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!