Sutton Place

Zack and I were on this one. Great learning experience for both. Tough gig. Some of the things that I did not like about this one were all the raffle prizes that were given away. It really ate away at the time and the crowd wasn't excited about it. They gave away 54 prizes at three different times. Each time took about 10-15 minutes, with the final taking around 30. One of the challenges I was up against as a dj was to keep the crowd engaged while the raffle was happening. I started by playing theme songs during, then switched to rat pack stuff with the suggestion of the emcee. The second raffle, we played some funk. That got the crowd into it a little bit more than what I was playing earlier. The last one, we played some hip-hop and house. That totally worked. They switched emcees at this point which helped out also. The second emcee was more playful with the guests, so that helped out more. He was getting into the music, too.

The crowd was mostly hispanic, and the music I played tended to be either merengue and salsa or hip-hop and pop. While I was in a merengue set, one of the guests told me, "Enough of majority rules. Play something I can understand." That comment really pissed me off. 1.) It was racist. 2.) I was about to switch music anyway - although I almost reconsidered after she made that comment.

This was one of those gigs where there were a lot of things that pissed me off and I was talking a LOT with Zack about everything that was upsetting me. It was mostly about the comments people were making. It didn't seem like they were there to really support and celebrate each other. Zack was great support to be there as someone I could talk things out with so my anger wouldn't effect my judgement that much. It effected it a little, because I didn't say anything about the raffle once I found out there were 54 prizes and strategized about the best way to do it.

--Jonathan, lead dj
Zack, assistant dj