Popular Science @ The Nokia Flagship Store

To the many hotels, restaurants, museums, galleries, and other eccentric places I have deejayed, I now add a new venue to my repertoire: A cell phone store. Yes, a cell phone store. Cell. Phone. Store. (I won't repeat it again, I promise.) April 26th was host to an event in honor of Popular Science magazine. They advertised a special contest in their magazine featuring the new Nokia N800 internet tablet phone, and a contest to win this cool new device. To celebrate this launch, Erik Friedly and myself were "called" to be the deejays at the swanky, hi-tech hostel that was the Nokia Flagship store on Michigan Avenue.

Simply put, this was a cool night. You may be thinking to yourself, "If I was a deejay and I was playing at a corporate party at a mighty fancy-looking phone store, what would I play?" Answer: Anything you want. That is exactly what Erik and I did. We "dialed up" tunes from about seven or eight different genres that night—rock, pop, oldies, techno, downtempo, and the like—and we had lots of fun doing so. One notable track I played was the original version of the song that mall maven Tiffany made oh-so radical in the 80s, "I Think We're Alone Now." Remember that one? Of course you do.

Speaking of the word "remember," our only drop of the night was that we did not remember to speak to one of the store employees to turn off the background audio before the beginning of speeches. One of the speakers turned to us in the middle of her speech and asked us if we could turn off the music. We laughed inside, due to the fact that she looked at the "audio experts"—us—first. Of course, we had no control over the store's piped-in audio. We knew that the sound was going on subconciously, but we did not think to request to one of the store employees to turn it off before speeches. Luckily, that went on for a few minutes and was resolved quickly. Erik and I learned to be more conscious of our surroundings in that moment, a very vital lesson.

It was a short gig (2-1/2 hours), but one of quality. We received some great compliments from people, and the employees of the Nokia store were kind and accomodating. Our client from Popular Science, Eshonda, loved the job we did, and showed that in her feedback form. All in all, this was a success, and I cannot wait to see what the next eccentric venue I'll be in. Maybe another phone store is in my future…

– Brent Rolland