With the holiday party season coming to an end, i closed it out with my client Welk Resort at Parq Nightclub. I was super excited to play at Parq as it was one of San Diego’s premiere night clubs and to give you an idea of what goes on there, I played there on a Monday after a weekend that saw performances by Drake, T.I. and Imagine Dragons. Once I dropped my first track on that Funktion 1 sound system, I knew we were all in for a treat. This is one of the few event clients that I can really use my skills as a club DJ uninhibited and not shackled to a clean version only playlist. I can only imagine how bad the hangovers were the next day!

Back in 2009 I traveled the nation with Monster Energy Drink as their official DJ for their Supercross, Motocross and C.O.R.E. I got on the tour through a buddy of mine Seth. Fast forward a few years and Seth is now working for Teva and referred me to be the Dj for the parent company’s holiday party. Decker’s owns many brands including Sanuk and Ugg boots, so it is a very large outdoor sports corporation based in Goleta CA.

At first I thought it would be your typical holiday party with dinner and drinks but once I got on the conference call about the party, I realized this would be a huge production. This event was Western themed so i had to dress up and customize my play list to cater to the theme. These are the types of events I LOVE. The music format was older country first and as the alcohol hit the blood stream and after the CEO speech, I was to crank it up. We had a blast!

To give you an idea of the amount of planning and production that went into this, when I parked in the lot outside of their warehouse, I noticed a huge bull tied to a trailer with about 30 bails of hay being transported into the warehouse. When I got in the warehouse, it was as if I was walking down the O.K. Corral complete with a Saloon, Brothel and a jail. They also hired several actors to play roles like sheriff, town drunk and gogo dancers to really put you in the theme. Great time!

This is a perfect example of how powerful having a good DJ at a holiday party can change an event manager’s perception of their co-workers. Originally the dinner was supposed to be outside but it was raining so the contingency plan was to have everyone crowd into an event space that was small for the crowd size. I spoke with one of the mangers of Chef Works and told her there was no dance floor where I was setting up. She replied, “Trust me, these people won’t dance. They are talkers and will just want to talk.” In my head I was like, “Then why did you hire a DJ?” but to her, I politely fell in line with her vision and took my place in the corner. I noticed the energy after dinner was quite low so I start doing some of my standard 80’s themed routines which are less catered to dancing and more catered to a DJ performance. After I grabbed their attention and they started to sing along, I gradually increased the energy of the music and the volume too. Within 20 minutes people were dancing wherever they could find space and the energy was super high. Never under estimate the power of music nor the yearning of a cubicle mate to dance their ass off, especially with a couple Stone IPAs in them!

It was that time of the year again for the UCSD ER Holiday party! Luckily the woman of my dreams who I married happens to be an ER nurse at UCSD, hence how I got this gig. What’s amazing about these nurses is that they will save your life and show you how to party on their time off! As soon as the dinner service was over, the dance floor got packed and stayed packed for 4 straight hours!