Excellent little post from Philippa at Piccadilly records in their intro this week, describing her experience of a ‘Dj Wanker’. This, folks, is the way not to do it. I’ve had a similiarly interesting experience djing at a party with a guy turning everything to full and playing forever. His mate was dancing, ( in a skeleton top ) but that was all. Me and Phil came back on, turned the music down, and everything went back to normal again.

“I was away last week because I was DJing at a civil partnership do for two of my mates who live in Cornwall. Actually, they’d already tied the knot (or whatever you do) in January, so this was basically the wedding reception, complete with millions of aunties, uncles, kids, friends and work colleagues, all fitting neatly into an ace beach bar at Pra Sands near Penzance.

Now, I’d only taken one bag of records because I was only supposed to be on for an hour, but I’d still packed a bit of 60s soul, some reggae hits, disco classics, 70s and 80s pop, indie anthems, funk and soul gems and more. Something for everyone basically (apart from the girls who wanted Busted and McFly), because that’s what DJing at weddings is all about.

Anyway, when I arrive in Cornwall (six hours away), it turns out that the resident DJ (who orders records from us, so hello to him – love the bar!) is playing somewhere else, so can I play more tunes. Of course I can – I have no social skills, so hiding in the DJ box is fine by me. Anyway, not to worry because they’ve got a mate coming down from London who’s also going to play.

So, this bloke, who shall remain nameless, comes in like the big I am down from the Smoke ‘yeah, I’m mates with people from The End’ blah blah blah, and his opening line to me (who arrived at the bar two hours before him to make sure the decks were in order etc) is ‘do you want to come and look at the mixer?’ (me; ‘no’), ‘there’s probably a few features you’re not familiar with’. What a tosser. It’s a wedding reception, I’m not gonna be touching the cut out switches and efx buttons, I’m just going to be moving the crossfader gently from one side to the other.

Anyway, after a cousin playing the organ while we ate, a bit of live folk and a bawdy Cornish sing-along, on I went, playing proper wedding music – “Come On Eileen”, “Uptown Top Ranking”, “Club Tropicana”, “Needle In A Haystack”, “Rehab”, “One Nation Under A Groove”, “I Want Your Love”, “Never Let her Slip Away”, “Silly Love Songs” – that kind of thing (but not in that order), keeping the dancefloor full (as Peaira, one half of the happy couple, said to me ‘you even got uncle Brian up dancing, and he’s normally in a disability scooter!’).

Meanwhile, Mr Dickhead is stood behind me for an hour and a half asking if I’m going to finish in 15 minutes (every five minutes), trying to make me change the perfectly good Stantons to the £250 Ortofon Concord headshells he’s brought with him, and saying stuff like ‘I see you’ve brought some 7″s’ (it’s a fucking wedding, of course I’ve brought some sevens). Anyway, I finally gave way and let him on the decks, leaving Madonna “Into The Groove” playing to a full dancefloor (obviously), and HE TOOK IT OUT HALFWAY THROUGH. Talk about lack of DJ etiquette!

Anyway, he started off with “Big Fun” and “Voodoo Ray”, so not too bad, but then went into the most tedious, heads-down Euro tech-house / trance nonsense, which obviously cleared the dancefloor in about 10 minutes. But he kept on playing it (using all the features on the Vestax mixer I bet!) and didn’t look up once, spinning to an empty room. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my definition of a total utter DJ wannabe wanker. “