Good Gig, Bad Gig.

[Imagine]

Nice easy weekend for me....teenage parties x 2 (eek!)

Tonight was a Halloween party for a private school...yes, I got my FULL Friday night fee for 2 1/2 hours work....and deserved every single penny of it!

I don't generally do the younger stuff these days apart from a couple of very local primary schools, preferring weddings and anniversaries...but I'm nearly related to the organiser of this one so did it anyway.

It's an internationally renowned college for secondary and sixth form (yep - parents in Taiwan send their kids half way across the planet for education ), and this was the first time they'd tried this so it sort of had to work....and it did. 100 kids, strobe lights, arms in the air and lots of bouncing....it was like a Mosh pit in front of the rig!

A good night - shame about the music though. Lots of Reeeanna, Usher (isn't that someone who sticks you in a seat at the cinema?), Scrillex (urgh) and Jason Derulo....none of it exactly my favourite type of music but hey...the kids had fun and that's all that matters

When I saw the size of the hall (tiny and with a wooden floor), I had the silly idea of leaving the subs in the van and sticking the DXR15's on the ground.....I kept having to pull them back towards the rig because they kept "walking" away from me with the bass.


Home by 11:30 and drinking a couple of well earned beers

Tomorrow - rinse and repeat. A not quite so well paying 13 year old party which was booked before I started charging sensible fees with roughly the same choice in music, but home an hour earlier and then off on my holibobs for a week

[Excalibur]

ig!

A good night - shame about the music though. Lots of Reeeanna, Usher (isn't that someone who sticks you in a seat at the cinema?), Scrillex (urgh) and Jason Derulo....none of it exactly my favourite type of music but hey...the kids had fun and that's all that matters

You is not down wiv da Yoof, like what I is. I rather like Skrillex, often soundchecking with Breakin' a Sweat. ( Mind you, the over 50s should know why I like that one. ) Rihanna varies from the diabolically awful to the exceedingly good disco staples. Variety is the spice of life though.

Coincidentally, tonight I've also got a


70th Birthday.

[Nakatomi]

I've got a local gig coming up next week - normally my drive to the residency is about 12 minutes but this one's gonna be a case of it takes way longer to load the van than to get there. A 21st, in the town where I live (my first!), very much in a house/club stylee apparently. Yeah we'll see what his dad has to say about that cos he's paying. Ahem. A much better payer than the residency too - admittedly not very hard to achieve even round here.

[ukpartydj]

Had a very interesting night Thursday doing sound and lighting for an army boxing night! Really good fun, and nice to really show off a bit of dmx programming for their entrances as well as push the speakers .

A close second to the longest working day of my life has just finished though, left the house at 10am... Got home 4am. Client meeting tomorrow (today) lunchtime, no pain no gain I guess!

[Nakatomi]

Another wedding last night, punctuated by acres of confetti, videographers and a mostly hip-hop/RnB remit. None of the usual 'wedding playlist' suspects came out, and none were requested either (wot no Proud Mary? Bliss!).

Crowd response to the first dance introduction was a bit lukewarm I thought, then by the time the buffet opened half the crowd has left. Sigh. Ah, but the people we were left with loved the tunes & carried on going all the way til midnight. Last tune was R Kelly - Bump & Grind.

Teardown & loadout took an inordinately long time (mostly because I was picking bits of confetti off cables & gear) & I was finally back in the house at 1.30am.

[Excalibur]

My 70th was a somewhat lukewarm affair. And I'm not impressed with the venue review from another NaD member, either. His assessment of the ease of access didn't tally mine. It was a long walk through three sets of doors, and just to stop me giving the new R12 trolley a test, there were four steps at the end. Grrr.

Lukewarm sums up the night completely, most dancers at one time was six, I had four requests all night, but on the plus side I got to follow my brief of leaning heavily towards the music of yesteryear, as there didn't seem to be many guests under 21.

Not many dancers, but lots of toes tapping and other signs of appreciation, and happy guests and client at the end raised my mood a lot.

[Imagine]

Same here for me really.

Second teenage party of the week (and actually, my last unless Friday night decide to use me as their regular party provider - I'm pretty much done with mainstream kids parties now and haven't been taking new bookings for them for a while).

This was a private 13yr old girl's party - I don't know how I let myself get talked into it but hey-ho....it's a change from the norm.

The usual suspects were requested (mainly R&B 'cos it's in the charts innit) with "da yoof" happily throwing popcorn and other food around the venue whilst I juggled with my old friend...the sound limiter

Mum came up and asked for Cha Cha Slide for her young niece....boom - 75 too cool for school teenagers are on the floor....game on then

Went on a little while like that until they got bored and started asking for more of the stuff that they listen to on their i-wossits but don't actually dance to. Thankfully the end of the night eventually rolled around and I left mum and the relations to clear up the Armageddon that had been created.

Highlights of the night - one kid kicked out for having a back pack full of booze, and grandad bending my ear all night. Actually, he was an ex-DJ of the old school variety that used to build his own kit and the like - actually a pleasant chap to stand nattering to for the evening and not like the modern day "I'm a DJ" types that like to wave gentlemen parts around about their own kit which is standing idle for the night. As a bonus, I might well be doing his 40th wedding anniversary next year with the full retro kit

Off in the sports car to Devon tomorrow for a last minute break involving a lot of clotted cream, scones and beer, then back to what could potentially be a messy 40th next weekend in a local football club followed by a kids fundraiser on Sunday.

Nearly Xmas party season

[Nakatomi]

Nearly Xmas party season

Oh gawd please don't remind me

[Benny Smyth]

Two weddings this past weekend.

Friday night was one that's been on the books for about 18 months now - a metal and cheese night. Bring it on, said I!

Had a fair bit of back and forth with the bride before she officially booked me, and apparently I did so well that even Martin got wind of it about a year ago via a Facebook group.

So the bride's brother's band was due to perform for the first hour after the first dance, and the bride asked if they can use my PA. The venue has a sound limiter, so I was happy for them to plug directly into my speakers as the sound limiter would cut them off long before they did any damage. All they needed was two XLR cables - one to go into each side. Can't be that hard, can it? Well you'd be wrong. Despite being told weeks in advanced that they would need to connect into my speakers via XLR cables, they didn't have the correct cables to go out of their mixer into my speakers. But it's cool though, as they bought their own speakers with them just in case. Righto...

To be honest, I didn't pay that much attention to the band as I was at the bar chatting to the staff and having a coffee. From what I could tell though, they seemed to be alright.

After about an hour, it's time for me to do my thing and I start picking and choosing from the bride's playlist whilst throwing in my own stuff in there. The heavy metal was due to be left for the last hour of the night, but I tease a bit here and there as I'm playing. This music is not alien to me, but it's also not my area of expertise so I was learning as I was going along. Certainly reminiscent of going out to Eddie's No. 8 in Brum.

The bar staff are prepared to experience music that they aren't ready for. They've prepped themselves for some screamy/shouty/devil conjuring stuff, and apparently they weren't looking forward to it as much as I was.

So at half 11, I play Pendulum. It's time to start building it up. Follow it up with Prodigy and General Levi and they're bouncing off the walls. N-Trance Set You Free is on the request list and I was going to ignore that, but I put it on. Follow it up with Born Slippy and Sandstorm and all of a sudden, the metal and cheese crowd are now jumping around to trance. What the hell? I wasn't expecting this, and neither were the staff. Oh well, it's working, so let's keep it going!

The photographer (who stayed the whole night) tells me that he's impressed with my work and asks me for a card. I had a chat with him as I recognised him from somewhere, but couldn't put my finger on it. Turns out it was Steve Gerrard, the guy who promoted the Ramshackle nights in Birmingham. He lives in Canada now, but comes over occasionally and he was a really nice guy to talk to.

Get to the final hour, so here we go. Start it off easy with Limp Bizkit's Rollin', and get a good reaction. Follow it up with Slipknot, and the bride pops around to have a chat. She's had a change of heart and maybe playing such hard stuff isn't such a good idea. I've spent the best part of fifty quid buying these songs, but OK - if she doesn't want it, then that's fine. I restrict it to playing rock and metal covers of songs like Halestorm's version of Bad Romance, and Goldfinger's version of 99 Red Balloons etc., as well as playing more punk stuff like Reel Big Fish, Green Day et al. I was, however, determined to play Soil's Halo by the end of the night, and I did. That made me happy.

Bride and groom were really happy with the night. I'm disappointed that it didn't go as 'hard' as I was expecting, but it was still a very good night.

Saturday night's was a wedding at a venue that I haven't been to for about a year, so it was nice to show my face in there again. 120 guests all in and no evening guests. They were chomping at the bit to dance and for the first hour after the first dance, I was playing what I like to call 'Heart Pop'. Usually only play about half an hour of such stuff, but they were lapping it up. Annoyingly, after 15 years of doing this, I can see massive problem - these guys are peaking too early and with no evening guests, this crowd is going to tire very quickly (the ceremony was at midday too). I was glad when the buffet was announced as I was hoping it would calm then down and give them time to regroup, but with the exception of a little bit of 80s, the room never came back to the level of it was post first-dance. They were exhausted.

I had a couple of very rude older gentlemen who really got to me. Bearing in mind that for an hour after the first dance I played songs no older than 5 years old, after playing 60s for 8 minutes (literally) whilst the buffet was being served, one of these guys came up and asked if I planned on playing any music 50 years into the future. I was nice enough in my response but they swapped back and forth coming up with their rude remarks and I finally just had enough. When I was told to play Red Hot Chili Peppers and when I questioned whether that was by Mr. please and Mrs. Thank You, I got responded with a "whatever" and he walked off. When he came back and asked why I hadn't played it, I told him straight that I don't cater for rude folk. He was about to go off on one when I told him to walk away, come back in five minutes and say the words "Mr. DJ, I would like to apologise for being rude to you earlier. Would you please play the Chili Peppers for me?" He told me that there was no ing way that was happening, so I just told him to do one. He effed and jeffed at me, but I stood my ground.

Bride was really happy with the night. I didn't see the groom at the end, but he fed back to me that he was loving it a couple of hour beforehand, so I assume nothing changed for him.

Quick question though: did I need permission from Gary to type a Good Gig/Bad Gig review this long? Is this an infringement on his intellectual property?

[Excalibur]

Very rude older Gentlemen? That sounds most unlikely. Are you sure they weren't younger people who'd had hard paper rounds?

Benny, it's not nice when that happens, I sympathise. It also happens the other way, young people asking if you're going to play anything newer than 1955. Doesn't matter that 75% of the guests are enjoying this, nor that you've announced four times an hour that you'll play almost anything they want, of any era.

Sometimes, our punters can be right s