Good Gig, Bad Gig.

[funkymook]

An enjoyable weekend for me. Friday was at my bi-monthly slot in my local live music pub, played a bit of everything, Ska, Reggae Punk, Rock, NS, Old School Hip Hop, Britpop and ended up being a full on Indie session for the last hour.

Saturday was a 60th birthday. Only 40 guests and as they couldn't find a suitable venue they had one built on the back of the house! A very nice marquee with a proper floor, safety rails around the steps, heating, dimmable chandeliers. Lovely people who wanted nothing but Motown and old soul with a smidgen of 70's disco all night. Only downside was I didn't notice I'd spilt the filling out of a vol au vent onto my headphones and ended up with a prawn in my ear!

[Excalibur]

Lovely people who wanted nothing but Motown and old soul with a smidgen of 70's disco all night. !

I would be insanely jealous, were I not booked for two very similar ones shortly.

Only downside was I didn't notice I'd spilt the filling out of a vol au vent onto my headphones and ended up with a prawn in my ear!

Now that's . I'm trying to visualise the conversaton at the Doctor's tomorrow, when you turn up tomorrow, complaining of slight deafness. Hilarious.

[DJ Jules]

Interesting School disco last night for my Son and Daughters school. I've been kind of using them as a test bed for new things (which is beneficial to them as well as I've been working with these kids for the last 4 years and if I don't keep bringing out new things they get bored). Last night I took along a projector for music videos and I ran Karaoke with it as well for the Year 5/6 kids (9-11yrs).

The Karaoke was a massive hit with the kids on and off the stage singing along, marred only slightly by the fact that when the kids put in their requests, they didn't write their names on the slips so every time I called for "the two girls who wanted to sign xxx" I got about four sets of kids put their hands up. I ended up getting three sets of girls lined up for two of the songs and letting them take turns to sing a verse and chorus each! Video projection also worked really well with these age groups (7-9yrs and 9-11yrs) which is always helped by Gangnam style having a reasonably child friendly and quite tongue in cheek video. I did get a warning from the deputy head in advance though to be very careful about the content of the video's (not too many ladies dancing or blokes with their trousers round their ankles) which forced me to have a quick rethink of the video's I had lined up and cut a few out (most notably, Macarena and the Lazy Song!)

If I do it again though I'm going to have to make it clearer that you CANNOT sing Gangnam style as Karaoke as it got requested a lot and I had to turn them all away - there's just not enough words to make it worth it

Feedback so far has all been positive. I also finally found an audience who actually want that stupid £1 fish track

Julian

[Excalibur]

There's an old Chinese curse-" May you live in interesting times"( According to Mr Pratchett, anyway )
Well I was certainly cursed last night. My ( chronologically ) first NAD booking. A Young Farmers 18th Birthday. Makes me realise why somE folk shun such functions, but I've got to say that doing these certainly keeps me sharp. Very little autopilot, and total concentration needed for five hours. I'm making a couple of modifications to the excellent DSB. Large steel plates welded to the base, so I can rawlbolt the blighter to the floor!!!! More of that later.

First off, a road closure of a river crossing, and the worst signing of warnings and diversions I have ever come across in my life meant that although I was in good tme for the gig, I was desperately low on diesel on arrival. Talk about the Mobil Economy Run on the way home. I was counting the half miles to the 24hour fuel . Made it without the warning light coming on, so I don't know how much further I could have gone, and I was in no mood to find out, believe me.

Arrived at the venue expecting a fair sized space, and was surprised to find that the main room was quite small, with an adjoining one roughly the same size for the bar. Apparently the veue could cope with 150 folk, and we had at least 180. Cosy. Owner was very very nice, very impressed with the kit before I'd even plugged anything in, and appreciative of the job I did.

I had taken subs and 12" tops, intending to augment them with the 15" full range cabs. Having viewed the venue, I left the tops in the van, and ran the full range ones with subs adding bass. First time I've done that, and it worked really well. No poles or tripods, sat them straight on the subs, what a good idea, otherwise they would have gone over, no question.

Booked for five hours, and by the end, the crowd were very well oiled, and the DJ was frazzled from protecting the kit from the bodies which kept clattering into it in the last hour. The polite term for them would be boisterous. I honestly think an Ultimax would have been in bits by the end, thank the Lord for my DSB, it repelled boarders superbly.

Crowd and venue staff were very complimentary, so let's hope I now get a good review for NAD. Christening this aft, so going out soon to put a smaller rig in the van, and when I get home tonight, slep is the order of the day, cos I haven't had much with getting up at six to listen to the Grand Prix. ( Yes, I can't afford Sky, and it's not live on BBC.

[Shakermaker Promotions]

I watched the Grand Prix live Peter as I was up early and didn't have a gig last night.
Good review...I've done one of those farmers functions before and boisterous is an understatement isn't it. At least I was set up on some kind of platform when I did mine gig and there was no way that they could get to my equipment. I don't envy you.
It's really strange not working on a Saturday night and to be honest, I couldn't have handled it last night if a late booking came in as I was suffering from Friday night when I got very "well oiled" as you say. I think in future (starting next weekend as I am not working then either) I will make a point of staying 'dry' when the weekend comes along just incase a late booking does come in.

It's a strange month for me as the bank holiday week sees me out 6 nights in a row. Very strange. At least it makes up for these 2 quiet weekends I suppose.

[Jim - Scotland's Party DJ]

Nice weekend for me.

Had that 3rd birthday party on Saturday afternoon and it was great. I got myself worked up over nothing. The kids were well behaved (what a difference it makes when parents aren't drinking / are actually keeping an eye on the kids) and it was a lot of fun.

Had to nip off quickly for a client meeting after it. Nice couple that are considering booking me for their wedding. I don't usually do client meetings for prospective bookings but it's a good paying gig if I land it and I'm pretty sure they'll come back to book so here's hoping.

Yesterday morning (10:30 load in!!!) I played for a mates Heart's supporters club pre cup final party. 150 of them all getting tore right into the bevvy early doors. I've done a few gigs for him before and it's an easy shift as he make sup CDs full of Hearts songs and a playlist of real songs that are linked to the club in some way. The only downside is he's a total football nut so he had Feyenoord chants, Chelsea songs and at one point a fairly lubricated guy came up moaning that the song I was playing was about Hibs. I pointed him in the direction of my mate and said he was in charge of the tunes I was just the talking jukebox

Was good fun though I've almost lost my voice from the amount of mic work I ended up doing punting raffle tickets, race cards and other stuff they were doing.

[chrisj]

Nice one Jim, glad to hear it went well for you. As I do lots of kids parties I have seen the good and the bad, where parents are very helpful and others where the kids run riot and parents don't care as they are in the bar if it is at a social club.

When is your next kids party? Joking, but they can be good earners for the afternoon.

[Jim - Scotland's Party DJ]

This was the first one I've done in years and with all of the needless drama with the contract and so on before it, I swore it'd be the last but I must admit i quite enjoyed it and though I'm not going to be chasing any up, if an enquiry comes through I'll have a think about it instead of the usual binning.

At one point a dude dressed as Spiderman rocked up and made decent money for half an hour of dancing around and having photos taken with the kids. |I've got a Batman costume so I could combine the DJing and Batman appearance in one handy reasonably priced package

[Excalibur]

Had that 3rd birthday party on Saturday afternoon and it was great. I got myself worked up over nothing. The kids were well behaved (what a difference it makes when parents aren't drinking / are actually keeping an eye on the kids) and it was a lot of fun.

You jammy At mine I was the Creche. As per custom, I spent the first two hours as Head Childminder, then when they got bored they went to play with the balloons, so I spent an hour and a half playing to no-one in particular, had half an hour where some of the adults responded ( including asking for The Laughing Policeman ) and then packed up in the pouring rain, drove home through rain, sleet and snow totally soaked, and very tired after the events of the weekend. There must be an easier way to make a living!

[Jim - Scotland's Party DJ]

You jammy At mine I was the Creche. As per custom, I spent the first two hours as Head Childminder, then when they got bored they went to play with the balloons, so I spent an hour and a half playing to no-one in particular, had half an hour where some of the adults responded ( including asking for The Laughing Policeman ) and then packed up in the pouring rain, drove home through rain, sleet and snow totally soaked, and very tired after the events of the weekend. There must be an easier way to make a living!

No joy.

As for an easier way to make a living, I DJ as a stress reliever so teaching clearly isn't the answer.