Best Western, Evanston

Alvin and I dj'd this hotel holiday party. The crowd was VERY diverse. Wide variety of ages, ethnicities, walks of life. Some people came extremely casual, others wore suits, and some came with flare. One of the problems I ran into with this gig was that there were three other people involved in the planning and each of them held different details about the event. What I should have done and will do next time is to have a meeting with everyone at the same time. What ended up happening with this event was that there were things that happened during the evening that I wasn't aware of. Santa came out to each of the tables and gave out gifts, the raffles and prizes took longer than what we had talked about, one person wanted holiday music while another wanted people dancing at the beginning. Meeting with everyone at the same time would have teased all of this out. Alvin and I did great improvising in the moment with what was happening. When Santa came out, we played "Santa Baby" by Madonna. It turned out that it was Santa's favorite Christmas song. Alvin and I played well off each other throughout the night. I think Alvin actually played more than I did. He knows latin and steppin' pretty well, so he took over for those genres. Otherwise, we bounced off each other. There wasn't much time for dancing. Maybe an hour. And we had a LOT of different people to play to during that time. We did great with what we had, but I think most of the guests didn't get to dance to enough of their kind of music.

--Jonathan, resident dj