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Monday, June 8, 2009
The View from the Booth / News A wedding at 145 b.p.m.
Posted By Ray Anderson on Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 3:16 PM
I recently drove to Raleigh to dj at a wedding reception, right? Easy money, because the company I work for requires that the bride and groom go through and pretty much hand pick all the songs they want played. They tell us what song they want for the first dance, the father/daughter dance… yadda,yadda,yadda.
Well, this bride and groom put down that they didn’t want any formalities... no song for their first dance, there would be no garter toss... just wanted me to show up and start playing.
Their music of choice was... interesting. Except for an Aaliyah cut here, and a Missy or LL cut there, it was all techno/trance/high energy stuff, at around 137-145 beats per minute.
I'm naturally a house music dj (I normally play around 126-130 bpms), but I figured this would be a fun challenge. Once the ceremony was over and they walked over to eat, I started off with some of the slower stuff on her list. That lasted about 20 minutes.
“Did you get my list?”
Yeah, I got it. I’m playing stuff off of it now.
"Well, can you get to the more upbeat stuff?
Now? You mean you want everybody to eat to techno and trance?
"Yeah… please”
Not sure just what she had in mind, but DJ Tiesto and meatballs don’t go together (Well, I guess it depends on where you are….) But as soon as the first “boom-boom-boom-boom” hit, some people were looking around... unsure of just where they were.
I kept it there, tried to make it interesting by blending everything on the list at the same BPM, even teching-out “Rock the Casbah" to keep it right where she wanted it. It was like Ibiza in Raleigh, but of course...
“Hey, we wanna do a father daughter dance... do you have....”
No, no, no. I was given this list to play from and theres nothing slow on here.
“Do you have this, do you have this, do you have __________”
We improvise and it worked out, but then the floodgates opened and I had to be a dick to a few people, and remind them that “I was given a list to play from...”
All in all, it was a good time. The bride and groom make a good couple, and everybody I ran into were just the nicest people you ever wanted to meet... however, I write this tale with a word of caution to djs, especially wedding djs everywhere.
Like they told you in the boy scouts... always be prepared.
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