Business

Friday night, I played for the first time at Brett Favre’s Steakhouse.  I’m not sure if was it bad luck, or (NSFW) The Viking Curse, but for the first time in the 3-4 years I’ve been using it, my Numark CDN-88 Dual-Deck CD Player decided that it wanted the night off.  I couldn’t understand why, but songs would pause for seemingly no reason and with no warning, and the deck would totally lock up mid-song.  The only remedy was to eject the disc, and start over on the other side, which worked just great, until I tried cuing up another disc of course.  Normally, I would have caught something like this during dinner, when music isn’t quite as critical as it is at dance time, but I had been playing some CDs that the bride and groom made for me that didn’t require cross-fading between them, so the problem never had an opportunity to show itself.

The first time the system went down, I thought it was a fluke, figured out how to unlock the unit, and kept going, hoping it was just some mistake I had made.  Not 4 songs later, it happened again.  I rewired my electrical, checked all my other cables, and gave it one more run.  During that first song, it went down a third time.  I had enough.  It was time to call in for reinforcements.   I called Dave, and he left the job he was at, and ran me a Numark CDMIX-2 which is nice, but as the reviewers on Amazon will tell you, it has a few problems of it’s own.

The family had prepared an amazing video collage of various football players and coaches that used TV news footage out-of-context, offering the couple marriage advice.  This was, by far the most creative and elegant use of a projector I had ever seen at a wedding.  I did not, however, know how poorly the hall’s sound system would perform with the audio, making it nearly inaudible for everyone in attendance.  I was unprepared to wire in any laptop without an external audio interface, so we ended up playing the video without sound, which was a such a major disappointment to me, I can only imagine how the bride, groom, and creator felt.

After the grand march, when I had a working CD player, there were a few minor hiccups, admittedly due to by lack of experience with the player, but overall we rocked the party hard.  My confidence and heart were down in the balls of my feet, but for the most part, everyone who stuck it out with me seemed to have a great time.  I even got a few compliments on how quickly I was able to get up and running and how well the party went thereafter, but it couldn’t erase the deep disappointment I felt from the earlier issues.

One of the major disadvantages of my business model and exclusive partnerships (I only take jobs from Action DJs and Monty’s Magic, and I always rent equipment from Action DJs or Camera Corner as a backup) is that my hands are typically tied when it comes to “making it right”.  If the job was booked through Action, my preferred method, I typically don’t get paid until after I return the rented equipment, and as a general rule, I won’t carry cash out of town any time I’m traveling, business or not.  Regardless, I felt that I owed something to the bride and her family, whether or not the problems that night were the fault of me, Action, or the venue, or whether they were just bad luck.  Sure we made our best efforts to correct the problems, but that doesn’t change the fact that I couldn’t play music for 15 minutes, and someone’s hard work wasn’t given the time and attention it deserved.

In a feeble attempt to mend the wounds, I gave both the bride and her father my card and offered them 4 hours of my time at no charge for any future event, and I hope they take me up on it.  They were both courteous and assured me that they understand the problem wasn’t my fault and that I handled it well, but that just isn’t good enough for me.  I want them to be awed and amazed.

I left Bret Favre’s Steakhouse not knowing the cause of my problems, cursing the Vikings, and praying that my equipment would work the following night at Stone Harbor Resort.  ( to be continued… )