Rock On, Wayne! Sorry, I Mean Matt!

Okay, so Wayne’s World has absolutely nothing to do with this wedding, except for the part where they say “Rock On!” because that’s exactly what we did. Mario and Elizabeth had their reception at the Sunset Country Club. The fig team of James, Billy, Megan, Tanya, Matt, and myself rocked this party as both photographers and deejays. Matt and I were on the decks playing a wide variety of stuff, with a concentration in rock. Classic rock, modern rock, indie rock, hard rock, rock & roll, light rock, hip-hop. Wait. Hip-hop? That’s not rock! True, but we hit it anyway because the crowd was loving it.

I had a few mistakes, which seemed to be the theme of the weekend, mistakes on all my gigs. Darn it! I hate it when that happens! I wish all my gigs were absolutely perfect. On this one, we played the wrong track for the cake cutting, Matt’s Motown cd had the wrong track listing and we ended up playing “Motown Philly” during a Motown set early in the evening, and I called Elizabeth’s dad the wrong name for a song that was dedicated to the two of them. The cake cutting song we quickly faded out, and then back in with the right song. Same thing with the Motown Philly. For the wrong name, “Woops. I mean Patrick.” I called him Robert. Robert? Where did I get that from? Who knows. I felt frustrated after that. It seemed like the whole weekend was off for me and things kept going wrong. The best thing for me to do in that moment was to take a walk. Matt took over while I stepped out, got some fresh air, breathed, walked around the crowd, saw who was there, relaxed, became part of the party again, started bobbing my head to the music, came back to the dj table, and went back to work. From then on it was smooth sailing.

Matt and I rocked the bajeebers out of that crowd and had them begging for more at the end of the night. The only downside was a few drunk idiots who wanted to hear the electric slide. I swear, I’m going to stop bringing this song so I can’t play it. I told them it was on the do not play list, that I’m not going to play it, yadayadayada. After several times of pestering me, the pestered the bride who gave in and said we could play it. I ended up not playing it because the music wasn’t going in that direction and played to the crowd. But those couple pesky guests came back and were like, “Why didn’t you play our song asshole!” Okay, they didn’t say asshole, but they were thinking that based on their tone. I gave in then, because I was tired of them pestering me and giving me a hard time. So, much to my dismay, and to the dismay of the bride and groom who ended up leaving the room during the song, I played the electric slide.

The thing that really pisses me off to no end with this song is that people come up to me and say, and I quote, “This will bring everybody out.” The strange thing, everybody WAS out! They were LOVING the music I was playing. And I don’t NEED this freakin’ song to bring people out. Why? Because I’m good. Unlike other wedding deejays who need to play songs with special dances associated with them (or lyrics that tell people how to dance to them) because it’s the only way they can get people to dance to their crappy music other then getting on the mic and telling them what to do (“It’s air guitar time! Break out your air guitar!” as I heard at one banquet hall from the other side of an air wall at a venue that shall remain nameless). So am on a rant right now, and I’m okay with that. Because I don’t need no stinking slide or a microphone to get people to dance. How do I do it, you ask? I play good music. Period.

Whew! I wasn’t really expecting that when I sat down to right this blog. Feels good expressing it though. One of these days, I’m going to get on the mic and lay out the ground rules for requests. “No need to request the electric slide tonight folks. Why? Because I’m not going to play it. Why? Because I’m good.”

--Jonathan, lead dj
Matt Carlson, assistant