Good Gig, Bad Gig.

[Excalibur]

Friday night was a 30th with the remit of mainly 90's dance and modern pop. We ended up in R&B, mild cheese ( which along with Anthems, were on the banned list. Birthday girl was throwing serious shapes to all of these, by the way ) and very little dance music.

So, Saturday rolls round for a 50th for Mr Jackson, in Driffield. He's there as well, just nearer the town centre. He very kindly showed me some tips for using the Prime GO ( that took a lot of prising out of his hands, once he'd seen it, I can tell you ) and tweaked my laptop loads for the new VDJ setup. That was a bit of a head scratcher, until we found the answer hiding deep in the settings of the system.

It also led me to a very squeaky bum episode later, as we hadn't had the laptop connected to a speaker while we did this. I get to the gig, connect the prime up first, as it's so quick, and start background while I set lights and laptop rig. Time to take over with laptop/VDJ, and it sounds like I've plugged into a Dalek! Blimey! It's a thousand times worse than when the VMS power supply died.

A fault finding dialogue ensues between us both, and finally Dave suggests the tried and tested " have you tried turning it off and on again" method. Phew, success, it's crystal again. Once more, guests had no idea of the chaos behind the decks.

Anyway, venue fills up nicely, and we all hold hands and try to contact the living. Some heavy duty cheese is requested by the truck(le) load by birthday boy's significant other, and rather than filling the floor, it's met with total apathy. Guests trickle away slowly from around 9pm, so it's looking a lot less packed. I'm so glad I don't use trussing any more, I'd have been throwing a noose over it. Over four hours of losing the will to live, playing humorous requests for guests, and wanting to pack up, until birthday boy admits defeat, pays me and goes home. I've now got the finish line in sight, speeding ever closer from the planned midnight to just after eleven. Yay, result.

Except:

One guest.

Over four hours of asking for requests, and she sits glued to the wall. I'm within seconds of switching everything off, and she comes up and asks for some Sash. I've got maybe fifteen guests left, and the floor's rammed. We're now in full 140bpm mode for the last half hour, and ( by my own exceedingly low standards ) I pulled off some cracking mixes. Bar staff decide that it's time for last orders, another fifteen minutes of music, and pack up. Good call dear, good call.

So, I'm out and in the van as fast as I can, hitting the road over half an hour before normal, and just to be sociable, I go to see Dave, who is also packing up. That's unusual, he's normally still rocking when I get there. I give him a hand to carry kit out, marvel at how people manage with small SUV's/people carriers, and go home.

Once again, huge thanks to Dave for his help, patience and assistance. Man's a star.

[DJ Jules]

I'm having a quiet October with just Saturday nights on the road until the final week when I'm out Tues, Thurs, Sat and Sunday Apparently Fridays are no longer party nights??

Anyway, 50th birthday party for me last night in a local cafe/bar (primarily cafe). The venue was professional dressed with a mirror wall and a lot of balloons before I arrived and I squeezed my micro rig and a single Maui 5 into a corner (moving a few tables to fit in) and then a few more tables were moved to create a mini dance floor with a capacity of about 20-30. Music brief had a mix of soul/motown, disco and quite a lot of Tina turner and Robbie Williams.

7pm start with a few people trickling in the door and chatting. 8:30 buffet and then at 9pm we kicked off the silent disco. Suddenly the 30 capacity dance floor looked like it could have done with being bigger and I more or less kept it at capacity by splitting the crowd with 3 channels of music in the headsets until bringing them back together to finish the end of the night with a bit of Robbie/Angels at 11:45. I ended up playing around the themes with a mix of everything from 70's through to current chart and the biggest hits were the higher energy 90's and 00's pop and cheese tracks. The son of the birthday girl threw in an interesting diversion by asking for some D&B and I threw in a mini mix of a few tracks and got away with it.





*Side note : laser dots are from a cheap diffraction laser that the bar staff had on a shelf over the bar. It wasn't really noticeable so I didn't bug them about it, but it was defective and not moving so I did consider asking them to turn it off on the grounds of H&S

Talking about photographers again.... they'd "paid" the father of one of their daughters friends to come along and take photos and he came over for a chat about 8:30pm to complain about the lack of dance floor action. I mentioned that they were either all deep in conversation or face down in the buffet and I wasn't about to disrupt that by putting headphones on them. He then asked me how much I charged for a typical evening and I gave him a rough figure. That led the conversation on to how much he charged (beer money) and how under valued he was with his £2k of prosumer camera and lens. I then pointed out that I had about £4k of silent disco kit, another £1k or so of PA, another £2k of lighting and about £3k of controllers and software holding it all together and he then stopped talking about how much I was being paid. What I didn't mention was that people doing gigs for beer money, in any industry, are usually part of the reason that the marketable value drops, I thought I'd leave that one alone.


Julian

[djdj]

huge thanks to Dave for his help, patience and assistance. Man's a star.

Well I've always been told to look after the elderly !
The Bar manageress said Cricket club as a bit of a Strange one!
Glad you got somewhere with all your new toys, A little more easy to carry than my Magma case

[Excalibur]

Well I've always been told to look after the elderly !
The Bar manageress said Cricket club as a bit of a Strange one!
Glad you got somewhere with all your new toys, A little more easy to carry than my Magma case

It's bloody immense! At least mine goes nattily over my shoulder.

[Excalibur]

30th Birthday upstairs at a venue I haven't been to for a while. I took the HK tops, which was a two edged sword. More power than I needed really, but very nice when the music policy swerved to AC/DC and Metallica later on! We ended up mainly rocking out with requests for Zeppelin among others, lots of Alt/Indie stuff, The Vaccines and Foo Fighters being very popular. Had it not been for The Crazy Frog ( played to a rapturous reception ) we would have been a cheese free zone. A novelty for me.

All in all, a good night, but next time there I'm taking the 4ft booth and the Prime. It's easier than using lots of poles for the mic stand and tablet holder. I had to download a few tracks last night, and finding somewhere to stick the tablet was tricky. Prime and Tidal looks a lot better bet to me. I used the Micron booth to save space, but it causes more problems than it solves really, and it will be a 4ft next time.

Edit: I used a lighting rig which is going out a lot lately. Gravity poles/bases with a Spectrapix batten mounted vertically with half clamps, and a Hadron on the top of the pole. For more minimal functions, it covers all bases.

[Imagine]

Regular readers of the member's side of things will note that my last few weddings weren't the danciest of affairs. Although they got praise from the people that mattered, they were all the type that leaves you driving home wondering what you'd done wrong and if you could have done it differently.

So, I went into tonight's wedding with more than a little trepidation. I've spent the last 4-5 weeks being a kids entertainer and having the time of my life. Truth be told, I was dreading weddinging again. I really needn't of worried.

After a LOT of technical glitches before the first dance, the night went like an absolute charm. Venue at capacity, full dance floor for much of the evening and apart from a couple of "do not plays", the night was my own with just a preference to keep the music policy 80s - 00s (whoops....I kicked off well and truly in the 70s disco era....to a rammed floor!). From there it went into 80s and 90s cheese (no...not THAT type of cheese) and then into 00s and 10's dance music to finish. An absolutely awesome night

Got a bit of kit sorting/maintenance to do during the week. It seems that such a busy year has taken its toll on certain items (I certainly need to look at somehow making new fronts for the LOVE letters)

[Excalibur]

On paper, I got the plum job between myself and Mr Jackson. I think it was only because his hotel is posher, and my van doesn't fit in the car park, really. 30th Birthday, with the musical remit of 90s and noughties bangers, classics, and lots of party ones.

This was reiterated when the two birthday girls, and one Birthday boy turned up, lovely folk, and a fancy dress theme. Well after the standard hour of background, away we went at a hundred miles an hour, with Cha Cha Slide, Macarena, Superman, Oops, the full cheeseboard. Wow, I thought, just wait till we get into all the 90s dance, we'll really be rocking.

Except they all seemed to go to sleep at this point, and we went off into a parallel universe, where we were full on Grunge. That went down a storm, and while they all loved it ( as did I, getting a chance to show that DJs can string together bangers from all Genres, not just party ones ) it wasn't what we expected. I enjoyed it, the clients and guests enjoyed it ( and said so ) but it just didn't live up to ( early ) expectations.

As an aside, for the second time in a week, one Polar broke the noise regulations. I think tonight we had a guest sleeping directly above the disco, so reasonably understandable.

Mind you, I reckon I did get the plum gig, cos Dave had packed up and gone home when I went round to see him!

[Nakatomi]

Back to the doldrums for a completely lacklustre wedding reception last night. Unengageable guests, most of whom left after the food, and rude requesters who were more listeners than dancers. I've had better nights in parochial WMCs.

One of the highlights was watching someone come up to make a request but missed 3 times, first walking into one of the thrones 8 feet to my left, then try to talk to one of my speakers before falling over his own feet before finally picking himself up & coming to my right hand side to ask for Dean Martin Little Old Wine Drinker Me. Takes one drunk to know another I guess.

[DJ Jules]

Yesterday I had a wedding in what is one of Bristol's worst venues for access. Kit must be in before 10:30 as the roads around the venue become pedestrianized after that time. Kit had to go up 2 stories of stairs and then across a huge room to the dj location. The same room is used for ceremony, wedding breakfast and evening as well, so there's always fun with logistics.

So... There I was losing stuff in to hide behind a big curtain at 9am as required and discussing set up times with the venue staff and discovered that they have no where for the guests to go during the evening turn around so the venue where seeing the room up for the evening at the turn around after the ceremony (including putting down the dance floor) so the time for me to set up was actually going to be 1:45pm, not after the speeches at 6:30pm.

So I went back and forward to the venue 3 times yesterday. Luckily it was only a 6mile drive, but I had the challenge of parking the van in Bristol centre 3 times too.

Anyway, efforts were appreciated. Everything went smoothly and the guests had a good night. Couple were very happy at the end of the night and my feet are probably going to take a week to recover

Luckily, I have a week until my next gig.

Julian

[Imagine]

A "back to normality" one for me this weekend (it's slowed right down now ).

The Scout Group I "work" for do an annual Halloween Ball for up to 100 kids (eek! I normally limit kids parties to 30-40). It's the only one I do for now't as all the proceeds go straight back into the kitty (and Gawd to we need the money in the kitty at the moment).

It was blimmin' BRILLIANT to be back after "you know what" stopped it for a couple of years, and the kids were well and truly up for the shenanigans of Capt. Chaos

The best bit (other than raising money for a cause close to my heart?). Raising money for a cause even closer to my heart....I've secured three parties off the back of it already