curtain in,so i was happy.Started at 7.30 and once they had there buffet the dance floor was busy all night..I was told to play musical youth pass the douchie at least 3 times..I asked why and i was told the band was there..Yes they was there but i felt they did not like there song being played and then all the guests kept looking at them..
Overall a excellent Gig
Weird one for me...
One of those classic ones where you think it's not been much cop but the customer can't praise you enough.
It was a retirement party for a very nice bloke (met him for the first time last night as everything was supposed to be a surprise). Disco was from 8.00pm - Midnight. Everyone was in the venue at 6.00pm for a hot buffet and from 6.00pm - 8.00pm it was background music. I actually started playing at around 8.45pm as there were lots of speeches.
100 guests and half of them left after the speeches. By 10.00pm, there were around 20 people left and we could've finished then to be honest as it felt like the night was coming to an end. Not many dancers during the night despite me saying I took requests etc. I also had a number of requests in advance. These went down ok. Ended up finishing the night at 11.45pm with 8 people left.
As I said, the customer was happy and so was her husband who had retired so that's cool but I didn't really think much of the night myself. There were a lot of older people there, work colleagues etc and a number of very nice young ladies too but all people seemed to want to do was talk.
One chap made me laugh though. He was about 70 and looked like he had previously been a boxer (he had 'Boxers Nose'). I'd just started the Disco and played (as requested), 'When I'm 64' by the Beatles. Within seconds he came over to me and said "Why have you turned all of the lights off?". I explained the situation, I hadn't turned them off and that the evening entertainment was starting etc etc... He turned his nose up, shook his head and walked off only to turn around and come back to me and say "I'll get them turned back on".
They never came back on!
Great night for me, the Wedding guests were off an average age of 30ish and they had given me a playlist containing a lot of indie, the dance was full most of the night and the last hour was mental, at the end of the night got the usual " one more song" but this time it was about 50 of them chanting it over and over, so i played 2 x extra songs and said goodnight, but they kept chanting " one more song" so i had be a little more abrupt and i told them " that there would be no more songs".
They stayed on the dance floor singing without the music for another 30 - 40 mins and the hotel had two complaints from guests in the rooms upstairs.
The Bride and groom were very happy and came over to thank me :)
Absolutely amazing gig for me last night.
It was a wedding with aqua coloured uplighting for a very nice couple in a lovely venue around 5 miles away from me. I did a wedding last year for the best man and a number of guests attended that one too. Lots of people saying hello to me when I arrived made me feel really relaxed and at ease and the funny thing is, in September I have another wedding where they will probably all be there again because I have been booked for one of the guests too.
Anyway, I won't make this a long review. I have been up for ages now as I just couldn't get to sleep properly. I had to leave most of the equipment at the venue as I just couldn't get it all out in the alloted 30 minutes (I know the venue well so it's not a problem and it's very secure).
I was booked from 7.30pm - Midnight. Set up the Uplighting on Friday morning and the Disco on saturday morning. It was chucking it down with rain big time all day and I felt sorry for the couple but on arrival found out that the sun had come out when they got married, just like it did when I got married and that wasn't the only coincidence (more on that in a second).
First dance happened around 9.10pm. It was delayed as the couple were having photos taken. I had been playing background music up until then and lots of people were outside on the patio. First dance was 'It Must Be Love' by Madness which went down brilliantly with almost every single one of the 130 guests singing along. Followed that with 'I'm in the mood for love' by Lord Tanamo and then straight into a Ska/Reggae set for a while.
The dancefloor was full all night. I had a few requests in advance and worked round those, adding some of my own in that I thought would work and they worked well. An Indie set was the highlight with lots of classics in there and everyone singing along. There was an Old Skool set with the likes of 'Out of Space' by The Prodigy and 'On a Ragga Tip' by SL2 and some Drum N Bass (Roni Size / Aphrodite etc). The night seemed to fly by and when it got to the last song, I made the announcement that it was 'You got the love' by Florence & The Machine and everyone went absolutely mental for it. Massive circle, bride and groom in the middle in tears because they were so happy, it was brilliant. I loved every minute of this wedding, it was a pleasure to be there.
Now, I mentioned some coincidences....it was quite freaky. Today is my wedding anniversary. I got married 7 years ago today.
Firstly, as I said...It poured down with rain all day but when we got married, the sun came out same as yesterday.
Secondly, it was my wife's birthday on Friday, same as the grooms but the most freaky thing above anything is that the couple fly off to Italy on monday for their honeymoon. They are going to Sorrento which is where we went but not just that, they are staying in the same hotel that we did too!!
Corker of a gig last night for me. A mature (30) students' graduation party as they've successfully completed 6yrs of training to be a doctor. I've been looking forward to this one as doctors and nurses tend to be more up for it than the guests at your usual family birthday party.
Very odd gig though in a number of ways, firstly the first hour of the night was a keyboard player providing background music and secondly the customer asked me to let a DJ friend of hers do an hour set at some point in the middle of the night (it was a 2am finish - if it'd been midnight then I would have said no, as usually there'd only be an hour of "proper" party time!)
I asked the customer to get her DJ friend to introduce himself when he arrived so that we could get him set up and he did, and he was immediately very apologetic as he also DJ'd from a laptop, except his wife had tipped cranberry juice down it earlier in the day and now the sound card had died and the touch pad was going absolutely mental. However, he was determined to do his set, so he found a USB sound card from somewhere and hooked up the laptop - and Virtual DJ locked up on him. We eventually managed to get the laptop running to the point where we could get the playlist out of Virtual DJ, and I had all of the tracks he was planning on playing, so I handed over my decks to him at about 12:40, and was back on the decks by 13:10 as what he was playing didn't go down as expected with the guests. Now, I've got to hand it to him for having the nerve to use someone else's decks and mixer with no rehearsal - and he did a pretty good job, the only issue he had was with what he was playing. He'd been asked to put together a 90's R&B set, leading into 90's house - which I could have told the customer wasn't going to work (I've done a couple of weddings playing 90's "house classics" and seems to be a genre which has it's fanatics, but if you're not one of them, then it doesn't appeal). For some reason he also started off at 100bpm and had the set list planned out to build it up to 130bpm+ over the course of 30 tracks over the hour - but he started playing at 12:40 when the party was in full swing so a "warmup" wasn't really needed. After about 25mins he handed the decks back to me because "The customer was really starting to get on his nerves" (she kept coming over and telling him to go more "cheesy").
I nicked a few choice cheesy numbers from his list (Montell Jordan, Nelly, etc) and picked up the pace again.
I had a chat with him at the end of the night and he was a big R&B/UKG DJ along with another guy who specialised in House who worked as a double act in some of the London clubs back in the 90's so I've no doubt he knew what he was doing - it just didn't work at this the party. He did thank me though for my patience and pointed out that many DJ's would have not been anywhere near as tolerant, but it made the client Happy :D I made a good contact anyway, as it turns out he's an IT recruitment consultant and I'm looking for a move in my day job at the moment (I've got his number to give him a call on Mon)
All in all, very happy customer, massive round of applause at the end and me very pleased with the new RCF 422's I picked up yesterday :D Oh, and I'm not even going to mention the guy who gave me two fingers for not playing "The Lazy Song" (dedicated to his wife).
As a bonus, the closest I got to playing current chart stuff last night was Katy Perry's TGIF during the warmup :D
Julian
Well done mate. Good review, nice and informative. The other DJ's choice of tracks obviously weren't suited to the party goer's tastes.
I was chatting to a couple of young blokes (21-ish at a guess) after my gig last night. I wondered why every now and then when they were near the gear, they kept looking over into the booth to see what gear I was using. Not sure why but I actually got paranoid at the time as I thought that they were bedroom DJ's and just taking the mick because I wasn't using vinyl or something (you know the score).
It turns out that they both want to get into DJing and currently practice on VDJ and Traktor at home. That's the only equipment that they have. They asked me what I was using and I explained about the Denon. The comment they gave me was "It looks like something out of a space ship!".
having worked in the same venue before, and been moaned at about the bass level, i left the HK system at home and took the Mackies to last nights 40th.
I was deliberatly keeping the volume & bass down low, but still got moaned at for being to loud by the management. I had guests asking me to turn it up, and managment telling me to turn it down.
turned out that smokers were going outside and leaving the doors open, so neighbours were complaining about the noise. Unfortunalty, drunk smokers dont care about shutting doors.
Yeah, from experience, they don't even care in winter when the guests are freezing.Quote:
Originally Posted by djdave01
Julian
Wedding last night - the venue was De Vere's Gorse Hill Hotel in Woking.
B&G were a lovely couple and very into their music, as were there guests (found out there were about 5 other DJ's there, including he Groom).
I was in the Boardroom, which was tiny, it was absolutely packed with 50 people in it, which created a great atmosphere (so much better than large function rooms with too much space).
I had 3 Solar 250's on the walls and ceilings (with rotators to spread the images around) and a pair of Martin Ego 2's on the floor. I did have some parbars but there wasn't any room for them, so they stayed in the car.
Music was Ska, Punk, 2-Tone, Indie, Funk, R'n'B, Northern Soul, Motown etc. Not one chart or cheese tune played or requested all night - people were asking for Parliament, The Meters, Roy Ayers, Jackson Sisters (I Believe In Miracles - tune!) - and it was an absolute pleasure to play them. Also weaved in some Irish bands for the Grooms family who had travelled over - Pogues, Flogging Molly, Saw Doctors,The Hooks as well as more traditional ones - these resulted in a mass influx from the adjoining bar and much cheering, clapping and stamping with everyone else joining in.
It was the best gig's I've ever done in regards to the audience reaction, at the end the whole room chanted my name and the Groom said a few nice words about me to the crowd - not really used to all that, certainly made a welcome change from being totally ignored as you pack up!
Judging by the groups that you played I certainly wouldnt have done the gig.