This is such a good story, it’s hard to believe I’ve never told it here yet…
So I was DJing a wedding at this villa in Bali…
The groom was some senior executive at Google based in Singapore. Just the kind of client you wanna fuck up for, lol. (Note sarcastic tone… NOT literal.)
I’d played alot of events at those villas - then part of a resort called Semara - and it was all pretty standard protocol. Yet this one had a hiccup that was undoubtedly my worst DJ moment ever.
As usual, I did the music prep in advance, including making sure we had the first dance song. In this case, Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” Well, it turned out, I was not actually fully prepared… in spite of having the song ready to go when it turned on.
the scene of the crime:
see that 'stand' thing to the right of pic behind the table? just in front of that is where the DJ booth was set up
So there the bride & groom were, standing in the middle of the dancefloor in the treasured moment, as Whitney’s voice came on, love in their eyes, surrounded by the warm smiles & hearts of their guests. All good.
Until something hits me. And I start panicking.
It mighta been about 30 seconds into the song, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. Hard to tell, but it felt like an infinity…
Whitney was still singing… and ONLY her singing.
Having not bothered to pre-listen to the song before the event, I just assumed it was good-to-go. And it’s not one I listened to often or paid much attention to, so I didn’t know the song… and that it has like 45 seconds of JUST her singing, no instruments, at the beginning.
In a single moment, the assumption took hold: “OH FUCK. This is the fucking ACAPELLA.” 😬🤦♂️
Had I patiently waited probably another 10 seconds, all concerns woulda been resolved as the band’s music came in. But instead, I scrambled. Frantically.
Calmness & rationality went out the fucking window. I scattered, trying to find another - the “real” - version of the song. Instead, the rush had me overlook song titles, and I threw on some other Whitney song with “love” in the title. Fucking great. Lol.
People started looking over, wondering wtf was going on. And I realized, oops. Not this one. So kept on the scrambled search for the right song… and throwed on some other Whitney one. Or maybe it was the same original one again.
Truthfully, I’m not sure if it was 3 or 4 different songs that went into that unscripted Whitney medley. Until I probably just went back to the original one, still not getting it - thinking I’d completely buried myself, until painfully sitting through another 45 seconds of the intro until realized, oh, that’s just how the song is. All the panic was over nothing.
now imagine this, at night... and the middle of that floor, a bride and groom looking straight at ya with a tense smile on their faces....
Definite ADHD moment.
Thankfully, the couple kept their cool throughout the trainwreck, smiling, and gracefully adapted way better than I did, and were rather diplomatic in their response as I embarassingly apologized profusely afterwards.
But holy fuck. Lol.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s a fun story to look back and laugh at now. Though if there were ever a precise moment which a professional DJ ought to be ensuring things are impeccable, that was it.
99% of the time, you could fuck up, carry on, and no one would even really notice or care. But THAT. 😹
Sometimes, I do miss some things about DJing. Just a tiny bit.
Though being 8 years since I’ve played, I’m actually content in “retirement.”
Oddly, I have dreams of DJing every now and then… and they’re always bad ones. Most of the time, the turntables setup on a table that’s shaky as fuck, or running out of time as songs finish and I haven’t got another one ready to go yet. It’s kinda weird, the level of anxiety that must still exist in my subconscious around playing out in public, despite having did it 12 years for a living. Kinda sucks a little to apparently have such a ‘bad taste’ left in metaphorical mouth, considering all the good vibes there were in all those years.
Though “is what it is,” perhaps. And maybe some honest reflection that didn’t fully enjoy it as much as may have tried to convince myself. (After all, maybe I’d still be doing it if actually loved it that much.)
Nonetheless, gotta appreciate the rare memories that really stick out - such as fucking up the first dance of a Google executive in one of the nicest villas in the world. Or my first residency at the beach club right below - and the day a wave crashed up at high tide, splashing & destroying my laptop & turntables. Lol. Ah, good times.
Though I may still be haunted by bad dreams of DJing, I still do wonder how much longer I’ll be able to put off going back to Indonesia for another, different round of adventures and what might come as musical focus has shifted from DJing to producing/engineering.
Yada, yada, yada.
Moral of the story…?
Preparation pays.
And sometimes ya gotta just look back at our fuckups and LAUGH.
Hey buddy! How's it going? Look, @rahipro and I are in the process of building a community “DJs on Hive”. So the community has been around for a year, but I'm a new member and we want to build a community to share knowledge, experiences and yes “feel at home”. In the next few days, we'll also be revising the look and feel, have some initial activities in mind, etc. Interesting content is already at the start and will of course be expanded daily. Should be going strong there soon... A place to strengthen DJing - not just on Hive.
I searched for #djing on Peakd and found you. Would you like to join the community and get involved? It would be a great thing! Buddy, we would be happy to welcome you there!
https://peakd.com/c/hive-143104/created
Never really did DJ-ing, but I did work as a movie projector for a summer!
Especially running Pulp Fiction was something, it was the only cinema in the country that allowed drinks, essentially it was a concert hall that converted to cinema at weekdays.
Now, there are some rules to follow, like keeping your left hand behind your back & literally hitting the switches for the 3 phase circuit going to the projector, wanting to survive and all that. Also making sure that there are rubber bands to keep the rollers on the projector together...
And maybe the most important: use the toilet well before starting up!
You never know what might happen if you leave the projector even for a short while. Well, that I did find out while running Man Bites Dog, which was of course printed on brittle, cheap Orwo or something...
Now, the projector was encased in a glass box. Of course I saw the blank screen exiting the toilets, but that half the box would be filled with film... That was a bit of a shock haha!
What to do? Just shove it all out, of course! Right then the guy in charge came up the stairs, leading to him being more scared than me, the cost of a print was considerable of course...
Snip it off with a pair of scissors, splice it on with some tape, get it rolling again!
I did spent quite a while when everyone had left patching it up... Fortunately there was maybe only a meter or so that had split in half along the reel, most of what I had to do was to straighten it out, do some cuts to get the tape right, and fix some partial tears.
Spin it back on the reel it came on & ship it off, never heard a thing! It was simply rotten to start with, and in the end I bet the mishap even made it look better, its one of the darkest movies I've seen anyway haha!
I always thought it would be fun to be a DJ, but stories like this make me glad I wasn't. Plus, I think I would have been good at the picking and playing music part of it, but talking to the crowd and "pumping them up" would have been difficult for me.
Not necessarily necessary. depends on exactly what type of gigs you’re playing where.
There were only a handful of nights at one club i played my first year where ever got on the mic. (My 22nd birthday will forever be etched in memory, high AF on E & Redbull-vodkas, screaming happy birthday to Canada & myself on Canada Day 😹).
The remaining 12 years at every venue/event, never. 😼
Ah okay, I might have been a bit okay then :) Sounds like a pretty epic night!
T’was.
T’was also a big turning point. I dunno if just overdid it and blew some neural circuits, what astrological alignments were in play, or what, but something changed that night. Was on a serious roll for the previous (almost) year, DJing going fucking awesome, friendship with my agent amazing, life overall fantastic… but that peak high marked a turnaround after which things started degrading over the next year plus. Of course, life has its cycles & seasons, though feel i probably went to excess that night that really altered some brain chemistry and the corresponding reality ‘manifested/projected’ from thereon.
Man, life really is a trip. Lol.
I know a guy who used to be a DJ and now he does work doing voice overs. He has a sound booth down in his basement where he records everything. Sorry, that really has nothing to do with anything, but your reply made me think of it.
This was an interesting story and a fun one to read as well, 😅