Monthly Archives: September 2012

September 17, 2012

My Top 20 ‘Do Not Play’ Song List for Weddings

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

There are a lot of people who are into technology and have calendared the launch date of the new Iphone.  People that can tell you about cars and all of the pros and cons of purchasing each model.  People that know about literature, and have a million books, and know which ones are being adapted into screenplays.  People that know the history of the British Royal Family and who all the important political figures are in all of the countries all over the world.  I don’t know about these things, but if we’re playing Trivial Pursuit, and the topic is music, you better hope I’m on your team.  I love music!  All kinds too.  I know as much about Hip Hop as I do about Rock and Roll, and most things in between.  If I don’t know I’m curious to find out.  I’m a sponge!  The question that comes up with family and friends is ‘can I get paid for such proficient use of that part of my brain?’  The answer would be ‘not to this point’.  If you don’t care about music, and we are in a ‘musical situation’ together, then I am annoying.  If you love music, and we are in a ‘musical situation’ together, then I am awesome, and so are you!

What’s a ‘musical situation’ you ask???  For me it’s every waking moment, but for most people it would be a concert, car ride, grocery store (they always have adult contemporary or 80s music playing….it’s the only reason I go), cleaning the home, and the most obvious ones which are going out to a bar/night club or for those that don’t go to those places, there’s a type of bar/night club that everyone goes to which I like to call a ‘wedding reception’.  Yes, once all the awkward speeches and kissing games are done, and the food is eaten, there is only one man who can bring home a good wedding, and that’s your wedding DJ.

In second place behind top 40 radio, the wedding DJ is the lowest common denominator of ‘musical situations’.  I don’t want to paint them all with the same brush, but time after time, wedding after wedding, they encourage me to paint them with the same brush.  They do this by having the same mediocre playlist of ‘safe’, reception appropriate, multi generation compatible music that every other wedding DJ has.  As a real music fan this sickens me.  It’s not because I think a wedding is the time for a DJ to pull out all the tricks and start ‘digging through the crates’ so to speak.  You do have an audience that has a huge range in age, so you kind of have to play to everybody, which can be a tricky proposition.  So what they’ve done over the years is found songs that work in those situations, and created a formula for success.  In any business, this makes perfect sense.  Being a wedding DJ definitely makes you a business person, but being a DJ SHOULD also make you an artist.  Art and business typically don’t mix very well, and only in the rarest of circumstances can an artist stay true to his/her art, and still make money.  The compromised product is often what works best.

While I’m understanding of their limitations and expectations, I would still like to see wedding DJs to take some chances.  Play some stuff that I didn’t hear a week ago at the last wedding I was at.  You’ll know if you’ve taken it too far, and you can always bring it back to what works, but there are thousands of songs out there that can work in these situations, yet I seem to only hear the same 30 or 40 over and over again.  As someone who loves music as much as I do, the repetition hurts my soul.

My wedding DJ did a pretty good job.  He came over to my condo and allowed me to lecture him on music for 4 hours (I’d gone to high school with him, so we caught up a bit too).  He was very patient with me.  He nodded like he was listening, and when my wedding day came, while I’m not sure he remembered everything I told him, he held his own up there, and kept the party going without really offending me in any way with his selections.  One of the things he did do, which I thought was pretty awesome, was asked me to make a list of 20 songs I had to hear, and 20 more for him to not play under any circumstances.  Now, I can’t remember if he played all 20 of the songs I wanted to hear or not, but he definitely didn’t play the ones that I didn’t want to hear, and that was even more important in a way.  I just didn’t want to hear the same generic songs that I hear at all the other weddings, so those made my list.

For your consideration, here are the 20 songs that I hate (but always end up) hearing at wedding receptions.  Some comments are included.  This is not necessarily in order of hatred, but rather which ones jumped into my head first.

1. Celebration by Kool & The Gang ( I get it….. we’re celebrating……I love Kool & The Gang too.  How about ‘Get Down On It’ or ‘Jungle Boogie’)

2. Holiday by Madonna (Madonna has 30 years of danceable hits….Why this one every time?)

3. Dancing Queen by Abba (Same comment as above but only 10 years)

4. Macarena by Los Del Rio (You will only hear this at weddings now…. hate songs with dances made up for them…. hate any form of line dancing)

5. Chicken Dance by Werner Thomas (Same comment as above)

6. Who Let the Dogs Out? by The Baha Men (They used to play the original version of this song at the clubs, and we liked it ok, but when the Baha Men re-did it, it became #3 on Rolling Stone Magazine “Most Annoying Songs Ever” poll.  So if you’re a wedding DJ, and this information is available to you, why would you keep playing it???  It’s horrible!!!! You’re horrible!!!! Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!)

7. Love Train by The O’ Jays (I actually love this song, but people tend to start a conga line when it comes on, and then they want to come around to every table, and there’s always some drunk member of the fun police that wants to get you up out of your seat to join the stupidity.  Fuck off and let me enjoy my beer and my social awkwardness!)

8. Conga by Miami Sound Machine (Same comment as above)

9. Mambo #5 by Lou Bega (I want to stab myself with my dessert fork every time I hear this )

10. Swing the Mood by Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers (This is a lazy-ass DJ way to play a bunch of swing songs all at the same time in hopes that some of the older people will feel like he ‘played to them’, but if your DJ was a master mixer himself, then he wouldn’t need to resort to this bullshit.)

11. Follow Me by Aly Us (As far as classic house goes, this is a great song, but at a Filpino wedding, everyone on the dance floor starts doing the ‘bus stop’, and if you don’t know that dance, or don’t feel like line dancing, it’s a good time to grab a drink.)

12. YMCA by The Village People (Wedding DJs get off easy, b/c they play to the drunkest of crowds.  Who would tolerate this song if sober?)

13. TIE – Anything from the Grease Soundtrack (This just sucks the life out of me)

14. Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough by Michael Jackson (I’ll take some Michael at a wedding, but not this one anymore)

15. Single Ladies by Beyonce (I wonder if it’s bouquet toss time?  I don’t really see any way of avoiding this one though)

16. We Are Family by Sister Sledge (You can celebrate with your family without this cue, thanks)

17. Le Freak by Chic (It sounds like I’m picking on Disco here, and I’m not really.  I’m merely picking on the lack of originality by wedding DJs.  A lot of these songs would be better if I didn’t hear them all the time.  I probably prefer this stuff to current pop music like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, but a lot of these Disco songs have been getting played out for the last 35 years.  If they are playing Lady Gaga at weddings 35 years from now, I’ll make a new list)

18. Wind Beneath My Wings by Bette Midler (I figured I’d include a few of the slow songs that drive me nuts.  This one is almost always the father/daughter dance.  I don’t want to sound un-sentimental (if that’s a word), but I can’t take any more of this song.)

19. TIE Anything by Shania Twain or Celine Dion (As a proud Canadian it disappoints me to do this, but no more please)

20. Baby Got Back by Sir-Mix-A-Lot (Oh my god Becky, look at her butt)

Maybe I’ve missed some!!  Do you have a played out wedding reception song that makes you shoot poisonous glare darts toward an unsuspecting, ‘mailing it in’ Wedding DJ???  I’d love to hear them!

 

12 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Humor, Rants, Uncategorized

September 3, 2012

Subway Stories

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

I spend too much time taking public transit.  I waste a good percentage of my life people watching.  I figure between 6-9% of my days are devoted to this based on commute time divided by hours that I’m awake.  This may be a recurring theme in my blog.  Anybody that wants to write and is stuck for ideas needs to live in a big city and spend time on the bus or train.  Everybody has a story, and you can either be a friendly dude and ask people for it, or you can quietly make up their story based on physical appearance, mannerisms and other evidence.  I get a big kick out of speculating what a complete stranger might be spending the rest of their day doing, and what else might be going on in their lives outside of this bus ride.  That’s only when I’m bored!  Sometimes the things that are happening on my commute are so interesting, that I don’t even have time for these games.

The other day I saw the worst toupee I have ever seen in my entire life.  I can’t even call it the worst, because I’m always strangely happy to see a bad toupee, so I will call it the best toupee I’ve ever seen.  It was black, and it took up 90% of this guy’s head.  Let’s just call it a wig.  The problem was, you could see his white hair above his neck where the wig didn’t quite cover.  Just a racing stripe of white hair at the bottom, enough so it blew his cover, and there’s no way the rest of it could pass for real hair.  That was bad enough on its own, but this wig was not unlike what 70’s Elvis Presley’s hair looked like.  Then I got a better look at him, and I saw that his glasses were not unlike something Elvis may have worn around that time too.  I told someone this, and they said that maybe he was dressed up for some kind of festival or something, but that’s the thing…. he wasn’t.  From the neck down he looked like any other guy in his 60’s.  I would say if anything, his lack of flair for wardrobe combined with his Elvis theme from the neck up (mouth up really, because of the white stripe of real hair at the back) was startling.  I promise, this was not some special outfit.  This is how this guy looks and perceives himself.  I’m positive this man looked at himself in the mirror that morning, put that wig on and thought he was the King!!  He would have fit into my ‘Time Warp’ blog nicely a few months ago.  It’s funny what vanity will have you do.  Also ironic that the bad wig makes him look way more ridiculous than whatever he was trying to cover up with it.

Sometimes the subway train will stop for whatever reason.  For a long time.  I always think it’s a ‘jumper’, but I think there are various reasons including electrical problems, and construction that a train could get delayed.  That doesn’t make it any less annoying when it happens, combined with being underground and having no cell phone reception to call work and let them know.  If you’re like me, and you time your work commute so you arrive there 30 seconds before you start, then there’s not a huge margin for error.  I could work at fixing myself, but instead I think I’ll complain about the transit system.  I understand that these things happen, but my main annoyance is the announcements they make.  They mumble!  There’s absolutely no human being on earth or Krypton for that matter who can decipher these messages.  They’re important too, but all you see is a train full of people with that wincing ‘I can’t hear’ face.  If it isn’t the mumbling messenger, it’s the crappy speakers that can’t seem to handle the most basic function of capturing the human voice.  Now here’s the conspiracy theory.  I truly believe that they do it on purpose, and here’s why…….  They are obligated to make an announcement, or else the paying customers which are trapped on this vessel in the middle of an underground tunnel will freak out.  The problem is that sometimes if people knew the truth (there’s a fire… somebody’s dead…), they would freak out even more.  So what do you do??  You install crappy speakers and teach your employees to mumble important announcements.  I can just see them doing it on orientation day.  ‘OK, now everyone grab a partner and practice sending important messages that nobody could ever possible receive’.

On Saturday I was trying to get home from work, and quickly because I had an out-of-town wedding reception to attend.  I ran to the bus stop after work, and got there about 10 seconds ahead of the bus.  There were 2 other people already at the bus stop.  The bus driver did not pull over, but continued up the road.  We all looked at each other like ‘did that just happen?’  There was no ‘Out of Service’ sign up.  He just forgot to pull over.  Here’s the thing though.  There was a lot of traffic on the street, and he had to stop a little further up before the intersection.  So we ran up to the bus, and started tapping on the door so he would let us on.  This guy has the nerve to point out the bus stop up the street, and we were quick to point out that he hadn’t picked us up at the last one.  He started arguing with us through the door (so I couldn’t hear him that well), and tried to say there was nobody there.  Up until now I had been letting some girl handle the argument on our behalf, but then I kind of lost it, and pounded on the glass, and yelled a bit.  I’m not proud of it, but the guy was pissing me off.  Then he started yelling through the glass asking if I was going to cause him problems.  I responded by telling him that I wouldn’t as long as he opened the door.  Then this chick is like ‘I’m not causing problems, I don’t know him’ (referring to me).  Thanks Chick!!!  Perfect!!  Throw me under the bus (not literally)!!  So suddenly I’m Mr. Crazy???  Then this bus driver was saying ‘because I was thinking of pulling over but I don’t want any problems’.  So I calmly walked over to the curb.  He pulled over.  We got on the bus, and I showed him my bus pass, neither of us making eye contact, and I went to my seat feeling like the ‘unreasonable one’.  I didn’t wake up in the morning thinking I would intimidate a Bus Driver into taking me to the subway station.  I always thought that if I stood patiently at a bus stop, that he would just pick me up and there’d be no drama.  If he did his job properly, none of this would have happened, but that’s not really even why it happened.  It’s because he, like 75% of people out there can’t admit he made a mistake.  Why is that so hard for people?  I wouldn’t have been mad if he just opened the door after he realized he screwed up, but why does he have to start telling stories (like nobody was standing there)?  Just do your best, admit to your mistakes, and you will be forgiven.  I’ll never understand why people have to go through life with this ‘perfect record’ of never being wrong, even if it means they have to make things up to support it.  It’s dumb!

 

 

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Humor, Rants, Uncategorized