McDonald's @ The School of the Art Institute Ballroom

Have you had your break today? My fellow fig artist Emily and I certainly did yesterday. It makes sense for me to open this entry with that familiar commercial phrase, as we were the deejays for a group of corporate employees from McDonald's (yes, the McDonald's) at the majestic ballroom of the School of the Art Institute. For this four-hour dinner-and-dance soiree, the main challenge of the evening was not digesting the delectable miniature roast beef sandwiches and onion zingers, but moreso enticing the nearly one hundred people at the party get on the dance floor.

We started off cocktails with a mixture of jazz, latin/bossa nova, and some downtempo music. Both of us could see the guests as one talkative mass, tightly packed near the bar in the upstairs balcony. Amusingly, when it was time for one of the heads of the company, Kevin, to get on the microphone and call everyone downstairs to dinner, he asked us to play the Black Eyed Peas' "Let's Get it Started." As Kim Possible might say, we were "so not the expecting that." The crowd did not expect that either, but it certainly got a laugh and slowly brought people downstairs.

Dinner was ending, and dancing was approaching. There was ninety minutes left until the evening ended. Dancing was a challenge for us. Somewhat like pulling that tab off of the sweet & sour sauce carton for your Chicken McNuggets. Thankfully, I have had much experience with holiday parties—not to mention McNugget sauce cartons—to carry through a gig like this. Armed with our music collections and a list of suggestions that our clients gave us the night-of, Emily and I poised ourselves for the music to come. We built up a dancing mood with such tunes as "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" (Temptations), "Superstition" (Stevie Wonder), "Domino" (Van Morrisson), and "September" (EWF). We totally played everything that we liked and enjoyed it. The crowd, however, were still in mingling mode. I remember throwing on "Billie Jean" and two people began to get on the dance floor. Yes! Sadly, they stopped dancing after a while and went back to talking. Non-yes! Our clients were certainly the catalysts—or, in layman's terms, the "party starters"—for the evening. Their suggestion: "Sweet Caroline." We played it, and several members of the crowd began to sing out loud. We then played some disco, such as "Stayin' Alive" and "I Will Survive," and eventually made our way into hip-hop, 80s favorites, and current stuff. I had a ton of fun playing Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch's "Good Vibrations" and Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger"—two songs that I rarely get a chance to play and were on the list. We even played the current bouncy hip-hop hit, "Crank That" (Soulja Boy). We ended the night with Culture Club's "I'll Tumble 4 Ya." We managed to keep the small, but mighty crowd going into overtime, which was definitely satisfying.

Emily and I performed some serious teamwork throughout the night with dinner and dancing music. We talked a lot about our musical choices, and when either of us didn't have a song or an idea, the other one of us did. We laughed when some songs (like the aforementioned "Good Vibrations") that we thought weren't going to work totally hit. Overall, we rode with our challenge and had lots of fun, making for quite a successful night. It was food, folks and fun for this successful evening. And, yes—the clients, the crowd, and us two deejays were "lovin' it."


– Brent Rolland, resident fig deejay