Games, Glitz, Galore!

I disc jockeyed an event for Masterplan (love those girls!) at the Fairmont a little over a week ago. It was in the Imperial Ballroom which was a huuuuuuuge freaking space. I had to take with me 3 G2's (big ole' honking speakers) and a little 10 inch as a monitor and it seriously needed all of it for the size of that room. My instructions were "uptempo, but low volume (networking event), play some 80's but not the whole night." Masterplan is cool, they don't always do this for their events but this one, and the only other event I disc jockeyed for them, they had all these games in the space. Pool tables, foozball, basketball, darts, it was so cool!

Hafeez was my assistant and after setting up (and playing a couple of games) we kicked off the night with, what else? Some 80's! The entire space was carpeted and the hotel didn't set out a dancefloor (basically ensures no chance of dancing), which was cool, it's not really necessary for a networking event. As a DJ though, I thrive off a packed dancefloor. If I DJ an event and people don't dance for it, I leave feeling unfulfilled. My saving grace this time was Hafeez. The perk to having no dancefloor is that you don't have the pressure of maintaining it. You can play really great songs that aren't really dancy or uncommon songs that a lot of people don't recognize without fear of losing the people. So, I made Hafeez tagteam with me. Tagteaming is when one DJ has one turntable and the other DJ has the other, you both take turns picking songs and mixing them back and forth, sometimes you let the other know what you're playing, sometimes not, so it's a little like improv. Starting out with 80's pop, we did a loopty-loop backwards into disco, then funk, motown, classic rock, 70's rock, 80's metal, using "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith and Run DMC we segwayed into 80's hip hop, then onto 90's hip hop, finishing up with current pop and hip hop. It was a really great night, people were bopping their heads and we got no complaints, so I feel we did a great job. Hafeez says he learned a lot and that just makes the event for me, if one person out of the entire night tells me they got something out of my work, then I feel my job is done!

Lucy "DJ Wak" Wieczorek