Hi folks

As promised I thought I’d let you know how the Girl’s School leaver’s ball went last Friday, 28 May 2004.

I’d been liasing with Katy, the organiser for weeks and she, and her guests made good use of our online music library which is turning out to be one of our major selling points.

On the morning of the gig, DJ Shaggy gave me a bit of a fright when he posted a message on the forum about the Hilton insisting on PAT certs and PLI documents. This wasn’t a major prob as far as PLI goes as we’re fully covered, however, as our gear is only just over a year old, we weren’t intending to get PAT done till November – Panic!!!

We arrived at 5.30 pm or so, found the Duty Manager, Ruth, who was extremely helpful and nothing was too much trouble.

We took our time setting up as guests weren’t due to arrive until 7 pm.

As you’re no doubt aware, things like this rarely run to time and guests didn’t actually sit down for their dinner until 8 pm, so we knew we were in for a long wait.

By this time we’d gotten ourselves tarted up in tux and dickie bows and received several comments on how it makes a change for a DJ to be looking smart.

This was also the first gig that we used our new radio mic, what a difference it makes to your mobility, no more stretchy wires to trip over.

So for nearly two hours we played background music, slowly increasing the volume and tempo of tracks to get a bit of atmosphere going.

So to the party itself…

From the word go, the dancefloor was jammed packed, and as Shaggy will tell you, it’s a nice sized room, with a nice space for dancing.

We’d already collected tons of requests from our website, and played a lot of them during the dinner music, getting the quiet stuff out the way – Dido, George Michael etc.

We started chucking glow sticks out into the crowd and managed to sell a few as well as demand was high.

For a bunch of youngsters, they still like the cheesy stuff. We didn’t go as far down the road as Saturday Night or 5.6.7.8, but there was plenty of ABBA, Dexy’s and the like.

My DJ Partner Darren J was in his hormonal element and couldn’t resist getting out into the throng of girlies for a dance, ostencibly to show them the moves, that’s what he says anyway.

At times like this, being blind is a real pain in the ar$e, but I guess one of us had to concentrate on the job in hand.

During the night, the DJ in the room next door came through and complemented us on our equipment and the way we were performing which was very much appreciated. He owns an agency, not sure if it’s the one that Shaggy was talking about that the Hilton use all the time – I guess it must be, will find out later.

The rest you can probably guess – very drunk girlies falling over themselves, too many requests at the end of the night, cries of just one more etc etc.

All in all, a great night and we packed away well pleased with ourselves.

Received excellent feedback from the organiser yesterday who said she couldn’t falt us at all J

Incidentally, we were never asked to produce PAT certs or anything else for that matter. However, I’m certainly going to get it done over the next month or so, I don’t want to have that pannick attack again on the day of a gig.

Thanks for reading.

Darren

Well done Darren.

Sounds like you had a great time and the pre gig work payed off.

Good to hear success stories like this.

Cheers

Vinnie

Good stuff

Well done!

Sounds like a good night mate! Well done!

School proms...definately my highlight of May / June!!!

Steve

Nice one Darren - did you use your laptop for the whole gig?

PaulS

Hi

Regarding Laptop.

We haven't started down that road yet, still using CD.

In my position I've gotta have all the relevant technologies working flawlessly before we try it out e.g. Speach software, braille displays etc.

At the moment I'm just using ots to get familiar with the program and producing background music on CD's.

Also, doing it like this gives me more time to rip my collection to the Ots format...bloody massive task!!!!

Darren