The public perception of DJs

This is the first in a series of articles I’m going to be publishing on this blog. This one delves into what I believe is the public perception of DJs, or more specifically the different types of DJs and how they are perceived in the public eye, and the reality behind that perception.

At one end of the spectrum are club DJs who are widely considered to be the pinnacle and as far as the entertainment side of things, are thought of as glamorous and as the most skilled.

The other end of the spectrum is the Wedding DJ, generally having a pretty bad rep and sometimes seen as a joke figure perpetrated by the likes of Peter Kay.

Yet the reality is somewhat different when a few factors are taken into consideration. Firstly the club DJ: They generally play 1 or 2 genres of music and the audience go to that club to hear that style of music, most of the audience are of a similar age, plus the audience go to the club mostly with the intention to dance, and the whole club environment is designed to encourage the crowd to dance as much as possible. In summary everything is set up to help the club DJ so if they’re not able to get the crowd dancing they’re in the wrong job!

Now the Wedding DJ: At an average wedding there is a vast difference in ages from toddlers right up to the grandparents and even great grandparents. There is also typically a huge cross-section in music tastes covering a multitude of genres. Many of the guests often haven’t seen each other for a long time and therefore want to catch up and chat about what they’ve been doing while others have no intention of dancing and are just there to be polite. Additionally at some venues the acoustics hardly help with a pleasing sound to the ear… and oh also, just in case that all makes it too easy sometimes the bar will be in a completely different room or part of the venue, to really challenge the poor sod charged with the task of getting this lot dancing!

When it comes down to it the good Wedding DJs are far more skilled than the good club DJs and have a far harder task to try to get a majority of the crowd dancing for a large section of the night and yet the public perception generally is the opposite. They’ll also often have far less of an ego as they have to be as accommodating as possible to the crowd in order to build the atmosphere, while getting requests from the youngsters for the latest pop and dance hits and at the same time being asked for golden oldies from the elder family members and guests and trying to juggle all of that and keep everyone happy.

A further difference is the actual music knowledge. At the majority of clubs they are playing mostly dance music, which could be various forms of house and then some urban R&B and rap and possibly dubstep, drum & bass etc. essentially they have a very safe comfort zone as far as the musical boundaries are concerned. At a wedding it would not be unusual for the DJ to receive requests for the same range of dance music that the club DJ has been asked for, plus oldies from the 50′s, 60′s, 70′s, 80′s & 90′s and also some Indie, Soul, Reggae, Rock, Latin/Salsa and even music from other cultures such as Indian Bhangra, Bollywood or Irish, Scottish, French etc at events where there are a mixture of cultures and nationalities. As an example one wedding the bride may have family with Asian ancestry and the next wedding they do could have a groom with many German family members and so on. So many Wedding DJs have to have an extremely wide musical knowledge covering a vast range of genres and to know the tracks from all those many era’s, genres and cultures that will get the guests on to the dancefloor, especially in multicultural cities like London, Birmingham, Manchester etc.

Long gone are the days when all Wedding DJs played each track from the start to the very end and then babbled inanely between each song, although let’s not kid ourselves, those dinosaurs do still exist! Nowadays many Wedding DJs are highly skilled mixers and can be very creative in the way they programme the music in order to have as many people dancing as possible and to maintain the numbers on the dancefloor while changing from one genre/era to another. In fact there are many skilled Wedding DJs who are easily able to play in a club and have the dancefloor packed all night, yet there are few Club DJs that could do the same at many weddings (whether they would want to is another thing but we’re talking about the perception here!).

Believe me I’m speaking from experience. I worked 6 nights a week in clubs in many countries around the world for over a decade but now do mainly private events such as the higher end weddings and corporate events and have probably done over 2,000 such events, yet also still do club nights every few weeks, so very much have a foot in both camps.

Not every club DJ is a Tiesto and not every Wedding DJ is a Peter Kay, but the Wedding DJ generally deserves much greater respect than they are often afforded.

-At The Funky Penguin we have a team of skilled and experienced event DJs, all of whom have performed at least 1.000 weddings and corporate events, many of whom have also worked in clubs.

Middle to Far!

The latest in the irregular blog entries! We have been doing a lot of events recently at venues such as Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, Harrow School, Haughley Park Barn in Suffolk, Crews Hill Golf Club in Enfield, Mitcham Golf club, Lutyens restaurant in The City, Ham House in Richmond, London Wetland centre in Barnes, Kingston university, Naval & Military club in Piccadilly. Albury Park in Guildford, Radisson Edwardian Heathrow, The Marriott County Hall central London, Great Fosters in Egham and The Rivervale Barn in Yately Hants. Which were a mixture of weddings, corporate events and birthday parties.

Some of them were pretty interesting such as a wedding at The Radisson Edwardian Heathrow with a Pakastani/Turkish bride and groom from Oman and consisted of music from Turkey, India, Pakistan, Arabic and western stuff such as R&B, latest dance and pop and there was also an Ethiopian dance group. It was certainly a challenge but was a good night and the end result was a happy bride and groom. The Arabic and music from the middle east went down a treat and within a few days there was a more far eastern theme, which is mentioned in a couple of paragraphs time!

Another wedding was at the Haughley Park Barn in Suffolk which is an amazing venue and one that really undersells itself on it’s website as it looks far better than is shown on the website and they’ve really paid great attention to tiny details. I was very very impressed with this fabulous venue.

We also did a wedding at The Naval & Military club in Piccadilly, also known as the In & Out club and the crowd there were eager to boogie with a packed dance floor from the very first song through to the last track. The song chosen for the first dance was a cover of You Sexy Thing by The Stereophonics which made a pleasant change from some of the usual first dance selections. On the subject of the first dance though last week at a wedding in Great Fosters in Egham, the couple had asked for a track by Jason Mraz, called I’m Yours and the bride and groom did a superbly choreographed dance to an impeccable standard. This wedding was very different musically as the Chinese bride and groom wanted predominantly R&B and I ended up playing some tracks that are very rarely played at any weddings, nevermind a Chinese wedding, such as KRS1 – Sound Of Da Police and Dr Dre – Nuthin’ But A G Thang!

This weekend we did a 40th birthday party at St Stephens in Hampstead which is a huge Victorian Gothic church and was a little strange with only 60 or so guests in a room that could hold over six times that, yet the guests didn’t mind and danced the night away through to midnight.

Aside from actual events I have attended some interesting meetings and seminars over the past few weeks including a very good seminar on Social Media given by David Hughes which certainly gave me some food for thought.

I’ll be making entries on a more regular basis from this week, many of which will be articles on various topics such as wedding entertainment, the public perception of Wedding DJs, music requests and many others.

To Paradise and back

It’s amazing how much can happen in the space of one week; to the point where in some ways some of the things seem like they happened ages ago and others a few hours ago!

As usual we had quite a few events happening in various locations. Myself, well on Friday I was doing an event at Paradise by way of Kensal Green for Groovers Korner. Groovers Korner is a monthly soul night I’ve been running around North-West London for the past 11 years or so, but have had a break from it since April due to a venue change. Previously I had been holding events at a venue in Harrow called Freddy’s but attendance had been dropping off at the last few events and one of the main complaints from regulars was the extremely high price of the drinks. So after a lengthy search I negotiated a deal with The Paradise but was unable to actually hold an event there for a few months because of their busy schedule which was frustrating but in another way was encouraging.

Prior to last Fridays event I had tried a few new methods in promoting the event and getting news of the event to many more people than I’d previously managed, and in the weeks leading up to the event it seemed that the work that I’d put into it was bearing fruit as there was a much higher interest about the night than most of the previous ones, and I was receiving a lot of emails, calls and texts. At previous events although the doors always opened from 9pm we generally didn’t get busy until around 11.30pm, but last week it was very busy before 10pm! and not long after 10pm it was absolutely packed and stayed that way until the very last song at 2am. It was definitely the busiest night yet and I’ve received lots of appreciative comments ever since from people who really enjoyed it, so all in all a great night.

The following night was a wedding for Liz & Ed at a new venue for me, Cripps Barn in Bibury, Gloucestershire. It was a very impressive venue, that had paid a lot of attention to very small details. This photo gives an indication of how it looks, but the website certainly doesn’t do justice to how good the place really looks and in my opinion the website really sells themselves short compared to what they have.

As usual with most weddings the night ran very late and this seems to happen with about 90% of weddings these days, but it’s usually a good sign. The weddings that run exactly to time are rarely as much fun, because people are paying too much attention to a schedule rather than just enjoying themselves!

The first dance was Nick Drake – From the morning and after that they wanted to go straight into the dance music with Dizzee Rascal – Bonkers. Liz and Ed had given me quite a lengthy request list, which although quite varied wasn’t hugely succesful, especially because there were so few guests in quite a big room.

Wednesday morning was my weekly breakfast meeting at BNI Walpole in Ealing. Fitzroy Williams visited the chapter and mentioned sponsorship opportunities at the Ealing Winter Wonderland this Christmas.

Thursday night I did an event at the Honorable Artillery Company in the city, which was a corporate event for Deutsche Bank, which as with many corporate events meant a lot of sitting around while they were having their meal. The actual dancing section of the evening was less than 2 hours and thus went very quickly.

8 Days a week

Well have finally gotten around to making another blog entry. It’s been a little hectic over the past few weeks with many different events going on for many of our DJs and bands.

Since the last blog entry I did a wedding at Stock Brook manor in Billericay two weeks ago and the following night did a joint leaving party for two couples; one couple were returning to California and the other couple returning to Dublin. The event was held at The Botanist in Kew and the crowd were certainly in the mood to party; so much so that they completely forgot about the karaoke equipment that had also been booked!

The following few days I did two more school proms at Stock Brook manor. The range of requests asked for at school proms can be pretty surprising to say the least, for example it’s not unusual to be asked for the following on the same night:

KIG – Head Shoulders Knees & Toes, Tiny Tempah – Frisky, Usher – OMG, Katy Perry – California Gurlz, DJ Casper – Cha Cha Slide, Queen – Don’t Stop Me Now, Journey – Don’t Stop Believin’, Michael Jackson – Billie Jean, Los Del Mar – Macarena! and lots more pretty diverse tracks/genres.

In between the two proms was a BNI visitors day @ BNI Walpole bright and early at 6.30am on Wednesday morning. Many of the members had invited businesses to visit the Walpole chapter and there were a number of building companies represented as well as some law firms and other professions and it was quite a vibrant meeting.

Next was a wedding in Eltham in SE London, so a journey from one corner of London to the opposite side. My Satnav recommended to head east around the North Circular road and then through the Blackwall tunnel and south through Greenwich. The alternatives were to drive through central london which is often a nightmare or to drive the other way around the North Circular and round the South Circular road. It all seemed pretty much 6 of one and half a dozen of the other as there were gonna be jams whichever route was taken.

It was a very hot day so I set off much earlier than necessary so that I could take my time setting the gear up as it was too hot to be rushing around with the gear. I took the route suggested by the Satnav and as I got past Golders Green on the North Circular the traffic was extremely heavy and what I didn’t realise was that major road works had started on a big section of the North Circular for the next 5 months or so and was causing chaos all around Bounds Green, New Southgate and Tottenham, and then as I was sitting in this jam I heard on the radio that the Blackwall tunnel was closed for the weekend for repairs!! Immediately I knew this really would cause problems and sure enough it meant I had to go via the M25 and the Dartford Crossing which was moving at about 10mph, so all in all a journey that has previously taken 90 minutes took almost 4 hours! and meant I arrived at the venue just as the guests were congregating outside and so I had to run around like an absolute lunatic to get all of my equipment into the venue before the guests started to enter, which was just what I needed on the hottest day of the year!? I eventually managed to get all of the equipment setup within minutes of everyone taking their seats and it looked like someone had just thrown a few buckets of water over me! but luckily I had a change of clothes with me as I always change into a suit after setting up.

After the meal and speeches had finished and the couple (Lee & Kayliegh) had cut the cake they were ready for the first dance which was Otis Redding – These Arms of Mine. The rest of the night was mainly very cheesy musicwise which is what Lee had requested and most of the guests requests were along the same lines.

The day before that wedding my laptop had gone to an IT specialist to upgrade it to Windows 7 as well as some other changes and I didn’t get it back as planned until midweek which was another reason for not making a blog entry that week and by the time it did come back there was a lot of work to catch up on and then 4 straight days of events, starting on Thursday with a wedding for Helen & Simon at Great Fosters in Egham, Surrey.

Great Fosters is a very nice venue that I’ve done many times before and is very DJ friendly, i.e. it has very easy access to take equipment in and out. Helen & Simon had chosen Nat King Cole – L.O.V.E. as their 1st dance. The requests for the rest of the night were mainly Indie and dance with a few oldies thrown in here and there and the night was going well until about an hour from the end when suddenly %&!? all the power cut! It was another dreaded sound limiter, yet this one was supposedly not in operation according to the manager of the venue, as the venue was undergoing some work by electrical contractors which meant the limiter had been bypassed… well that was what I was told anyway, but at around 11pm I found to my cost it was completely untrue and so once again I then spent the rest of the night having to be extremely careful with the volume and watching the limiter rather than watching the guests!… I really detest sound limiters!!!

The following days event was a wedding for Nika & Wayne at The Fulham Palace in west London, but first I had to drive over to Wickford in Essex to collect some lighting equipment for some architectural lighting of this old venue. The 1st dance for this wedding was Michael Buble – Everything, but from there on in the rest of the night had a much more international flavour to it as the bride was originally from Russia and the groom Australian and guests from many countries around the world. There was also a 4 piece band performing including a fiddle player… and yep, you guessed it, they performed The Devil Went Down To Georgia! What with the meal finishing far later than expected and the band performing two sets it meant a lot of standing around for me.

At The Funky Penguin we have many excellent bands and I have also worked with many great bands and so I know very well how to recognise an experienced function band that aims to give a totally professional performance to their client and the clients guests, but also there is the other type of bands that are either not as experienced or just a little(lot) egotistical and not quite so dedicated to what the client wants and more about “their great act”! Bands that treat the DJ as being beneath them are often of the second variety, which is often out of insecurity and it’s not unusual that the act doesn’t live up to their ego and a good DJ will have far more people dancing. This band, I hasten to add, did not treat me badly and were not unfriendly, but they did however display another sign of inexperience which was both times that they took over from me, as they came onto the stage, some of them would try to play along with the music that was playing. More often than not this doesn’t sound very good and on some occasions it can sound awful, this was the case here. Two of the guitarists and the fiddler were playing along to the song that I was playing and it sounded pretty bad, but they were totally oblivious to it and didn’t notice the looks they received from some of the guests that had been dancing to the song that they practically destroyed. As I said this happened both times they took over (to a full dance floor), however although it was annoying I remained professional and both times gave them a rousing introduction. Both times I took over from them the dancefloor was virtually empty and they didn’t give me an introduction at all. Usually when I work with a very good band I always take their contact details and discuss with them the possibilities of them doing events for The Funky Penguin, suffice to say no such conversation was had with this band.

The next event was on Saturday at Shendish Manor in Apsley near Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire. This was a corporate event for a company called Excel Care, it was their summer ball . Once again I was working with a band, “Grand Avenue Music”, but these guys were totally professional and did a great job for the client. Once again the meal finished very late which was partly due to some of the coaches arriving late at the venue due to severe traffic jams on the M25. After the meal there was an awards ceremony which went on for over an hour and then they had an auction which also went on for a very long time. To give an indication of just how long this all went on for, there were two girls dressed up as Bunny girls that were standing on stage throughout the awards and auction. Midway through the auction one of the girls fainted partly due to not having eaten or drank for a long time!

Eventually the auction finished and then the band started and then I took over at 11.15pm and played for the last 75 minutes but had to finish at 12.30am sharp due to the coach drivers not being willing to wait around for a bit longer!

On the Sunday night I was back at Stock Brook manor doing another corporate event this time for Waitrose, although it was quite poorly attended and most of the guests seemed to be mainly interested in chatting and so was quite a subdued night. At the end of that event and when I eventually reached home I was just glad to not have to get up early for anything the following day for the first time in around 10 days!