Having never been a DJ but having always WANTED to be one this night was an important gig for me. 80's HOT TRAXXX live at the THERAPY CAFE in Downtown Dayton was going to be an exciting experience for both Dale and myself. We over-prepared for it with 29 gigs worth of videos ripped an saved to work from and a box full of prizes to give away courtesy of my buddy Matt over at Game Swap in Kettering (and I threw in a bunch of stuff too that I had left over from Horrorama). We ended up using some of the 80's posters from Game Swap to decorate the stage and give it a different "feel" than the usual 80's night presentation (which it was gonna have anyway since they didn't play videos and that was ALL we were going to do).
Our show was getting started at 7:00 pm on a tuesday evening and was to lead into 9:00 pm approximately when the actual 80's night DJ's would start their thing. Dale and I were prepared for little to no crowd to show up since no one in Dayton comes out to drink at 7:00 pm and frankly very few people come out for first time events. There is a stigma in this city of when an event is a first time thing people wont go to it because it isn't cool and established, yet quite often because said event doesn't get a crowd there wont be a second one, thus killing it. So the hipster vibe of "I wont be seen somewhere where I most likely wont be seen" kills most first time interesting ideas in this town.
Luckily for us, we didn't care and had the support of our workplace DATV behind us. They all showed up. Too bad two thirds of the volunteers who always show up at our events didn't because they choose to go to the FILM DAYTON meeting instead, even though there was something else that could have used some support gong on. But I digress, it still got cooking to a smallish but turned out to be very into it crowd.
We warmed them up before hand with some soft 80's rock, stuff like Sade, and Allyson Moyett with a spinkling of Samantha Fox at her most naughty to get their attention. Some Billy Idol and one of my favorites Men At Work's "Overkill" were in there too.
Then we got cooking with Dale and I talking the stage. It is kind of a blur at this point, I don't even remember what video we started with actually. I know The Plasmatics "The Damned" got played pretty earlier on to get people fired up. Rick Springfield's "Human Touch" and naturally The Buggles' " Video Killed The Radio Star" were in there too. It wasn't long before the request 
started coming fast and furious with stuff like Durand Duran "Rio" (I wanted to play "The Chauffeur" instead) A Flock of Seagulls "I Ran", Journey's "Separate Ways" (Requested as "the Worst Video of All Time, but luckily I knew just what they were talking about), Bryan Ferry's "Is Your Love Strong Enough" Bonny Tyler "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and some Judas Priest.At one point someone asked if I had a David Hassellhoff Video of which
I did not, but I told them I did however have a Philip Michael Thomas video that was WAY better, to hang out for it. That it would blow their minds. This prompted me to do a block of 80's craptastic muck that was the whole reason people came out. After this fetid blast of anal wind they could go home happy. Starting with Philip Michale Thomas' "Just The Way I Planned It" I surprised them with the theme to "Diff'rent Strokes" 
Gerardo's "Here Kitty Kitty (In Spanish) and finally Billy Squire "Rock Me Tonight" (Asked for as "that video where Billy Squire Channels Richard Simmons")
The BACK TO THE 80's acting troupe were there to promote the last weekend of their show and clearly had a blast interacting with us and reliving some of the video classics. They won a lot of the trivia and got bundles of old VHS movies, actual vinyl albums and DATV drinking mugs. We roped the incredibly cute gal into being our spokes model for a giveaway and when she grabbed the card from the box the name on it was Peter North! To which it seemed not a lot of people int he audience seemed to get the joke there, I'm not sure if she did or not, but I suspect she did. It was funny anyway, but Peter and his special hair was not in the building. But her and her red High heels are welcome to be are spokesmodel/giveaway girl if we ever do this again!
Dale and I worked it well together, bantering back and forth, but due to learning the DJ software I sort of drifted towards that end and Dale towards the giveaway end, but that worked out just fine. A good time was had by all and this way we had the technical kinks worked out by the mid point in the show, and considering we were using software we had NEVER touched before in our lives, I think that is a pretty good track record.
I hope everyone who came out had fun. We certainly did and maybe, just maybe the planets will line up and we can finagle a way to do it again!
Andy C.
Special Thanks to Jim Burns for being our Camera man for the evening too! Still photos by Dan Suffoletto!
No comments:
Post a Comment