Last gig of the year for me last night. A 60th birthday party which has been booked in since 6th Jan last year. This has been a funny one, despite the very long lead time from booking to party, information on this gig has not been forthcoming. Original brief was for disco and uplighting with high interaction with the crowd (adult party games, "this is your life" style event, etc). Then in May photo/video projection was added. Then in October it was taken off again because they wouldn't be able to get the photos/videos together in time for the party (?!) Then around the start of December I contacted the customer to start pulling together stories for the "this is your life" segment and got a "we're working on it" response and again last week, and then finally they ended up grabbing people as they came in last night to get them to give stories! I also only found out the start and buffet times on Tues!
Anyway, first bit of fun was with the venue. It's a local community centre type hall and according to the customer it should have been open from 5:00pm last night (as agreed with the staff who let them in at 11:00am yesterday to set up). So... 6:20 we got in for a 7:00 start as there had been a breakdown in communication between the keyholders and the lady opening up for the evening didn't even know that there was a private party booked in. One anxious customer, and an even more anxious caterer who had a lot to do, but I was up and running and plugged in the last uplighter at spot on 7:00. Unfortunately not the first time this has happened at this venue.
Now it's the usual story.... waited for guests to arrive... and waited. This customer had clearly gone to a LOT of trouble for the night. Outside caterers, chair covers, table dressing, uplighters, ornamental fountain, balloons, hog roast - the venue looked pretty amazing. And the guests drifted in slowly between 7:00 and 8:15, leading to the buffet being delayed until 8:30 and the "this is your life" segment being pushed back to 9:30. Because the majority of the guests were drifting straight to the bar and showing zero interest in anything I was doing, I slapped VDJ on autoplay and entertained the 5 kids in attendance with a bit of balloon modelling. 9:30 came and we dragged up the birthday boy and got his guests to recount tales from his youth, which worked well while his footy mates were telling tales, but when his family took over with more recent stories the footy crowd drifted back to the bar and ignored them, chatting over them (I'm supposed to be doing a heavy interaction show and thinking uh-oh by this point).
Tales told and it's time for me to play some games with them as instructed. I thought I'd test the water with "Heads or Tails" for a couple of bottles of wine as it's a good way to see who is actually listening and prepared to join in. Turns out that it was just the younger family who were prepared to take part with the footy mates and older family refusing point blank to stand up and take part. Yay. Remind me why people go to parties?
So.... I run the game through, do another quick competition and call it a night on the "high interaction" piece as a significant number in attendance clearly weren't interested in interacting. On with the music and I think I had about 6 people dancing all night. Another one where I felt very sorry for the Customer who had clearly put a massive effort into the night. Customer was happy though, and very apologetic about her guests and she sent me home with a large box of cakes after insisting multiple times that I take some! Probably also being booked for her daughters 6th birthday in Feb!
To be honest, I was hoping to have a better gig to end my year with after my Xmas party last Sat. That one was for the volunteers from a local community transport organisation. If you imagine the most miserable, grumpy, bus driver you've ever met, and then put 70 of him in a room, you'll have a feel for the kind of reception I got at that gig. Happy customer again though. :)
Both gigs were in complete contrast with a corporate bash I did last Thursday where they had a Jazz band during the meal (great, but the Alto TS10a's they brought with them didn't do the singer any favours), a burlesque act and some proper outrageous behaviour later in the night. I'd post photos, but it's a family forum. :D
Anyway, that's me done for the year now other than two hires of PA kit for NYE. And no, none of my lights will be coming into the house over the Xmas break or for NYE.
Julian
