Last night we had a dance at the community center to raise money for the senior class. Of course, I helped chaperone and work the snack bar through both the elementary and high school dances. That includes decorating, clean up, etc. What it should not have included was a conflict with the DJ, wasted time, and money.
What do you expect to get when you hire a DJ for an event? I'll run down what we got. Thursday night, he came to set up. All he brought were lights! When asked about a play list and sound equipment. DJ stated that the last 2 times he had done this, he borrowed the stuff that was in the center (this is equipment owned by a local church that rents the hall on Sunday), and that the music was provided to him. He plugs in the equipment, there is a pop and then nothing!
Now there is running off to find sound equipment and inform me there is no music for the dance. We manage to borrow equipment from a real DJ, and I get started building playlists. I spent 2 hours Thursday night and all day Friday working on it. We needed a separate list for elementary and high school. The high school kids also had several requests for music we didn't own. After checking lyrics and listening to samples, anything clean was purchased by me at my own expense from Itunes.
We get to the dance last night (elementary) and start the playlist. Kids are dancing, etc. DJ keeps repeating the same few songs over and over which makes no sense at all since I loaded 3 hours of music for a 2 hour dance. He does no announcing, hyping the crowd, etc. As the elementary dance ends, he tells us that the music we picked wasn't dance music, it was way too old, and the 3 students he had talked to hated everything on the high school list. I said this is what we have because DJs have music and since you didn't I built this. At this point, his wife who is a school employee and thinks she runs something but is in fact a secretary, starts yelling at me! He points our that one of the songs specifically isn't even dance music, it's "basketball music." Okay, I'm not entirely sure what that means but the song was C&C Music Factory Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now). Yep, I can totally see how that's not dance music!
I demand that my Ipod be returned to me immediately. Either they can come up with their own music (30 minutes before the high school dance) or they can leave and I'll play tracks. I mean, it's not rocket science, it's playing an Ipod!
If my reaction seems a bit harsh, please remember, I am 24.5 weeks pregnant, have spent my money and about 10 hours building the playlist, and have aready run concessions through one dance, cleaned the hall and repaired decorations in preparation for the second dance.
They managed to get a laptop that another teacher keeps in her room that had music from a StuCo dance. My music was too old, but the 3rd track out was Staying Alive. In fact, other than that track, they only played 3 that weren't on my playlist, mostly things that were, and none of the songs that the kids had specifically requested (recall that I downloaded them from Itunes). The kids spent 95% of the time standing around, not dancing. When the aforementioned title was played, kids told us that they didn't even know how to dance to that. Some of the older kids that helped work the first dance said they were looking forward to some of the songs like Limbo Rock that never played (this was a popular one off my playlist).
To top it off, the DJ said nothing all night! There were often long gaps of silence, and when he saw that the kids weren't dancing to a song, he still just left it playing instead of trying to shuffle to a more popular choice. Oh well, I guess live and learn.
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