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When
his pal Paul Halverson got engaged, Brian Doyle offered
his DJing services for the wedding reception at no charge
– as in gratis, a gift from one friend to another. At the
reception – early 1991, Livermore, Cal. – Doyle assumed
the MCing duties and interacted with the raucous, beer-swilling
crowd while his DJ, Rene, dropped jams by Billy Idol, The
B-52s and The Romantics.
But
Halverson’s mother had other ideas. Despite having kicked
off the reception with nearly an hour of oldies like “Sing
Sing Sing” and “In the Mood,” Doyle was pestered by Mrs.
Halverson, who kept asking him to turn down the noisy rock
music and play more mellow material, like Patsy Cline.
“By doing what she requested, it would have killed the party,”
says Doyle. “Even this younger crowd, in their twenties
and thirties, had been totally getting into the older stuff
we had been playing earlier. But now it was time to move
on to the newer party music.”
When
the disagreement turned into a shouting match between Mrs.
Halverson and the newlyweds, the scene quickly shifted from
“Ozzie and Harriet” to “Married with Children.” The newlyweds
defended Doyle by pointing out that he had, after all, donated
his MCing talent, his DJ and his mobile rig as a wedding
gift. Here was Doyle, displaying no less virtue than Mother
Theresa, but, in return, catching hell.
Sound
familiar? Ever notice how DJing a party for friends or family
is too often a lose-lose situation? Yet we all eventually
do receive that phone call from a cousin who’s getting married,
or from a sister whose college sorority friend is getting
married – or worse yet, from a cousin whose college sorority
friend is getting re-married. They’re all looking for that
“special” deal; then they tell you it’s “all in the family.”
Puh-leeze. It sometimes makes me wish I were an orphan.
Oh
yeah, and forget about charging normal prices in these situations
– friends have a talent for needling us about such “piracy,”
and family members will pour the guilt on until we’re old
and gray. And once you’ve agreed to do the gig, just try
telling your good friend Chad that you absolutely will not
play his favorite Devo song – the one that clears floors
better than a broom. And have you ever tried explaining
to Aunt Mimi why Eddie Cantor is not your preferred segue
after “Pump Up The Volume”?
The
challenge, then, is to handle such gig requests – the dreaded
“freebie” – diplomatically, or not.
Doyle,
owner of the Bay Area-based Denon & Doyle, will not allow
such a situation to crop up again. “I’ve found that if you
give someone something for free, they don’t attach any monetary
value to it,” he says. “Any time you do something for free,
you want people to rave about you and fall all over you.
I could have just bought them a nice gift, and it would
have been a lot cheaper and less of a headache. They figure
they’re doing you a favor by allowing you to DJ their wedding.
Ever since I did that friend’s wedding, whenever a close
friend asks me to DJ their wedding, I refer them to other
good DJ friends of mine, simply to get myself out of the
loop.”
Not every DJ, however, prefers to or can afford to farm
that gig out, of course. “I’ve found it’s simply better
to do them myself,” says Chris James DeGray, vice-president
of Mark’s Rolling Dance Revue in Agawam, Mass. “When I refer
my friends and family to another company, I know those other
companies will charge full price. And if they screw it up,
man, do I hear about it.”
Fairly
frequently, DeGray’s services are requested by old schoolmates
or family members – for a reduced or absent rate. “I do
take the calls,” he says. “But I try to help them understand
that this is what I do for a living. Sometimes I’ll ask
them if they’ll give me the same discount wherever they
work – whether it’s for an insurance company or at a movie
theater – and when they say, ‘no,’ I’ll explain to them
that I’m self-employed and this is my only income.”
For
multi-system companies especially, this family freebie can
be a drag on revenue and can wear down valuable equipment.
“Because we do this for a living, we have to get our minimum
price just for going out,” says K.C. Kokoruz, owner of Chicago-based
Spinnin’ Discs. “This year, it seems like every one of my
sister’s friends is getting married and calling for reduced-rate
deals. What they don’t realize is that we’re a lot more
expensive than most other DJs in the phone book.”
Kokoruz
offers these acquaintances free lights or some other perk
that won’t cost him any out-of-pocket money or additional
payroll charges. “That way, the person can usually respect
that this is how we make our living,” he explains. “They
might only pay a minimum price, but we’ll bring out a $2,000-$3,000
show, with extra speakers and lights and video screens and
lasers. They get all the upgrades, but the company is still
making what it needs to make on a Saturday night.”
According
to Mark Ashe, the main man behind Mark’s Rolling Dance Revue,
his company offers a special friends-only discount. “But
there aren’t really any great benefits for us,” he says.
“And it really hurts to offer our services for a reduced
rate and then have to pass up on a $1,000 gig because we’re
already booked.”
For
Ashe, though, there is the benefit of giving a “gift” to
friends or family and hoping they’ll realize its value.
“The ‘present’ you’re giving your friend by offering your
services for a discounted price has more value than any
other gift someone will buy them,” he says. “The highest
cost you’ll see for a wedding gift is usually around $100,
but we give a discount of between $200 and $300.”
These days, if one of Doyle’s employees requests a DJ system
to play a friend’s party for free, Doyle takes a compassionate,
creative approach: “I tell them they can’t do it for free,
but they can charge their sister $250 and just keep the
$250 for themselves. They tell the client they have to charge
that amount for the rental of the equipment from the DJ
company, and if the DJ really feels bad about taking the
money, they can simply turn around and write them back a
check for $250 and make that their wedding present.”
While
these gigs for family and friends may not be stuffing your
pockets with green, they do have their own peculiar advantages:
Knowing all the personalities and quirks of everybody in
the room, the MC can add customized hilarity to the crowd-interaction.
“When you’re doing the MC work,” says Doyle, “you can add
all sorts of things you know about the guests. So you can
actually toast and roast the groom or the bride. You can
also get away a lot more with interactions with friends
and family because you know them. No longer are you the
cheesy DJ, because you know what’s cool and what’s not.
It’s fun to tell a lot of inside jokes on the microphone
that brings all of them together.”
Of
course, there’s no better advantage while performing family
freebies than being able to tell your guests to “shove it.”
It’s a rare occurrence, indeed, but that’s what Rolling
Dance Revue’s DeGray does. While DJing for family events,
he’ll hear good-natured criticism from his siblings or cousins
– even his dad. DeGray prefers to give it right back to
them. “Family members will come up to me and tell me that
my music sucks and I should play this and that,” he says.
“But because they’re family, I’ll just say, ‘Shut up, dad,
I’m busy working!’ They’ll give you more guff because you’re
family, but you have the license to give it to them back
because they’re family, too.”
How
do you handle requests from friends or family members? Do
you bite the bullet and do the freebie? Or do you inform
them that your DJing is not an adventure – it’s a job. Let
us know and we’ll print your response: djtimes@testa.com
Copyright
© 2000 DJ Times Magazine
TESTA
Communications Publishing
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