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.

From dusk till dawn

The Saturday just gone The Funky Penguin was supplying entertainment and other services for a few weddings going on and I was DJ’ing a wedding for Caron & Yuri in a marquee in Ruislip. Their house backed onto a golf course and they’d OK’d it with the neighbours on either side so everything was set for a long night as they’d asked me whether I minded going on until 3am or later?

They’d actually got married in Mauritius a few weeks ago and this was the party for friends and family so there wasn’t the usual all day festivities and people didn’t really start arriving until 8pm onwards. They also had a singer called Dan Rosen to do background music early on and then a party set later. His physical appearance kinda gave the impression of a computer geek more than an inspiring performer, but once again, looks can be very deceiving as his voice and presence surprised everyone! He had a very varied repertoire and quite a good range and was quite interactive with the guests.

Dan played for most of the first couple of hours so I basically just stood around and ate to relieve the boredom! and then eventually took over around 10.30ish. Yuri had asked me to play a lot of soul, rare-groove and reggae as that was what he was into and he said that many of the guests were also into, however as the night progressed it was clear this wasn’t the case and many of the guests wanted more “party” music and once I was given the all-clear and started going in that direction there were a LOT more people dancing!

Because the singer had done most of the early part of the night the first dance had been overlooked. In the pre-event meeting they’d told me that the singer would be doing the first dance, but at just gone 1am Caron asked me did I think it would be too late to do the first dance then!? I replied that i couldn’t see a problem with doing it now and so for the first time in my life I did a first dance at 1.30 in the morning… it was certainly different!

The night went pretty quickly and the next thing I knew it was 2.30 and they were asking me to keep going. In what seemed like a flash it was suddenly 3.30 and again I was asked if I would keep going. Shortly after that there was a very comical sight; a bloke was walking towards me wearing pyjamas, a dressing gown and slippers! and I didn’t recognise him from being there earlier at all. He came up to me and quite politely asked whose party it was because he wanted the music turned down a little as he was trying to sleep! I was amazed at how calm he was as he walked off to chat with the bride and groom. I reduced the music by about 50% and he was fine and went back to his house!

The music eventually stopped at 4.45am by which time most of the guests had staggered off home and by the time I managed to get all of the equipment into the van it was almost 6am and daylight again!

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!

The Heat Is On

It’s been pretty manic over the past week and a lot less sleep than usual with many meetings and events .

Started last Thursday when I was “subbing” at another BNI chapter. I haven’t mentioned on this blog previously that I’m a BNI member and thus attend an early morning breakfast meeting every Wednesday morning @BNI Walpole in Ealing. But on Thursday a guy I know at the BNI Hogarth chapter in Chiswick was unable to make it to his regular meeting so I substituted for him at 6.30am which is an unheard of time of day for most DJs! The meeting finished at 9am and I then attended a workshop on improving business communications which was also in Chiswick. This took me to mid-day and then after a quick runaround to the bank and attending to some other bits and pieces I was driving over to Essex for a wedding at Stock Brook Manor golf club for the wedding of Sara & Darryl. This remarkably was the first wedding in 4 where they had a first dance; the song being Take That-A Million Love Songs.

Before playing the first dance track I always have a chat with the bride and/or groom and as I was chatting with the groom, Darryl- he seemed quite nervous, which was a little unusual at this stage of the proceedings as most grooms that are nervous during the actual ceremony or speeches have usually relaxed by the evening as there isn’t much they have to do as such, although some grooms do get quite nervous about the actual dance aspect of the first dance. His nerves really became apparent when I joked with him about the first dance being Motorhead and he replied OK! I often joke with the bride or groom that they still want Motorhead as their first dance track and they usually laugh and then reply with the actual track they’re having, but Darryl just said OK and clearly hadn’t realised I was joking. So I then said to him “are you really sure that you want Motorhead as your first dance?” and he said that whatever Sara had asked for was fine with him! and that he’d had no input into the request list whatsoever!

Most of the music on that request list was very commercial and the dancing continued through to midnight. Then managed 4 hours sleep before another early rise for the BNI annual members day at The Metropole Hotel in central London which was an all day event with some superb inspirational speakers including Dr Ivan Misner, Rob Brown, Dinah Liversidge, Phil Berg and Iain Whyte. It was a great day of networking also and lined up many meetings over the next few weeks.

No time for sitting around, after the end of the BNI event then it was back over to Essex for another event at Stock Brook, this time a dinner dance for the Dr’s, nurses and staff of the Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford. They were all very much up for it and a busy dancefloor this time through to 2am.

The following day there was a bit of a lie-in before heading over to Stoke Newington for a 50th birthday party for Lucy at The West Reservoir Sailing Centre which was basically an old boiler room with a very high ceiling. I’d been asked to setup some uplighting around the room to give some warmth to what otherwise has a very sterile atmosphere.

An excellent night with a pretty varied request list ranging from the 40′s the latest hits and genres such as Jazz, Salsa, Samba, Dance, Reggae, Pop, Soul and Rock.

The events were starting to merge into one and the next was a 40th birthday for Nick at The HAC in central London, but the event couldn’t really have been easier as the meal didn’t finish until 10.45 and the event had to finish at 12.15 so music for 90 minutes, and no extra time!

Cher and Cher Alike

We had a few events again in various locations around London and the M25 and I was doing a Civil Ceremony in Dulwich.

Had to fight with the nightmare that is driving through South London on a Saturday afternoon! Lot’s of jams and roadworks but eventually arrived at the venue on time; the venue being Beauberry House for the union of Rob & Rich’. They’re big Cher fans and had also hired a Cher tribute act to do a couple of sets. She was a superb entertainer and really worked the crowd well, with the songs Walking In Memphis, The Shoop Shoop Song and Just Like Jesse James going down particularly well. At the end of her set the crowd would not accept that she had finished and she did two encores. I was gonna have to be on top form to maintain the level of excitement, so kicked off with Black Eyed Peas-I Gotta Feeling which has been a great way to start the night for quite a while now with many different types of audience, and it went down a storm.

Actually, this was also the 3rd marriage in a row that the couple didn’t have a 1st dance; maybe a new trend is starting! The request list Rob & Rich had given me was quite eclectic and the crowd were mostly in their late 20′s, early 30′s and the music that worked best from the dancefloor point of view was 80′s pop, funky house from a few years back, Kylie and some classic 70′s disco! One issue I sometimes encounter with Civil Ceremonies is whether to play the almost stereotyped camp tracks such as I Will Survive, I Am What I Am, Dancing Queen and so on, because it could seem like you are taking the Mick!? However when MacArthur Park from Donna Summer went down so well I took a chance and followed it up with I Am What I Am and it was a big success. The set list was quite different to many events and other songs that went down really well included Sympathy For The Devil, Ring Of Fire, Wish I Didn’t Miss You remix, 9 to 5, Rockin’ Music, Disco 2000 and Once In A Lifetime.

This is a bit of a generalisation but gay audiences seem to enjoy themselves so much more and really have fun, which from a DJs point of view is ideal. The night ended with a track that was special to the couple which was a song previously unknown to me, David Gray & Annie Lennox – Full Steam.

All in all a great night and it’s a lot easier getting home from South London at 2am than it is at 2pm!

From Stoke to Stock

On Saturday afternoon I met with a client called Lucy at the venue where I’ll be DJ’ing for her 50th birthday party in a fortnight. The venue was quite an unusual space in Stoke Newington called the West Reservoir Sailing Centre which used to be a boilerhouse.

From there I went to my cousin Sam’s house in Rayleigh in Essex to watch the 1st half of the England v USA game in the World Cup. I had to leave just before half time to get to Stock Brook Manor near Billericay where I was DJ’ing a wedding. On the drive from Rayleigh to Billericay the roads were empty! When I arrived at Stock Brook there was a band performing which is why I was starting so late. They were on a bit of a hiding to nothing, they’d been performing since before the game started and there was a huge widescreen TV setup next to them and most of the wedding guests were watching the game, with one of the guests getting particularly irate, which was so over the top it was actually quite funny.

At 9pm the band finished and I took over, not that any of the guests really noticed as there was still about 20 minutes left of the game. I was now in quite a peculiar situation, as I was setup against the back wall, with the band setup directly in front of me and the TV slightly to the left of the band. So I couldn’t see the TV or the game but had a good view of all the guests watching the game and some of the anguished faces! Watching the guests faces and reactions was like studying anthropology!

The 1-1 result really seemed to dampen many people’s spirits for a while and the room cleared; mind you it wasn’t helped by how long it took the band to dismantle their gear. They finished their set at 9pm and were still taking gear out of the room at gone 11pm! So in the meantime their gear was on what was supposed to be the dancefloor.

For the 2nd night in a row the bride and groom (Amie & Peter) didn’t have a first dance, but both of them did seem to be on the dancefloor for most of the night once the football had finished, with Peter especially liking anything from Pulp, James and other 90′s Britpop.

While the band were removing their gear I noticed a small boy of around 4 maybe 5 years old doing some amazing dancing, while I was playing a Michael Jackson track. The whole room started watching him in astonishment. He really had some good moves and I can’t ever remember seeing a kid so young dancing so well.

A few meetings over the next few days with venues and off to Ascot on Wednesday for a day at the races.

A delayed kick-off

Just back from doing a wedding at The Tithe Barn near Petersfield in Sussex, which is a nice venue but another place with a dreaded sound limiter. The wedding was for Emily & Paul and they’d decided not to have a first dance at all and considering that I didn’t see Paul on the dancefloor even once the whole night (even though I played the vast majority of tracks on his request list!), it wasn’t difficult to guess why he didn’t want a first dance!

After the meal and speeches finished most of the guests sat outside for a while as it was a nice evening while others watched the less than riveting France v Uruguay game in the world cup. This combination meant a very quiet dancefloor until around 9.30 and considering the music had to stop at 11.30pm there wasn’t gonna be a lot of time for dancing; mind you in a way that wasn’t a bad thing as the sound limiter there was making life pretty difficult for me. I’ve played at this venue before and I don’t remember the limiter causing me any problems previously but tonight it seemed to be going into the red with very little volume at all, to the point where the volume was so low that I could hear conversations on the dancefloor and so made it difficult to really create an atmosphere as no one could “feel the music! It also meant I had to constantly watch the limiter all night long to ensure that the red bars didn’t stay on for more than 3 seconds otherwise all the power would’ve been cut. So rather than watching the crowds reactions to each song I play like I usually do, I had to give as much attention to the limiter as to the crowd which was far from relaxing and I was actually quite relieved when the night ended. The groom asked me to finish on New York, but the cool version! i.e. Jay-Z & Alicia Keys – Empire State of Mind, rather than the overplayed Frank Sinatra-Theme from New York that far too many (unimaginative) DJs end with at every event!!

Thankfully Saturday night I’m in Stock Brook Manor near Billericay in Essex and there is no sound limiter there!

I know that you don’t like requests but…

Had a very good week last week which included some very positive meetings and events.

One meeting was with a top wedding planner, a lady by the name of Erika who runs Flutterfly Events. They organise upmarket weddings all around the south-east and Erika has a very good approach to the way she goes about organising weddings for brides.

Also had a great meeting with Jonathan Hughes from Wordzup who we’re gonna be working with on some ideas to bring more venues and event companies on board which is all pretty exciting.

Saturday we had a number of events on and the one I was doing was at The National Liberal Club which has “the most splendid terrace in London”, situated in Whitehall with a great view of the Thames and The London Eye etc.

It was a wedding for Joe & Jo! It was another very warm evening, so that, together with the amazing views from the terrace meant we didn’t really get going until pretty late. The first dance was Joe Cocker – You Are So Beautiful and from then it was predominantly music from the 90′s to current day. Although 3 of the grooms friends were keen to show of their breakdancing skills! so we had a brief Hip Hop session.

During the night I received a few requests which I’d played and then the best man came up to me and said “I know that you don’t like playing requests but would you play Journey- Don’t Stop Believing?” This was pretty puzzling as to that point I’d played almost every request that I’d received. I told him that it was no problem to play his song but why was it he was under the impression that I didn’t like requests? He replied that someone earlier had mentioned that the DJ didn’t like playing requests!? This baffled me as a couple of songs after the first dance I’d already said over the microphone that if anyone wanted any requests to just let me know. Then about 40 minutes later another guest said virtually the same thing; “I know you don’t like taking requests but…” when I asked him what made him think I didn’t take requests he also replied that someone has mentioned it earlier! I was beginning to wonder if I was giving off some strange vibe that I was unaware of!

Anyway, the night went really well and built to a steady crescendo and by the last half hour the crowd were going crazy on the dancefloor and it was a great ending to a really good night. After I’d got the crowd to give the bride and groom three cheers and said my goodbyes, the groom Joe came over to me to thank me for a great night. We got chatting about this and that and during the chat the best man came over to also thank me and said “I wanna apologise for offending you earlier”, Joe looked at him and said “why, what on earth did you do?”, the best man explained about him saying that he thought I didn’t like taking requests. I answered that I was really puzzled as someone else had said the same thing. Joe then looked a little sheepish and explained that the bride Jo, didn’t really want everyone asking for lots of strange songs and so she’d told a few people early in the day that the DJ doesn’t play requests! So the mystery was cleared up!