A recent professional DJ gig, the Hoboken International Film Festival, required a bit more preparation than I am accustomed. For this particular event, I needed to create a playlist for the acceptance of awards at the Awards Gala. These songs were needing to be for when the winners would walk up to receive their awards and then return to their seats after an acceptance speech. Sounds easy?  Maybe not so much. For each award, I needed to have a different song that ‘matched’ the feel for the award and had a dynamic beginning and intro to create energy for the award recepients and the crowd. In all there were 21 awards/songs needed. Coming up with a playlist for this took about 4-5 hours of searching through my nearly 250GB library for songs that met the criteria needed. Fortunately, it came out OK:)

Today I will be preparing a playlist for a HS graduation party on Saturday night.  This special young lady has very diverse taste for a teenager. Most teenagers when they say they have diverse taste, they usually mean they like several different forms of the same genre of pop music; dance/Top 40/club.  This particular young lady wants Grunge, Pop, Top 40, Country, Rock, Classic Rock, Sinatra, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Billy Idol and of course, Michael to go with Slides (Electric and Cha Cha), and current popular dance songs like Akon and PitBull. When I was her age my musical tastes were also diverse. Back then, this was not acceptable because music defined social groups more and there was little opportunity for stepping over social borders as there is today. I am excited about getting the opportunity to share in her big event. She has even let me know what songs she wants to dance with her Dad, boyfriend, best friend and a dedication to her Uncle who recently passed.

All this fun and I haven’t even gotten to the gig yet! Can’t wait to see what surprises the party itself will present.  Time to get back to putting some stuff together for Saturday night.

DJ Mystical Michael Rhode Island DJ & NY DJ

This week I had the misfortune of doing business with a less than reputable DJ Agency in Illinois. I will not at this time add their name till I am certain the deal has gone sour.  This national DJ service recruits other professional DJs to work specific events for him and sends them an e-contract to sign.  The e-conctract is returned to him automatically. 
As a subcontractor, I feel ultra-responsible for producing an excellent event. This is due to the fact that I am now representing me and HIS agency when I professional DJ this event.

It turns out after some research, that this particular agency does not pay their professional DJs but they do accept full payment in advance from the client. Meaning, they get paid $400 and the professional DJ gets nothing without the client knowing, or the professional DJ, that the professional DJ is about to work for free while producing an event.

This is sad. It would be sad regardless of the industry but I have been part of this particular industry since the late 70’s back when there were only THREE of us doing mobile professional DJ gigs at the time. I take this personally. This really burns me up! How can people sleep at night when doing business like this.

My anger wants me to name these folks to ‘get them back’. But that is not the answer, at least not out of anger. Soon I may move to a place of listing them out of service and protection to all of you and our colleagues in the industry.

Bottom line: watch who you do business with! We encourage you to take the time to research who you are doing business with BEFORE you send them money or agree to sub-contract work with them. We can together make it harder for scammers to make money off hard-working people with integrity.

Let us know if you have any ideas or suggestions on how we can make this happen together.

DJ Mystical Michael Rhode Island DJ & NY DJ