I've got my first Christmas Dinner Dance of the season approaching in 3 weeks...well, I suppose Christmas is only 50 days away.

Now, as some of you will have already found out, song after song of Christmas music is ok for the background music during the meal at Dinner Dances which are very close to Christmas eg: the last few days before Christmas, but people seem to prefer more of a mixture, if Christmas is still a little way away.

So, if your CD-decks offer you Robo-start, or Relay-play features, where one track will play from one CD, and then one track will play from the other CD, heres an idea, which I've just tried.

I've burnt a CD-R, with a track order of a christmas track, followed by a normal track, a christmas track, a normal track, and so on...all the way through the disc.

If you put this disc on Relay Play (Robo-start) in one drive, and a normal non-christmas CD in the other deck, your audience will hear 1 x Christmas Song, followed by 2 x normal songs, then 1 x Christmas song, and two normal songs again...etc..etc.. meaning that only 33% of the background music is "Christmassy".

If you swap the Non-Christmas CD, for a Christmassy CD, then the percentage goes up to 66% Christmassy background music, suitable for mid December Dinner Dances.

Either method gives you 160 minutes...ermmm thats 2hours 40mins, of suitable background music, until you need to think about changing the CD's. (or about a day, if you're using MP3 CD's)

I'm off to the bar...drink anyone?...Not you Paula, I've already got a mortgage ...oh come on then...

If your decks have got "Power-on Play" options, just fit a timeswitch to the wall socket and turn up in time for the coffee and mints...

great idea gazza.... unless like me, the hotel I work for use their own surround sound during the meal so that the people next to the speakers dont get deafened and those at the back can still hear.... hehehe I love it... no work for me and I dont have to even think about the background music!

Gary,
Good idea, even without decks that will facilitate just being left alone. I used to just play Christmas stuff during the meal but this year I'm going to alternate with those well known tunes from this year, which will give me a bit of self-justification for buying this year's music.
Spinko

Gaaaaaarrrrrrryyyy
Was is it with you and Christmas? you've been reminding us about it since July

Paul Mccartneys' "Simply having a wonderful Christmas time", is enough to make me jump, at any sort of volume.

My amps are tamperproof, and thanks to good ventilation I can lock the flightcase lid over the mixer. But, yes, you're right - best check everything.

In reality, I dont use a time-switch, and infact, my latest flightcase even uses a "Speakon Powercon" type connector lead, which I take away with me each night, if Im leaving the gear set up. I wouldnt put it past some hotels to try a lead from a Kettle, into the more traditional IEC connectors on some disco gear, but I doubt that they'd have a Powercon lead lying around.

Does people sitting right up with their backs or coats hanging from the back of chairs to your speakers/bass bins , cause damage to the speaker cones? I was told it does , but would like to know for sure.

Chris, Are you going to tell them or shall I ?

Get a laptop, set up at dinnertime, tell the computer to start play music at 19:45:00 (that 15 minutes to eight Karen !!) and put in the playlist what you want Christmassy, if that is a word, or not Christmassy. End of the night unplug one lead and take 7000 songs with you !!

I tryed the laptop thing but i could not get my head round it, i belive its the future but not for me just yet i mean i still buy and use vinyl.

Just to say, on the subject of Christmas Dinner Dance "during the meal" background music...

Sainsburys have a useful deal on at the moment. Buy any Chart CD from them, and get "The Rat Pack: Christmas CD" for £2.99.

The rat pack CD features Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Junior (in case you didn't know, and were expecting Roland)...and they croon and sing their way though all the usual festive fa la la's.... suitable for most crowds over 35, and in fact everyone else too, as no-one listens to the background music anyway... At least you can be fairly sure that you're not going to play anything from this CD later on, unlike sticking on Now Christmas.

Click here for CD details

Now interestingly enough...if you dont want to buy another chart CD, to get this at £2.99, instead of Sainsburys £5.99 price (or was it £7.99) price, you can buy it from Woolworths, on its own for £3.99.


I briefly mentioned "Now Christmas" above...which is a CD that I've had for several years now, and they keep wheeling it out into the shops every bonfire night for 8 weeks...EMI have launched a WHOLE NEW "Now thats what I call Christmas" which spans the decades (ohh, I should be in marketing...) starting off with the oldest of the old christmas tracks, then, by the end of disc 2, its up to date.

Click here for a tracklisting to see what I mean...

That tracklist contains something that made me smile:
Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer-Elmo & Patsy


Never heard it before!

This is how my Christmas parties ran last year and I intend to do the same again this year: Duing courses we do a bit of chat and cabaret giving away some Chatau de'shite.

Starters: A "mix" ( if you call my mixing a "Mix"!!) of TV and film instrumental tunes from the sixties to the nineties. This includes Van Der Valk, which I am hoping to get then Kazooing along to. That worked well last year.The venue supplies everyone with Kazoos.

Main Course: Another mix, starts off with some more TV tunes with vocals (IE Happy Days, Rainbow, You get the idea!!) then goes into a few real cheesey sing a long songs after about 30 mins (Runaround Sue, Long haired lover, Knock three times, Rose Garden)

Deserts: Starts off with the slow grease mix (DMC) and has many well known sing a long ditties, but a bit more disco-ish. This mix lasts for about 30 minutes by which time the punters are gagging foir the dance floor!

I dont do any Christmas music until the last half hour of the show, even then its only a few of the old up tempo faves.

We always finish at exactly 12.30 with White Christmas and use 3 snow machines to cover everyone in snow.

Over the last week I've been listening to the 200+ tracks I have under 'Christmas' classification to check if there's a gem in there that I may have overlooked last year - and there isn't

So it'll be a case of rolling out the same gunge this time. For background music I normally play 1 Christmas track then 1 other slow song (soul, rat pack, chart) and repeat until the meal is finished (using different tracks of course )

Then into the party where again I'm obliged to play some Christmas songs and judging by this years new offerings (The Cheeky Girls springs to mind) it'll be the old classics again but that's another thread.....

PaulS

With regards to Christmas CD's I picked up about 2 mint cd's from a carboot sale with all the classics on Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Slade, The Osmonds etc. On average I would play about a Christmas track every 5 or 6 songs

Gary, Sorry to sound like an argumentative but say if you got a small form type pc (rackmount shuttle etc) you could swap parts around if anything went wrong? I mean you can even have a backup hard drive spinning at the same time?

Surely a PC is just like a cd player? It can go down at any time? But I'm sure you could swap a few parts with a pc relatively straight forward? Even with a laptop you could have a backup external hard drive?

Obviously PC'S/Laptops might not be for everyone, but just a bit of food for thought.

P.S I have been using OTSDJ and a shuttle pc for the last year or so and in the 15 gigs which I have done I have never had one problem, glitch or error. I don't have anything on it apart from I occasionally go on the internet to post a txt file or save a top 40 file thats an html file not any illegal songs.

I'm sure when i started reading this topic, it was about crimbo songs !!

or singing as Carol

A triple CD "The Hits of Christmas" is out'n'about now too.

Whats useful about a triple CD set, rather than 3 single CD's for background music, is that you dont end up with 3 versions Jingle Bells, or 3 versions of "Have yourself a merry little Christmas" etc.

Click here for track listing

Quite a good selection of old fav's and newer artists singer newer Christmas songs.

NOTE: I'm not sure if its a national, or a local thing, but I noticed that WhSmiths are doing a 10% off day tomorrow (Thursday), while keeping all their other offers intact (apparently), so, that would mean "Buy 2 chart CD's get £5 off", then 10% off THAT... not too bad...

Now the only thing is...WhSmiths normal price is £14.99....MVC is £11.99.... hmmm choose carefully, depends how much else you're after really.