Nightmares while djing

[discokicks]

I am certain that those who have spent some time as a club or mobile dj have had those nights when something didn't go as planned...a sound system malfunction, an annoying patron, etc.

This past weekend, I had to endure a bit of a nightmare. As always, the bartender at the beginning of the night turned on the system and was playing a cd for the first couple of hours before I got there. A couple minutes after I entered the dj booth at the club, I noticed that only the left channel on the sound level metres was lit...nothing on the right.

I immediately spring into action....I ranted and raved :lol: ...and then start figuring out the problem. All components were turned on, all the cords were in place and the sound was fine thru the headphones. I stomp out of the booth to find the manager who tries to find a flashlight. She returns (the flashlight doesn't work :x...so I'm crawling underneath with a lighter :evil: ) Meanwhile, patrons start merrily coming thru the door.

The manager had called the owner of the club who arrived 20 minutes later. He couldn't find the problem at first but then boosted the volume on the mixer. Both channels lit up and the problem was solved...:oops: I sheepishly said thanks as I looked for the next song.

About 3/4 hour later, as I'm getting people on the dancefloor, the sound completely cuts out as I mix from one song to the other! It comes back and then cuts out again! I touch the volume slider on the mixer, the sound cuts out, back, out and now the left channel is weaker than usual and quite noticeable. This goes on for the next half hour..all the time, I'm watching as the place gets busier and trying to concentrate on what to play.

Needless to say that I am totally flustered and unable to function as usual. The owner had left before this started and the manager had apologetically told me that I'd have to put up with this nonsense and the system would be looked at next week (I won't start my rant about the unprofessional running of this club)....but in the meantime, I'm faced with three more hours of making this night happen!:(

I tried spraying some WD-40 around the mixer's volume slider which was obviously where the fault lied. I apologize to my crowd about the sound problems and tell them that I'm going to attempt some adjustments so bear with it if the sound cuts out. (The place is now full.) Thankfully, I gently boosted the volume on the mixer and both channels boldly came on in full swing....I was back in business!:-D

I didn't dare touch the volume slider for the rest of the night until the end of the evening. That's when I discovered that someone previously had spilled a drink on the mixer....:evil: ...no doubt the dj the night before.

I'll admit that I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to djing and my music. I feel that a dj's mood is vitally important for the evening's success but when things go astray, it can feel like a living nightmare as you're 'on stage' trying to entertain. I have certainly had other episodes like this happen over the last couple decades.

Anyone care to share similar stories?

[RetroRuss]

The worst thing that has ever happened to me is that a needle 'failed' half way through a set. I knew I had a spare - fortunately the venue was only approx. 10 minutes from home. So I put on 'Disco Extravaganza' on the other deck, asked a friend to keep an eye on things and ran out of the venue and drove home - fast! I picked up the needle drove like a rocket back to where I was playing, changed the needle and then smoothly mixed in the next tune as the track was coming to an end! I now always carry a spare set with me!

[Mixmachine]

Originally Posted by Headlamp

The worst thing that has ever happened to me is that a needle 'failed' half way through a set.

I think just about any DJ working daily will have tons of funny stories (now ! )to tell. :D

I also had problems with busted needles a few times but always I or the club had spare Stantons, but nothing one can do about the blown mix and the scratching noise as the needle rips the vinyl, and the perplexed look of customers wondering what happened :roll::-D


But by far my worse fear with needles was what I call the "Gliding" effect, this happens when you forget (to much drinking ???) to clear the dust off the stylus after a few records (sometimes just a single really dirty one will do)and then the accumulated dust lifts the arm and cart and the needle floats all the way to the end!!!!!

:lol::o:lol:

[Disco Funk]

Nothing major. I was just one of a number of djs at a company party, but the venue was so dark, I couldn't see the CD players, which were hard to use anyway. So there was one point where I didn't get the next song cued up fast enough, so there was 20 seconds of dead air. Another time I just got the faders confused (not my own personal mixer) so the song came in midway into the intro break. I don't do DJing on a regular basis, so its pretty easy for me to screw up. :)

Disco Funk

[RetroRuss]

LOL!! Been there with the gliding effect - so in my headphone bag I carry a record cleaner and with darkness a fairly powerful maglite!

Once in a while, usually towards the end of a 4 hour set in a hot & sticky club I have been known to fade to silence....having dropped the levels down and channel and forgotten to bring back up again....the audience is bemused, I usually panic and push the slider up fast, with the mix ruined!! :roll:

[JussiK]

The Flu: snot dripped on the vinyl, the wrong side of the needle...just a couple of rotations away. The sound it made was not pretty.

[Videoskooter]

Originally Posted by JussiK

The Flu: snot dripped on the vinyl, the wrong side of the needle...just a couple of rotations away. The sound it made was not pretty.

OMG :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D ! The horror, the horror!

Picture this: a fashion show, beautiful models, had prepared a good set, the first misses wants to come on the catwalk,, goes to the stair, falls over my cables and kills the sound for 6 minutes:oops:

[Nano]

I was only an amateur DJ (other than parties I worked one month in a club substituting one of the DJs) but I remember some:

-doing a perfect mix, finishing it, and then picking up the needle of the record that was NOW PLAYING! I did this one night at the club. Silence on the speakers, people go "ooooh!" A second later, I put it down again (luckily, the needle didn't make extra noise when touching the record). Some people laughed. What could I do? I turned on the microphone and said: "Sorry!" over the music.

-the first night I DJed alone in this club something in the sound system was fucking with me bad. Every time I started a mix, the second the two records were sounding together on the speakers, the sound crapped down! It went noisy and dirty like if someone was playing with the cable end! :evil: This went on the whole night and I couldn't place the reason. Finally, at the end of the night, the other DJ appeared. He just turned down the treble control in the mixer and everything went back to normal. (Yes, I had put that up earlier.) Boy was I pissed... But I learned that one. :-?

-this one was in a radio booth and was pretty funny (lot of funny stories in radio booths). This radio show were starting, I was one of the commentators and the female hostess was talking really fast, a few seconds after the beginning she was announcing the first song. She was not DJing (we have a separate DJ in talk radio here) and she was not looking at the DJ, who was in a separate booth... disarming the whole arm of the turntable! I mean, cables hanging, man! :-o :-o :-o I touched the hostess' arm for her to notice... Her face went pale! She had to slooooowww down the whole speech right there in order to make time for the poor DJ guy who was changing the whole set. We LOL about that for, like, a week :p

[Mixmachine]

Originally Posted by Nano

I
-doing a perfect mix, finishing it, and then picking up the needle of the record that was NOW PLAYING! I did this one night at the club. Silence on the speakers, people go "ooooh!" A second later, I put it down again (luckily, the needle didn't make extra noise when touching the record). Some people laughed. What could I do? I turned on the microphone and said: "Sorry!" over the music.

:p:p This happened to me also, ( and I heard it happened at other clubs too) but in my case only while playing around with two copies of the same record using both TTs, and always because some kind of extra curriculum distracting activities were happening in the booth :-?;), soon after to avoid this embarrassing disaster from re-occurring I developed the habit of picking up the needle only after checking first with the mixer, I did this after every mix, regardless, even if playing with one record only. It never happened again

The best recovery solution is to quickly lowering /raising the volume, dropping the needle back down anywhere and then looking perplex and blame power spike/failure.:p:p

[DavyMac]

Originally Posted by Nano

-doing a perfect mix, finishing it, and then picking up the needle of the record that was NOW PLAYING! I did this one night at the club. Silence on the speakers, people go "ooooh!" A second later, I put it down again (luckily, the needle didn't make extra noise when touching the record). Some people laughed. What could I do? I turned on the microphone and said: "Sorry!" over the music.

Yup, been there, done that :D

Like MixMachine, I developed a habit of looking at the mixer before lifting a needle afterwards.

[cadillac_man]

I was doing a mobile gig in a bar 20 years ago. I tried a new amp a friend of mine gave me and it was dead. I called him up, he ran to my house, got my old amp and drove 30 minutes and got me the amp just in time.

Another time I was doing a private party and I spilled my martini in the mixer. Lucky for me the lady of the house gave me a blow drier. After 15 minutes it was ok.

[discokicks]

Originally Posted by Mixmachine

:p:p This happened to me also, ( and I heard it happened at other clubs too) but in my case only while playing around with two copies of the same record using both TTs, and always because some kind of extra curriculum distracting activities were happening in the booth :-?;), soon after to avoid this embarrassing disaster from re-occurring I developed the habit of picking up the needle only after checking first with the mixer, I did this after every mix, regardless, even if playing with one record only. It never happened again

Spinning cds can be even more difficult because you can't visually see which one's playing over the speakers without looking at the volume sliders. What a laugh when you just come out of a perfect mix and then hit the stop button on the one everyone's grooving to.....but then with a quick "whoops", you hit play and immediately the music's back on...

Speaking of mobile gigs, at this one wedding that I did back in the 80's, the dancefloor was less than desireable for playing vinyl. When I would do my set-ups, I would always pay attention to how shaky the floor would be but in this particular building, I felt confident that there would be no problems.

I was so wrong because just after the first couple of slow songs, the needle jumped so I knew there would be no point in playing something faster. So, sheepishly, with a little help from a couple of the patrons, we moved my whole setup into the lobby of the building!:lol: :oops:

Thankfully, everyone thought this was just a hoot as I would occasionally ask over the microphone if everyone was still there. It turned out to be a good party.

[KoolChris]

Originally Posted by Headlamp

So I put on 'Disco Extravaganza' on the other deck, asked a friend to keep an eye on things and ran out of the venue and drove home - fast! I picked up the needle drove like a rocket back to where I was playing, changed the needle and then smoothly mixed in the next tune as the track was coming to an end!

I love that track!! (You were referring to the George Bussey Experience track, right?) Especially the break around 7 min. into the track, when the beat, congas, brass and female vocals are joined by the strings.... Beautiful!

I can only think of 2 noticeable fuck-ups:

-once deejaying for a New Year's party of 350-400 people, coming in from everywhere in Europe from Portugal to Germany. The organizer had rented a whole hotel, not readily technically equipped for such a party (no DJ equipment) in the Swiss Alps. We had prepared the party (with the organizers) beforehand in Paris, where I'd told them I'd need a pair of SL1200s, a pair of Denon DJ1000s, a pro mixer, and last but not least: pro headphones, preferably Koss. They managed to rent all the equipment, but forgot the headphones. When I arrived on New Year's Eve, by the last train in this remote ski resort, I started by checking all the equipment, and noticed the lack of headphones. The guy in charge told me he hadn't rented the headphones because he had plenty, left over from all the Walkmans he'd owned over the years!!!! I started sweating in advance at the idea of doing an all-night set with no headphones. We were far from any mid-sized town, and everything would be closed anyway!!
So I started my set, trying to keep the headphones level as low as possible, but obviously, to be able to distinguish any sound from the mixer over the speakers (there was no booth), the level had to go up. 2 hours and 4 blown-up headphones later, I was left mixing with no cue on what was playing, only matching beats after they were already playing through the dancefloor speakers. I made a quick explanation over the mic, and people thankfully understood, many coming by to tell me I was still doing a pretty good job.

-Another New Year's party (of 1999), co-deejaying with a close friend who was also organizing and hosting the party (at his very large Paris apartment). There were a little under 100 of us, and we'd all been enjoying dinner and open bar for awhile when it was time to mix. By 1:00, I was both drunk (so I felt like I was handling records with baseball mitts) and high (so I didn't care), but still managed to perform a semi-decent set. A girl I'd made a mutually good impression on earlier made her way behing the decks table with a pair of drinks, and, as we started making out during a longer house track, she decided to free her hand by depositing her glass on the table behind her... smack on the spinning record! Thankfully, the glass spilled mostly on the floor, after pushing the arm out of it's way, across the tracks! A push on the crossfader bought me some time to check the arm and cartridge, and to realize a catastrophy had been avoided...

[QUINNY]

In all my years as a DJ I luckily had very few nightmares whilst DJing.

I probably took the pickup off of the wrong record a few times....but don't remember.

A Spanish guy pissed all over a corner of the dancefloor on one occasion. Some people applauded others were outraged, but on the whole, they just smiled and got back to dancing.

Another time, a rich French guy who thought he was a punk, danced on the dancefloor with a skinned sheep's head, tethered with a piece of string.

A woman deliberately took the pickup off of the record that was playing.....'cos I was kinda ignoring her advances. She was escorted from the premises.

In one venue, they had a re-furb. The DJ booth was a lift (supposed to be a rocket ship taking off, with smoke machine underneath) and on the first night, with hundreds of people, every time it went up or down, the records took off, NOT the 'spaceship'!;) It was a right shambles.

In my early days, a couple of guys in dark suits ended up with white suits after one of my DJ colleagues decided to run riot with bags of flour.

Also in my very early days, I temporarily knocked myself out doing a Pete Townsend (of the Who) inpersonation. Strobe was in my eyes, I threw the solid body guitar up into the air, it came down on my head. Luckily it was a double up night, so the other DJ continued.

Another time, my DJ colleague fell asleep whilst in the booth. This, in the days of 3 minute 7" records!

On a riverboat shuffle, despite acres of padding, springing etc, the boat rolled sooo much that virtually every record jumped. Everyone just got pissed outta their heads and ened up having a great time.

So ya see, no real nightmares.

However, once I'd stopped Djing, for several years I'd have the same nightmare. That of DJing, but not knowing what to put on next and getting into a frightful state. I hated that dream!!!!!

[Mixmachine]

Originally Posted by QUINNY

However, once I'd stopped Djing, for several years I'd have the same nightmare. That of DJing, but not knowing what to put on next and getting into a frightful state. I hated that dream!!!!!

:-P:-P
I still also experience this s dreams too, I called them “DJ withdraws” similarly sometimes I also have dreams about final exams!!! :roll:

Another one of my worse nightmare happened to me in ’92, almost three years after my retirement and understandably not very familiar with the latest club playlists.

I visited this old DJ friend at this hot South Beach club he was spinning at, and while the club was at it’s peak with packed dance floor and all he asked me to throw a few mixes while he stepped out for a few minutes, for obvious reasons I asked him to hurry back and to pull out a few “pertinent” records before leaving to make it easier on me, (and allow me time to listen to the intros on the spot for the first time), needless to say, He never returned again!!!,:-o leaving me stranded there with a packed floor and not knowing what to play next!!! after running out of his picks, and worse of all, I wasn’t able to find anything familiar in time within his filing system either !!.:???:

I immediately started sweating bullets!!!, my nice expensive “buzz” was completely gone!! In a couple of occasions the record almost ran out on me!!! only catching the last few bars at the very end by some miracle, to add to my troubles I didn’t like his headphones either and couldn’t get used to the monitor they had (if they did ), as a result my mixing was sub-par to say the least and the floor began to thin out causing me to sweat even more bullets!!

Finally, after about an hour of this (that seemed like an eternity to me) and after every one looking for him had given up, I settled down and resigned myself to try to finish the night for the sake of the Club and his job, then by a welcome stroke of luck, in a dark corner of the record bin I found a neatly filed late 70’s ‘oldies’ 12” pile I could work with, and immediately began to spin this oldies sets the best I could struggling along for another hour or so until closing.

Afterwards, the management thank me for my efforts and was always welcome for free at the door after this night, later on my friend told me He had this once in a life time opportunity he couldn’t pass up !!!. Well, I said, that must be the only acceptable explanation you could give me for ruining my night and my nice Buzz .… but you better don’t do it again!!!! :):)