![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The longest 3 hours of my life.
Mar. 30th, 2008 06:08 pm11:55pm - approach the DJ booth to get CD's out and ready, headphones plugged in, water situated, ready to go
11:59pm - put copy 1 of setlist CD in the left CD Player, track 1 (Hot new Peaches Pleasure Seeker remix of B-52's "Funplex") - press play to start the track and stop it at the point about a minute in when it goes "THE WORLD IS GOING TO HELL"
12:00am - Skip. try again. play play play skip. FUCK. It's ok because DJ Underdog has another song ready on his laptop just incase.
12:05am - I switch the CD to the other CDplayer (right side) and it plays fine, no skipping.
12:06am - put copy 2 of setlist CD into the left player in hopes that it just didn't like that disc. Nope. EVERY TRACK IS SKIPPING AROUND RANDOMLY. wonderful.
12:09 - B-52's track is coming to an end and the next track (not to mention any other track I try, including CD's that I have spun on those EXACT CD-J's) is skipping and not working. It's either mix into the skipping track or let the song end with awkward silence. I chose mix into the next song.
12:10 - FAIL. The song is skipping all over the place. Everyone on the dance floor is looking at me like "Whoa total trainwreck." I want to crawl into a hole and die. So embarrassing and there is nothing I can do about it.
REPEAT FOR THE NEXT 3 HOURS
longest 3 hours of my entire life.
At first I was SO embarrassed, but as it happened more and more I felt sorry for the people out on the dance floor (and surprisingly there was a PACKED dance floor!). They kept getting into a groove and then jarringly pulled out of it. Sometimes the song would just end. 2,3 minutes left in the song and it would just stop. THAT was fun.
I then started to get frustrated. SO frustrated. Here I was, finally headlining a Bearracuda, FINALLY headlining a club night where people were ACTUALLY THERE and READY TO DANCE (you have to realize the last 4 bookings I've had, no one showed up to and I played to the bar staff). Deco Lounge JUST bought a DJM-700 to replace their rickety-no-EQ-BUCKET of a mixer they had previous. They replaced the bunk speaker with a delicious new one. I had a KILLER set put together that I couldn't have been more excited to play for everyone.
I. Was. Ready. To. Jam.
and I didn't get to.
I felt like it was my big chance to shine, and everything was aligned and ready, and it all got fucked up.
But there was one saving grace.
at around 2:00am I looked out onto the dance floor expecting to see all these sad faces feeling embarrassed FOR me, but what I saw was a large group of my friends (including Phil) who I love DEARLY dancing, sweating, and most importantly smiling, each occasionally catching my glimpse, shrug, wink, and then returning to what ever groove they could salvage from the Tourettes Syndrome CD-J's from hell.
It made me feel so much better to see them there, silently supporting me.
For that I deeply thank them.
I then started to laugh. Out loud, BIG GUFFAWW type laughs. The song would skip and I'd laugh. It would stop dead in the middle and I would scream out BWAHAAHAHAHAAA. Others joined me. They knew. They knew there was nothing else to do but laugh. So what. The music wasn't working right. They were dancing, sweating and having a good time. THAT's what mattered. Skipping/stopping CD's weren't going to ruin their night of underwear glad sexual debauchery so why should it ruin mine?
In hindsight, the floor never cleared out. People were dancing till we kicked them out @ 3am to close the bar.
EVEN WITH SKIPPING SONGS.
I didn't walk away. I didn't give up.
I put my head down and trudged through it doing what I could to try and play the bigger, heavier, anthem-y songs on the non-skipping player so that SOME dancing could be salvaged.
I didn't post about this but DJ Underdog, the resident DJ for Bearracuda for the last 2 years decided to step down, and Mattacuda asked me to be the new Resident DJ and I accepted. Matt jokingly referred to last night as my "Bearracuda Deco Lounge Hazing" where "when there is something that can go wrong, it usually does."
"It's the trade off for being able to play porn and have blowjobs out in the open."
All I know is I am ready for whatever that club has to throw at me.
*EDIT*
So today they figured out what the problem was. The new speaker, which they haven't used since New Years a few years ago was set on top of the "bar" that the turntables are on. You can't really feel it shaking, but it vibrates just enough to mess with the spinning of the disks. They had a similar problem a few NYE's ago and didn't realize it was the same problem happening again. From now on when they use the more powerful speaker, they are going to put it on an independant stand.
Live and learn. (then forget for a few years, live, then learn again.)
11:59pm - put copy 1 of setlist CD in the left CD Player, track 1 (Hot new Peaches Pleasure Seeker remix of B-52's "Funplex") - press play to start the track and stop it at the point about a minute in when it goes "THE WORLD IS GOING TO HELL"
12:00am - Skip. try again. play play play skip. FUCK. It's ok because DJ Underdog has another song ready on his laptop just incase.
12:05am - I switch the CD to the other CDplayer (right side) and it plays fine, no skipping.
12:06am - put copy 2 of setlist CD into the left player in hopes that it just didn't like that disc. Nope. EVERY TRACK IS SKIPPING AROUND RANDOMLY. wonderful.
12:09 - B-52's track is coming to an end and the next track (not to mention any other track I try, including CD's that I have spun on those EXACT CD-J's) is skipping and not working. It's either mix into the skipping track or let the song end with awkward silence. I chose mix into the next song.
12:10 - FAIL. The song is skipping all over the place. Everyone on the dance floor is looking at me like "Whoa total trainwreck." I want to crawl into a hole and die. So embarrassing and there is nothing I can do about it.
REPEAT FOR THE NEXT 3 HOURS
longest 3 hours of my entire life.
At first I was SO embarrassed, but as it happened more and more I felt sorry for the people out on the dance floor (and surprisingly there was a PACKED dance floor!). They kept getting into a groove and then jarringly pulled out of it. Sometimes the song would just end. 2,3 minutes left in the song and it would just stop. THAT was fun.
I then started to get frustrated. SO frustrated. Here I was, finally headlining a Bearracuda, FINALLY headlining a club night where people were ACTUALLY THERE and READY TO DANCE (you have to realize the last 4 bookings I've had, no one showed up to and I played to the bar staff). Deco Lounge JUST bought a DJM-700 to replace their rickety-no-EQ-BUCKET of a mixer they had previous. They replaced the bunk speaker with a delicious new one. I had a KILLER set put together that I couldn't have been more excited to play for everyone.
I. Was. Ready. To. Jam.
and I didn't get to.
I felt like it was my big chance to shine, and everything was aligned and ready, and it all got fucked up.
But there was one saving grace.
at around 2:00am I looked out onto the dance floor expecting to see all these sad faces feeling embarrassed FOR me, but what I saw was a large group of my friends (including Phil) who I love DEARLY dancing, sweating, and most importantly smiling, each occasionally catching my glimpse, shrug, wink, and then returning to what ever groove they could salvage from the Tourettes Syndrome CD-J's from hell.
It made me feel so much better to see them there, silently supporting me.
For that I deeply thank them.
I then started to laugh. Out loud, BIG GUFFAWW type laughs. The song would skip and I'd laugh. It would stop dead in the middle and I would scream out BWAHAAHAHAHAAA. Others joined me. They knew. They knew there was nothing else to do but laugh. So what. The music wasn't working right. They were dancing, sweating and having a good time. THAT's what mattered. Skipping/stopping CD's weren't going to ruin their night of underwear glad sexual debauchery so why should it ruin mine?
In hindsight, the floor never cleared out. People were dancing till we kicked them out @ 3am to close the bar.
EVEN WITH SKIPPING SONGS.
I didn't walk away. I didn't give up.
I put my head down and trudged through it doing what I could to try and play the bigger, heavier, anthem-y songs on the non-skipping player so that SOME dancing could be salvaged.
I didn't post about this but DJ Underdog, the resident DJ for Bearracuda for the last 2 years decided to step down, and Mattacuda asked me to be the new Resident DJ and I accepted. Matt jokingly referred to last night as my "Bearracuda Deco Lounge Hazing" where "when there is something that can go wrong, it usually does."
"It's the trade off for being able to play porn and have blowjobs out in the open."
All I know is I am ready for whatever that club has to throw at me.
*EDIT*
So today they figured out what the problem was. The new speaker, which they haven't used since New Years a few years ago was set on top of the "bar" that the turntables are on. You can't really feel it shaking, but it vibrates just enough to mess with the spinning of the disks. They had a similar problem a few NYE's ago and didn't realize it was the same problem happening again. From now on when they use the more powerful speaker, they are going to put it on an independant stand.
Live and learn. (then forget for a few years, live, then learn again.)
