Friends in Low Places

“Line dancing is fascistic,” I said to the bride over the phone.

Silence for several beats.

“I’m a dental technician,” she replied.

That about sums up the wedding I DJ’d last night. I also asked her if the party center was east of west of the freeway.

“I’m not good with east and west,” she admitted.

“Well, if I’m on the freeway, do I head toward New York or California to get the place?”

“You’re teasing me again.”

Lately, I’ve been DJing weddings for a company for extra money. On the one hand it’s a lot of fun playing music for people, trying to make sure everything goes smoothly for them on their special day, blabbing to the crowd; and it’s rewarding to hear how much fun they had afterward. That’s all cool.

But it also an enormous pain in the ass to pick up and return the rental equipment (since I no longer own a big enough amp or speakers), and gather the specific requests for the wedding, since unlike a party or a club, you HAVE to have the important ritual requests for a wedding – first dance, father/daughter, blah blah blah, all of that. And frankly I don’t have all that much patience anymore for deranged drunken fools, an alarming number of whom were in attendance by the end of the night last night.

Another warning about the tone of the affair that was to follow: the groom and his groomsmen wore cowboy hats as part of their official wedding attire. I’m not kidding. They also had hundreds of jello shots lined up for each adult participant in the dollar dance. The groom’s mother requested AC/DC. These were clues.

Other fun facts:

the groom and his groomsmen mooned the crowd not once but twice from the stage.

the power shorted out not once but twice during the “Electric Slide.”

the groom and a random woman sang along – on microphone – with “God Bless the U.S.A.”

though the requests were varied and ran from oldies to classic rock to old school rap, funk, and soul, to country, when everyone was good and drunk – open bar, large young crowd, recipe for insanity – COUNTRY was demanded, NOW.

the five songs that got the biggest response were:

“Friends in Low Places” – Garth Brooks

“Family Tradition” – Hank Williams Jr.

“You Shook Me All Night Long” – AC/DC

“The Locomotion” – Grank Funk

“Wild Thing” – Tone Loc

By the time Garth and Hank were on near the end, the groom and groomsmen had taken off their shirts and were wearing their vests like wife-beaters.

The hall was very nice, well-decorated, and the staff was great – no problem there (other than the power issue), but the hall I was in last week – the Polish-American Club – was the most outrageous shithole I have ever worked for a wedding: smoke-stained, dirty, paper tablecloths, plastic silverware, surly women with hairy arms making the food and shuffling about as if in a bad trance. Of course no one wants to go too crazy on expense when it’s the groom’s fourth, and the bride’s third wedding – it’s more like a series. And best of all – they met online.

Back to last night: everyone was pleasant, people were very much into the music, the young wedding party was attractive and lively, Dawn came along to help and keep me company and we had fun discussing the various affronts to decorum, so it’s not like the evening was a disaster or without charms.

BUT, by the end of the night, with the stage diving, the young woman who kept running up to the stage to make some terribly important inane announcement and EVERY single time she ran up the stairs her breasts fell out of her ridiculous dress, the LONG hours, the teetering drunken requesters slamming into the turntables jumping the records, and the stress induced by the general across-the-board level of debauchery, we were worn out and beaten down. No matter HOW much fun they had and how successful the evening was perceived to be, and no matter how many compliments we got for rocking the house, it just kind of sucked.

As Danny Glover said to Mel Gibson: “I’m getting too old for this shit.” Maybe I am.

Oh, and did I mention the needle broke on my left turntable and I didn’t have a replacement because I just don’t think that much about this crap anymore? So I was working with one truntable and two CD players for the evening – no mixing that way, hombre.