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Make Your Adam Sandler Joke
Now from Student.com, 1998 It’s Saturday night, about ten o’clock. All of your friends are at home, getting spruced up, preparing for another night of hitting the bars. You are wearing a tuxedo and a smile. Perhaps you are at a luxurious hotel, perhaps a Knights of Columbus Hall. You are playing “Superfreak” for a bunch of drunk twentysomethings and their parents. Yes, you are a wedding disc jockey. That is my life. Five days a week, I am mild mannered office boy. But on the weekends, I become “Super-Entertainment Man,” ready to play anything from Sinatra to Puff Daddy for the young newlyweds of New England… and their parents, and their grandparents. When I was on the radio in college, I never thought it would lead to this type of profession. I actually spent some time in the “real” radio business after graduating. After a year, I found myself back in Boston looking for extra money to supplement my income. That’s when I answered an advertisement looking for disc jockeys. After a short test of musical knowledge (Quick: who sang “Chances Are?”) and a little personality interview, I was in. (Johnny
Mathis, by the way.) There
are two ways to be a wedding disc jockey. One
is to do it yourself. You will have
to do all your own advertising, purchase your own equipment, and plan your own
events. I don’t recommend this
option if you value your sanity. The
other option is to hook-up with a DJ company; there are a few in every town.
My company provides me with equipment and a music collection of over
7,000 songs on recordable Mini-Discs. They
plan the entire party with the bride and groom.
Each weekend, all I do is pick up the equipment, do the show, drop the
equipment back off at headquarters, and pocket some money – less than I would
if I worked on my own, but of course I have no overhead other than car upkeep. The
most important thing about working as a wedding entertainer is to remember that
at the wedding the DJ runs the show. You
not only must have the personality to entertain, you also must be forceful
enough to make sure that the photographer, the caterer, and the couple are all
in sync. As far as the music goes,
it will also be much different than working at college radio because your
audience ranges from 5 to 95. You
have to mix together the big band with the disco and the hip-hop to make
everyone happy, especially the bride and groom.
(Trade secret: everyone loves Motown.)
And you have to be able to stomach all the cheesy music that makes you
sick. I don’t know which I
despise more: the “Macarena,” the “Electric Slide,” or the most dreaded
of all, the “Chicken Dance.” Often
I find a couple with class, and they don’t want to hear the same cliched
wedding standards, so my musical knowledge has to go deep.
Through experience, I’ve discovered a few songs, which, while cheesy,
don’t have quite the same Velveeta-ization as “Shout” and
“Celebration.” The Jackson Five
always get everyone dancing. “Footloose” is a lost 80’s classic.
“Kissing a Fool” by George Michael is great because it is a modern
song that sounds good next to Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald.
And once the older generation has gone home for the evening, I break out
“Bust a Move” and “Funky Cold Medina.”
Mark my words, the early-90’s revival will be upon us any day now. The
wide variety of experiences I have had as a wedding DJ provide me with many good
anecdotes. I had a goth wedding
once, where the groom wore an ornate fifteenth-century style suit to go with his
half-shaved head and the earrings running up and down his ears.
The music was a mix of disco and standards (picked by the parents) and
goth dance remixes (picked by the bride and groom).
They asked me to play the nine-minute “Dark Garage Mix” of the
Sneaker Pimps’ “Spin Spin Sugar.” Well,
the first rule of weddings is that the bride and groom always get what they
want. You should have seen the poor
friends of the parents with their mouths agape while the bride and groom, along
with two friends, twirled around the dance floor like whirling dervishes, in
what must be a goth dance style, for nine achingly long minutes. At
another wedding, I was asked to play some traditional Italian music.
I threw in some of the classics, like “the Tarantella,” and the
groom’s parents and their friends polkaed all over the dance floor.
I felt like I was living in a spaghetti sauce commercial.
Meanwhile the groom was plastered after about an hour, and he was
stumbling around with his vest and coat off and his shirt untucked. You
also get to experience the wide variety of catered foods that are available in
this day and age, since at most weddings the bride and groom provide a meal for
the disc jockey to eat in the back while the rest of the guests are eating.
You have to cope with a good number of rubber stuffed chicken dinners,
but it was all worth it for me when I got to do a traditional Asian wedding
banquet with nine courses of delicious Vietnamese delicacies. If
you have a personality, and a good knowledge of music that spans genres, working
as a wedding DJ can be a great way to pick up extra cash either during college
or in those first years after school if you haven’t sold your soul to a big
six consulting firm. At an average
five hour gig, I can pick up anywhere from $140 to $200 depending on tip.
The downside is that you will lose some of your weekend social time,
particularly during June and on holiday weekends like Columbus Day.
You also have to remember that disc jockeys often work as contractors,
even if they hire out through a company, so the earnings are double-taxed and
you will be very confused come April 15. Return to the page of my Writings. |
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