Hey guys, I know I’ve been absent for a little bit - things have been nuts (pray you never have to rehab a condo), especially with the impending details of my label coming up…man I want to spill the beans. In any case, I promise I will be posting some music later today. In the meantime, let’s hear some of your woeful DJ tales. TimeOut Chicago, one of the publications I write for, is doing a feature on your worst gigs ever:
“Remember the time when the promoter ran off with the money, the opening DJ broke both turntables and some crazy person kept stalking you all night?
Doing a little story on worst DJ gigs ever—either on tour or in our fair Chicago—but local stories are probably better. I’d love to quote you on your worst night behind the decks—when either the promoter, the club, the crowd, the mixer, another DJ, or just all around bad mojo caught up with you. The more colorful and freaky, the better.”
Submit them in the comments below and I will forward the best ones on to TimeOut! Here is my story that will be included:
“My first gig in Mexico was at an amazing club in Cancun right on the strip - very high profile with clientele to match. Needless to say, I was thrilled and flew in a couple days early with friends to relax and take in the sights. The day of the gig I requested that we get a ride to see the Tulum ruins and the promoter provided us with two friends who would be at our disposal for the afternoon. We headed out, loving the scenery and the weather when all of a sudden, we heard sirens behind us. The Federalis pulled us over, made us all get out of the car and had the promoter unlock the trunk. It was a thinly veiled shakedown since they didn’t ask for ID from anyone and the promoter’s friend buckled under the pressure, asking for us to be let go while showing the officers the flyer with my event on it! They took one look, then asked to search through our belongings, going through our backpacks and then the car itself, emerging with a bag of drugs that obviously didn’t belong to us. I thought the promoter’s friend was about to faint. What was the price of letting us go now? One thousand dollars cash per person. Of course we didn’t have that kind of money on us, so we were driven back to the police station and guarded while the promoter negotiated with the Feds. We were eventually let go, but at a price. The officers were given $500 cash and promised half the money at the door of the club that night.”
Top that bitches!
April 13th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Emailed to me by Bobcat of Bobcat and Legz:
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Hey Danielle….tried to add this to your DJ horror story link but said I didn’t have a valid email(?) Anyways, this story is too good (or bad, depending how you look at it) not to tell. Enjoy………………………8 years ago I was asked to DJ a weekly event outside of Boston. The weekend of the event a girl who was heavily involved in the scene unfortunately passed away so my gig became a vigil/memorial celebratory gathering for this poor girl. Everyone was coming up to me telling me how much they just wanted to hear great music and dance in her memory. Now the pressure was really mounting especially since I didn’t know the girl. Anyhow, before I began playing they gave a brief candle ceremony where the promoter said a few kind words and everyone held up candles in the girls honor. Yet as he spoke on the microphone, candle wax began dripping down all over my first record!! I wasn’t looking at the record because I was so moved and confused about what was going on around me. When I finally started playing the needle hit the candle wax and you know what that must have sounded like - unpleasant at best! And I was sober, Ugh!! I quickly regrouped because it seemed like these people really needed me to bring on the funk so I took the record off with haste, paused, and dropped the first record in the crate which happened to be Jark Prongo’s “Moving through Your System”. People went bonkers….they loved it. Thank goodness for Jark Prongo - I should have opened with it!
April 14th, 2008 at 11:11 am
This might be a shade closer to a complaint about staff at the venues more than a horror story per se, but here it is:
A while back a friend of mine rented out a popular bar here in Chicago to host a fashion show of new designs she was bringing in to her boutique, she asked me to DJ for the gig. The bar insisted that their resident DJ was more than capable, but me friend stuck up for me and told them that me opening up “wasn’t negotiable” (gotta love friends that go to the mat for you!).
During the walk through a few nights before the event, I asked their sound guy what equipment they were using, so I could be sure everything would work out…sure enough everything was industry standard 2 x 1200’s and a pioneer mixer, no surprises there.
But for some reason the night of the event, the completely reconfigured their system (to use laptops, but without a computer present, there wasn’t a way to pass regular records through to the system). After tracking down some one to talk to, he told me that the system configuration was in the main act’s rider, and that any deviation could result in them being sued. Being level headed enough, I didn’t want the bar to catch a case because I wanted to play some records, so I called the sound guy personally. As it turns out, he was the resident DJ whose night I just usurped (the plot thickens!), so to say that he was less than anxious to come down and help me out would be an understatement.
When he did show up, his solution was to play some mix CDs “he had laying around.” I felt like yelling, I didn’t want his gig, I wasn’t trying to piss on his territory, I was just trying to help a friend of mine, but I realized this would be useless.
Thankfully, I recognized the main act and saw him setting up early. Not to let this thorn in my side rest, I jumped into the booth and asked him if changing the set-up was going to mess up his rider, he looked stunned that someone told me his rider would prevent the warm-up act from even going on, which in fact was far from the truth. He packed up his laptop and told me to go crazy on the reconfiguration.
After a quick set of cable changes, I was finally able to spin some records for my friend’s runway show.
Why would somebody make up a phantom rider request, just to get me to stop bothering them? That just makes them look incapable and incompetent and even worse, it makes their main act that night sound like a real douche for something he never even wanted. Needless to say, my friend didn’t throw any more parties there.