Mr DJ, could you turn the music up / down / sideways / off: Family Disco Review 09/12/05

This is a guest article by MG

It all began on the Thursday prior. Dru had organised a meeting down at the Old Farmhouse pub for all of the Feature Youth Club leaders, in addition to a number of parents who had expressed a keen interest prior in assisting us with larger scale events such as our now yearly Carnival appearances and regular disco nights that we run throughout the year. As it transpired, only myself, Paul and Dru attended the meeting, and it worked out that we agreed on pretty much everything we came up with! This allowed for another style of business to be conducted in some style (hysterics).

From there, it was my task to compile and arrange the music playlist for the following Friday (partially assisted by gathering a consensus from the kids the week prior as to what they wanted to listen to at the disco – the final list was small, varied and subsequently went missing) (hysterics). This proved fairly simple, though I decided to leave the formation process until Friday evening, which nearly caused a few problems!

Problems were always going to be prominent for such an evening, though, and the relationship between FYC and the sports club took a turn for the worse following a visit on the Wednesday, which although was aimed at being productive, ended in a detrimental alternative. Still, we still had to run the event and following a terrific effort by Gordon and Dru with blowing up hundreds of balloons the night previous, Friday evening arrived relatively quickly. I arrived back from work at 17:30, and with the disco beginning at 19:00 I moved swiftly into preparation mode. This involved frantically managing a number of tasks at the same time in a vein similar to that of a last minute assignment that requires completion! I seem to do well when working under pressure individually – you’ll find out how well I manage to work under pressure when in the presence of children if you read on!

I was mid-task when Dru rang from the Sports Club where the disco was to be held. It turned out that the rain was coming down fairly heavily outside and that he was to come and pick us up. Acceleration pedal to the floor! I quickly aimed to complete as many of the designated tasks as possible before he arrived, and with as much done as possible in the time I had, we set sail for our destination via the Comm Tower (Ulverston Community Centre) for a cable to connect our ‘jukebox’ (Ryan’s laptop) to the powerful sound system that is resident down there.

On arrival at the venue, we encountered a number of fairies! Natalie, Nig and Lauren had fully taken the fancy-dress theme to heart and each had done a fantastic job. All have far more charisma than I have for such ideas and subsequent execution – I had stuck to Paul’s idea of attending dressed as a FYC leader (hysterics).

Anyhow, after greeting the crew it was straight to the DJ console to set things up. I’m not a fan of that mixer (give me a Xone92, or something? Oh, hold on, they’re around £1k) (hysterics), and once Iaz had allowed us access we attempted to connect the laptop to it. Of course, with the usage of the word ‘attempted’ you can likely predict what ensued! Greater usage of technology equates to a greater probability of things going wrong, and after plentiful fiddling, a phone call and J, Dru, myself and Iaz fiddling with the connections and settings all attempting to resolve the situation, we finally managed to get the system working. Which was good, as by this time we were already into the 3 hour disco session! The memorable part from this section of the evening was when I put Madonna’s latest single on early on, which was apparently so bad that it caused a whole number of kids to run around screaming and the DJ booth to be inundated with requests to take it off! Oh dear. 1. The track is only 3 minutes long. 2. Isn’t popular music ‘popular’ anymore? I’ve totally lost track of the popular music scene in the previous year or so. We had the Prodigy, Green Day, Madonna, Rihanna (I think), Tom Novy etc in the first half-hour, with each resulting in various children coming up to the booth and voicing their disapproval! I knew it was going to be tough, but the indications were that I wasn’t going to be able to win the battle. Proper club DJs have such an advantage – especially in progressive house – as they can do their thing nigh-on independently, play longer tracks (i.e. 5mins +) and subsequently project themselves as a significant controlling force of the dancefloor. With the short (song begins, chorus hits in 20seconds), stop / starty, poor quality garbage that I was playing out, it was a totally different ballgame altogether…

With the pass the parcel game due at 20:00 (a godsend at this point!), it was a case of getting some different tracks together to play until the stoppage. This was quickly resolved by the 7minute version of the Cha-Cha Slide (hysterics). As usual, a whole clique of children hit the dancefloor and started ‘busting out’ their synchronised dance moves (hysterics). Is DJ Casper the 21st Century Pied-Piper? Don’t bother with the answers on postcards lark. Break time…

Paul and Dru came to the fore following the militeriesque (apparently not a word!) dancing. They both did a wonderful job of ensuring the activity ran smoothly (would you expect anything less?), and with Sasha’s mash-up between the U&K remix of Wavy Gravy and Gorillaz providing the soundtrack, it even gave an opportunity for the standard of music to be raised ever so slightly! During the intervals when the music stopped, the children lumbered with the packages unwrapped the outer layer, only to find a forfeit slip lurking beneath. As you can likely imagine, the vast majority instructed the children to perform on the nearby stage – whether it be to dance, impersonate, or tell a joke to the onlookers. Some fared better than others, whilst some decided to be wisely petrified of making a fool of themselves and wimped out tamely (hysterics).

Of course, the peace and quiet was short-lived and the kids were given free license again for approximately 45 minutes before our last planned game at 9PM. Requests at this stage were for the Timewarp (they’d be lucky – I didn’t think I had it) and some track called ‘Dancing in the Dark’, which apparently wasn’t the 80’s track by Bruce Springsteen. We found out what that was later. At this point, I kept on getting requests for music that either a) I hadn’t heard of before, b) I didn’t have or c) I did have but didn’t know where it was on the CDs I’d made, which remember had no track listings as I ran out of time (hysterics). Maybe we should have a new regime whereby they actually bring their own music that I can put on, instead of me doing all of the legwork beforehand. Then at least some of them would shut the...

My quest to please all was failing miserably, even moreso when I was asked to put Akon on after Bob Sinclair. No wonder some of them had cause for complaint! That’s the thing about going to somewhere to see the best DJs at venues such as Sankey’s – you know that you’re going to get a world-class performance from someone who has an ear for playing a whole host of great music, which in genres such as progressive house, is now emerging from all around the globe. At a pop disco, you get a bog-standard (or less, in this case) performance from someone who (although in this case has an ear for playing a whole host of great music) is being instructed by uneducated / taste-maker led punters to play a hugely mixed bag of genres and styles. Add to that the fact that most of the music on the playlist is manufactured pap and you can see why so many kids are disgruntled (hysterics).

Then a stroke of luck… I actually found the Timewarp! Except, it wasn’t the Timewarp as such, as the kids hardly recognised it when it was on. What the track turned out to be was a 7 minute version of it mashed-up with the Cha-Cha slide. Tom asked if it was two records playing together. ‘Yes’, I incorrectly replied, thinking that he probably wouldn’t understand what was going on if I began to explain it to him. ‘We want the real Timewarp!’ shouted one of the girls. Dear, dear. As much as the mixed lyrics such as: ‘put your hands on your hips – move to the left!’ probably did more to confuse the audience than co-ordinate them precisely, the music and lyrics were still there. Hmm. I was dehydrated at this point, and instead of waiting for a cold Guinness as my first fluid intake for the night, decided that I would benefit from a pint of soft drink instead. Dru asked how my night was going. I shrugged my shoulders and walked off. The orange I bought never lasted long (hysterics).

9PM rolled around. I had been relieved of the laptop at this stage (J had picked it up and said he was going to cue up some of the requests in the attempt to make my job easier post game and raffle – hopefully that would take some of the pressure off!) and we began the ‘musical knees’ jaunt instead of spin the broom (their precious overhead Christmas décor would have been in danger if we played that!), which is similar to musical chairs but with real people providing the seats. The track to be used here was an extended 7 minute mix of Rachel Stevens’ new one (I can’t be bothered to look up its name), which is absolute drivel and thus fitted the scene perfectly. Again, with Dru and Paul running the proceedings impeccably it gave me an opportunity to have a rest from continuous requests – and from the controls, too, after I handed the them to Emma during the game. As it transpired, we used the whole of the track, which considering the stop-start nature of the game was very welcome in terms of the amount of time it passed!

J arrived back with the laptop at this point, and subsequently booted it up and queued the list that would potentially see the disco out. He also included a track list – very handy (hysterics). It was at this point that we held a ceremony for Lisa (FYC leader), who was leaving the leadership team on the same night on which her Mum did the year prior. I believe she took on some of the mantle of running the tuck shop at FYC1, and with that particular group being highly attended each week she has provided the club with a valuable service. We wish her well for the future.

Meanwhile, the fancy dress competition was being held, with the children asked to cheer for the best outfit showcased by those who had made the effort. Natalie, Lauren and Nig were aptly ‘introduced’ by Paul, whilst Dru got a rousing cheer and Lisa and Bekka ran on in partial fancy attire at one point! Then out of nowhere whilst I was in dreamland, I suddenly looked up and found that I was being cheered at! I couldn’t believe it, and was caught totally unawares. That’s a nice (or ‘right’ (hysterics)) touch. Maybe some of them understood how hard I was finding it after all!

The raffle was then drawn, with the highlight being Steve and Jordan from one end of the family tree both being drawn out of the bucket (good substitute for a hat!). Some people even won some of my mix CDs – wonder if they’ll bother with them and if so, not class their content as ‘boring’? (hysterics)

It was at this point that some people left, whilst others stayed. Back to the grind, then! With only half an hour left, you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that the rest of the night should have been a simple formality. Of course, it wasn’t, with children still chasing after certain tracks that I either couldn’t find or didn’t have, complaints of the standard of music and a similar standard of general hassle that plagued the first two hours. Frustration was creeping in. It probably should do when people are giving me instructions what to do from left, right and centre that cannot be complied with 100%. And it most certainly should when a lot of those instructions were being directed in the ‘you said you would play it if you can find it – why haven’t you played it?!’ mode. When 10PM came along I was spent. Ironically, the last track was Mylo vs Gloria Estefan, the instrumental version of the former track ('Drop the Pressure') which I used (or at least attempted to,) to open up the last disco I DJ'd at, before it was cut short by Emma after she asked 'what is this?' Hell, I don't even like the track. Emma was in the booth once more and full circle had been completed...

In the last disco review I wrote, I mentioned the fact that after the disco had finished, I was so frustrated that dejection set in. Thankfully, it was a different feeling this time. After some more rubbish on the airwaves, I put on one of the raffled Anthemics that were lying around whilst cleaning up the huge mess that had amassed from multiple balloon poppages (hysterics)… whilst drinking an ice cold Guinness, which could feasibly be described as ‘necessary’ after the day’s work! The choice of tracks on those albums that wouldn’t be instantly turned off were minimal, so I put a set finale on and switched my brain onto ‘auto’ mode. I’ll end it here.

I myself, amongst a great deal of other elements, am hypnotised by tough beats and rolling basslines. Music is one area I devote a lot of time to, and I can tell that a fair number of the kids do the same. Thing is, I have little idea how to hypnotise the kids. Then again, its probably best that I don’t know how…

This is a guest article by MG, imported from Wordpress. Please ignore the 'author/contributor/posted-by' tag on this post, which is incorrect.