Wk Commencing 11th Dec

[Leonna 0]

First of the proper xmas parties last night. Hard crowd to get going mixed groups as always.

 

Had one group of women send me a note via the manager saying "We paid too there are 8 of us" and then something to the effect of not playing 'techno'. I had as always tried several genres to get people up and this was the one that was having the most effect - Sandstorm etc. I normally only do about 3 anyway and move on, needless to say there 'requests' were promptly binned although I did play similar songs.

 

They wanted disco - which I had played earlier - so played blame it on the boogie, then boogie wonderland - few people dancing after that, no more disco.

 

Dancing Queen - gave them waterloo

 

Chain reaction by Diana Ross - Baby love by same artist, chain reaction by steps.

 

Towards the end a few of them were left dancing.

 

Other groups were having a great time but then again I was playing their requests because they came and asked nicely. I think some people need to read how to win friends and influence people

 

On the up side I had to pose for photos with 2 of the blokes there, we had an air guitar play off, with one bloke using his girlfriend as the guitar - he won bottle of bubbly.

 

So even though it was a slow starter I think the majority of people had good night with shouts of one more at the end.

 

 

 

 

[Andy Westcott 0]

Nothing for me this weekend, as usual.

 

No! Wait - I do have a gig.

Entertaining the local school kids on Friday - should be a laff, it usually is.

[Leonna 0]

Quietish night again for me last night around 80. good crowd though and up from the word go. However alot of people left earlyish from aroun 12 there were only 10 people left of 5 which were still dancing. Contemplated putting something rubbish on so they mght give up and I could have an early, but I think they would have danced to it anyway. Management said finish around 12.45, so slightly early night.

 

Looks like abusy one tonight

[otronics 0]

Friday: Staff party (just done it! Excellent night....more later)

 

Sat (today) big night out, so won't be any state to do much after!!)

 

Mon: radio

 

Tue: Radio

 

Wed: Radio & 50th Birthday disco in evening.

 

Busy, busy.

 

Oh, 3TR staff party Friday....another night of too much booze no doubt!

[YourBigEvent 0]

Karaoke tonight, brought a nice new phono lead (30') just for this gig, set up TV wouldn't show graphics, played around about, found a much smaller phono lead to test, new lead faulty ! Had to get a feed from the karaoke machine to the TV now..........

 

Luckily I have some 'spares', including a few gender benders, and XLR to jack convertors etc, luckily I also had two XLR to phono convertors, this along with a gender bender, and a long XLR lead got me out of trouble, looked a little strange having an XLR into the TV, but also had a scart convertor so hid it around the back, and you couldn't see the rear of the mixer either, so no-body knew the dilemma.

 

Great night, booked until midnight, finished at 1.30.

[andyw 0]

 

Great night, booked until midnight, finished at 1.30.

 

is that 1 & 1/2hrs late finishing or 10 & 1/2 hrs early :bouncy:

[EdBray 0]

Great night last night at the venue I am at on NYE.

 

Wedding reception with a no "party" songs or any songs pre 1976. Preferred genres/decades were indie, britpop mid 80s - mid 90s. Made me think a bit as my weakest area of music would be these genres and years, but what a great night.

 

Started a bit slow with only a few dancing off and on prior to 10pm, but after that pretty much full dancefloor. At midnight, talked me (okay they crossed my palm with silver) into playing on, the venue said another half an hour was okay, so continued with a full dancefloor until 12.30.

 

Scissor Sisters was the most requested songs and ended up playing it twice during the main part of the evening and also played it as the last song at 12.30, went down a treat.

[shakermaker 0]

I was supplying the entertainment for 2 christmas parties last night in the function rooms at my Hotel residency (same again tonight).

 

140 in my room, mixed ages but no'one over 50 I'd say and 95 in the other room, again mixed ages.

 

Background music as usual whilst the meals were going on. Lots of rowdy, pretty girls and beered up blokes. Kicked off at 10pm with 'Could it be magic' - Take That (as it was requested along with a whole bunch of stuff) and the dancefloor filled instantly, people dancing on their chairs too. Followed it with 'Hips don't lie' - Shakira and then 'Crazy right now' - Beyonce and the floor stayed full. It stayed like that until around midnight and then people started getting their coats on!!?!? I announced on the mic that I was playing through until 01.00am and ditched the next cued up song and quickly replaced it with Scissor Sisters. Everyone joined in on the dancefloor (still in their coats) and then left shortly afterwards to get their taxis.

 

It went from 140 down to 10 for the final hour (all girls) so I said "Right, it's our own private party ladies, request whatever you like" (and they did!).....

Luther Vandross - Never too much

Fatback Band - I Found Lovin

Womack & Womack - Teardrops

Jocelyn Brown - Somebody Elses Guy

Rufus & Chaka Khan - Aint Nobody

Cheryl Lynn - Encore

....and loads more Take That (as they all went to Cardiff to see them).

 

Finished off with 'Never Forget' at 12.45am and then that was it.... I joined the other room to see how things were going and it looked like all of them were still there and they were all up dancing until the very end.

 

Hope tonight is just as good!

[Andy Westcott 0]

The Christmas party for the local kids went down well as usual. (A freebie.)

 

Loads of requests, and for the benefit of anyone not used to primary school age kids, but with a forthcoming gig of that type, here's what was requested during the 1 1/2 hour event:

 

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/andyspatch/hosting/reqlist1.gif

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/andyspatch/hosting/reqlist2.gif

 

Aren't they wonderful??

I had to pick and choose a bit, obviously, but you get the idea.

[TonyB 0]

Thats very similar to the sort of list I get from 15/16 year olds although not been asked to play any Lazy town yet. I use Welcome to the Black Parade as a final Track.

 

Just goes to show that cheese like YMCA, Macarena, Pizza Hut appeals to all ages - usually get asked for the Macarena too.

[EdBray 0]

Just goes to show that cheese like YMCA, Macarena, Pizza Hut appeals to all ages - usually get asked for the Macarena too.

 

Went to Butlins with the Grandson earlier in the year. The only time the dancefloor was packed was for the "party" songs, all ages, but predominately kids and teenagers.

[brianmole 0]

The Christmas party for the local kids went down well as usual. (A freebie.)

 

Loads of requests, and for the benefit of anyone not used to primary school age kids, but with a forthcoming gig of that type, here's what was requested during the 1 1/2 hour event:

 

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/andyspatch/hosting/reqlist1.gif

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/andyspatch/hosting/reqlist2.gif

 

Aren't they wonderful??

I had to pick and choose a bit, obviously, but you get the idea.

 

Chelsea and Charlotte are serial requesters in the making :scared:

 

Thursday: I earned a cancellation fee, so went to see PARTYCHRIS and SHORT SKIRT HIGH HEELS who were working in the same venue but different rooms. Yesterday, I did a corporate party in a local polo club. The meal and presentations were in an attached marquee, so I set up one of the Bose L1's in there with a radio mic:

 

 

I added the L1 back to this main setup for the dancing after the meal:

 

 

It was a wicked night, in a really good venue. Also picked up a job for 23rd working alongside a bunch of club DJ's :joe: :Thumbup:

 

Tonight, working South Lodge for another corporate xmas do, whilst my mate Dave is downstairs doing a similar thang.

[Andy Westcott 0]

Quote:

"Chelsea and Charlotte are serial requesters in the making"

 

Yes, in the main it was the same few kids doing the requesting.

Wait 'till they get a taste for alcohol in later years - I'll then post a warning of areas to avoid.... :fear:

[Kane 0]

Friday - Christmas partys at the applecart again, absoulutly great night, loadsa of dancing, loads of drinking too come to think of it, about a dozen irish there too (luckily they wernt gypos) so, of course, i played the pogues at the end. videos from friday can be seen on my website HERE

 

 

Sat - I had to use the resisident djs rig that was perminantly set up in the function room, it consisted of 4 unknown speakers, 4 acme magic gobos, unknown mixer and a pioneer cms-3000 cd player, which was totally screwed up, and the mixer was knackerd too, so i just unplugged it and used my console.

 

2 staff christmas partys from different companys, all in one room, :S, started the night with the scissor sisters, which.... failed to get them moving, so i put on mariah carey and literally EVERYONE came flooding to the floor, great night, but i kept getting this really arogant sarcastic fatty coming up and asking for "JT", my love, i told her i havnt got it, to which i got an earfull of sarcasm....many times in fact throughout the evening, do in the end i told her everyone else is having a good time, why cant you just go and enjoy yourself instead of constanly bothering me.....women eh!

anyway i got some videos from last night, ill upload them later.

[DJ Marky Marc 0]

Friday night was a company party, nice small venue with two nice ladys who spent most of the night infront of the disco compairing there thongs and making sure the guys noticed.

 

saturday was a 30th at over 150bpm, hard house all night , I need a week off to recover

[shakermaker 0]

Right guys......sit back, relax and listen to this little story from last night!!

 

I supplied the Disco Entertainment for 2 functions at my hotel residency. Me in one room with 140 ish people and someone else in the other room working for me with about 70 people.

 

Have you ever just got the feeling that you know that the next few hours aren't going to be much cop? I don't know why but as me and the other dj sat in the bar whilst the meals were being served, we both said at exactly the same time "Got a bad feeling about tonight".....Maybe it was because we had done some really good ones so far and there was bound to be a dodgy one at some point? Not sure but we were both correct (kind of).

 

Once again, everyone looked really smart, lots of pretty girls who all made the effort but also some really snobby people (sorry to use that word but they were!)....I played the usual background downtempo stuff whilst they were eating and when I came back into the room after being away about 10 mins to check everything was ok, I was greeted by a guy in a dinner jacket and bow tie who sounded like Prince Charles, standing behind my decks..."Excuse me, can I help?" I asked.... "Just wondered if you could change the b:cense:dy music" he said quite sternly. I asked what was wrong and he said "It isn't to my liking". I replied, "With respect, it is on whilst the meals are being served and no'one else has commented on it"

 

He huffed and puffed and then went back to his table, obviously dissing me as the whole table looked over at me! About half an hour later I was stood with the conferencing manager and the same guy came over and let rip big style about there not being silver service and it was outrageous. I left them to get on with it and returned to the room to check everything was ok. The whole christmas party was for one company, I won't mention the company name but all I will say is that I would hate to work there judging by some of the people that were there....

 

When they finished the meal, I thought that I had better stick something on that would guarantee a packed dancefloor and I picked the Scissor Sisters which hasn't failed me yet - well, last night it did fail, not even one bit of movement and I must admit that it threw me totally (first time in years)....I followed it with Abba and still no movement!!!! It was 9.45pm and I was already in a bit of a strop because of what happened earlier with Mr Snob and the music not getting any reaction whatsoever. I reminded everyone about the request slips on the tables and after about half an hour with an empty dancefloor, the requests started flooded in....80's, 80's, 80's, they all said on them so I looked through them and put on The Proclaimers - '500 Miles' and instant success!!!! A packed dancefloor, so I played a huge 80's set and then went off into some Motown and then Disco and it worked well. There were some other requests for Indie which pleased me so I played, Kaiser Chiefs, Kooks, Arctic Monkeys etc and then went into some Madness and stuff and then on to some party stuff. Surprisingly, the night was going quickly and people were beginning to let their hair down a bit.... Requests came in for The Undertones, Buzzcocks, Blondie and The Only Ones and I began to think that maybe, the crowd weren't so bad afterall.

 

Funniest thing of the night was when I was doing the party stuff... I played 'Oops upside your head' for the first time in ages. All night I had been getting the eye of this pretty blonde girl with a great bod (well, until she smiled..she had a gap in her teeth), anyway....she had a short black skirt on and was second in the line on the floor directly in front of me. As they were doing the actions to the song she kept looking up at me and suddenly I noticed that she had no underwear on and was...shall we say....bald downstairs. No matter how hard I tried to avoid eye contact, I couldn't miss it and she just smiled. She either did it on purpose or had no idea what was going on due to the alcohol. My guess is the former as when the song had finished, she went to her table with her friends and they got their coats on. She then scribbled something down on a request slip and came over to me and handed it to me without saying a word and then left. I looked at it when they had left and it said "Hope you liked the show" and there was a phone number too, but no name!

 

Finished off the night with Nirvana - 'Smells like teen spirit' and Green Day - 'Wake me up when september ends' which were both requested by guess who....yes, Mr Snob!!

 

Unbelievable night really...Sorry for the long post but hope you enjoyed the read.

 

Tonight should be good, it's a staff christmas party for a company that I have done various events for and I know they will be up for it from the word go!

[Andy Westcott 0]

"she had no underwear on and was...shall we say....bald downstairs."

 

Might have been mange.....

[EdBray 0]

"she had no underwear on and was...shall we say....bald downstairs."

 

Might have been mange.....

 

Surely you spell it with an I not A :ads:

[YourBigEvent 0]

Did you call ?

[Gary 0]

back at home for a few hours...ahh...

 

The whole month in one post, or thereabouts...

 

Been doing the obvious Christmas Party nights every night during Dec except Sundays, and indeed Sunday 3rd was a kids party...(phew! - but The Dr Who Game went down well - twice)

 

I've fonud a workable "spicer" to the "quieter" nights of Christmas party nights eg: The nights that no sods really want to book, but they have to, coz they left their booking too late and so couldnt find anywhere that had a Saturday left, or a Friday left, or a Thursday, etc,etc....

 

On the mondays, tuesdays etc... I've been running a 2 or 3 round music quiz after the coffees have been served - this also allows time for the slower/later tables to catch up with the tables that sat down first etc - so everyone is ready to start dancing, all at the same time.

 

The quizes are typically, name the song, or name the TV show from the theme etc...I just hand around a quiz sheet to each table, tell them to write their name on it, nominate their chosen writer etc - then announce that there are prizes, and so mention that they might want to run around to their nominated writer, if they know the answer, rather than yelling the answer so loudly that all the other tables hear... gets em on their feet.

 

These take around 10~12 minutes to run, and BE WARNED about 1 min per table/sheet to mark - so its best to have 3 or 4 more background music tracks ready to roll for directly afterwards.

 

The only prat that I've been pestered with this month so far was last night. This 20something lad kept coming up about 3 times an hour for some utterly wrong stuff. "got any Eminem?", "Got any D12?", "Got any Waterfall?"....and best of all, at 12:50 - ten minutes before the end....in the midst of Pogues, Slade, Carey & Co.... "Got any Slipknot....?". I'm certain that he was just asking (by the end) purely to wind me up as throughout the evening I'd been countering his requests with "No, I don't carry any of that artist for this type of function"....and (later) "No, I only bring music to these types of function that will appeal to the majority"...and (later still) .... "No, these types of functions are quite short - they dont grant us time to play music that people will just sit there and nod their heads and tap their beer glasses to... "....(later, later) "Sorry, you're really gonna have to think of some tunes that some of the other 139 guests will dance to too."....and (finally....and I should have said this to him earlier)..."I dont think that your preference for music is going to be something that we can satisfy while theres anyone else in the room."

(yes, I'd checked that he wasnt one of the organisers...and yes, the dancefloor was doing well, with all the the usual requests and party favourites.

 

The other anxious moment that I've had was that a recent party night was made up of two different companies. Nothing unusual about that really...after all we usually have part nights of anything from 1 huge group, throu to about 9 groups... What made this 2 grouper night so tricky, was that one group more or less filled the room, whereas the other group was a table of 10. Worse still...the big group wanted (and have been given venue approval) to perform a 1 hour raffle, on the mic. Luckily, the big group had been told that they must sit down EARLY eg: 6:45pm, and the little group sat at 8pm so they didn't have too much wRaffle to sit through. Still, the small table were seriously outnumbered and I couldnt shake the feeling that they must have felt a little like gate-crashers, even though they had every right to be there.

 

[brianmole 0]

Saturday's gig was good fun, a successful local company xmas dinner dance. They were subjected to a powerpoint ordeal , complete with backing muzac going through a pair of Bose 802's hire by someone else - what a horrible noise - put me off laptop sound quality! Then a 1/2 hour mini opera was performed by three singers with the backing track going through my Bose L1's - wow, what a difference! The production organiser was baffled and amazed, and asked me where he could get this speaker system.

 

I then followed on with 2 hours of disco, really responsive crowd up for a good boogie :Thumbup:

 

Sunday: this was DJ Loulou's 11th birthday party, and guess who had to do a disco for 50 ish of her friends? To be honest, I don't do kids parties, but duty calls.... Turned out to be a real hoot. Surprise of the day is when Louise's cousin turned up with her new boyfriend who is a successful club DJ and D&B producer with current output which is good, and selling well :scared: Great guy, had a spin on the CDJ's - all good fun.

 

Today: back to work for a rest, got a few days off this week.

[KrazyKaz 0]

Saturday 16th Dec

 

I organised a staff Xmas party for where I work. I bought and cooked the food (everyone did put in £2.50 per person to cover the cost) I got up 6.00am to start cooking etc.

 

Got to the venue at 6.00pm with my eldest daughter and one of the supervisors who helped put the food out.

I provided a disco at no cost to the company and also managed to get the venue free too.

 

Party started at 7.30pm.

 

The night turned out to be very very disappointing. Only 25 people turned up.Nobody danced, I tried all genres. Tried a couple of games, they were OK, but not brill.

I didn't get any feedback at work. I was mortified. Was I that bad? Did they enjoy it?

 

Today, when I got to work there was a envelope on my desk addressed to me. Thinking it was a Crimbo card from someone at work I opened it, It was a Thank You card from 4 of my colleagues saying

 

" Thank you for trying to give our party a good night. Sorry the miserable buggers wouldn't get up and dance, you must feel right p****** off with them. Never mind some of us enjoyed it"

 

I thought the gesture was sweet. Then as I was about to leave work today another envelope had appeared on my desk, I opened it and it was another Thank You card, this time signed by the boss saying

 

"Many thanks for the hard work and planning of Sat night"

 

Inside the card was a £10 voucher for the shop that I work in

 

Well, not quite sure what to think really. I was on a right downer after the gig. Even the bar manager of the venue couldn't believe how disappointing the night was. I have done a fair few gigs at the venue, and she'd never seen a gig quite like it. I was that low, I even considered just packing it all in. My hubby said it was their problem if they didn't make the best of it.

 

I worked very hard getting it all organised, provided entertainment etc. I didn't do it to get anything out of it. I did it to try to get everyone together and have some fun.

 

Oh well............................... :rant:

 

Merry Xmas one and all.