Articles by Nick Drago

Photo 1 (above): Residents, as well as students that came to volunteer at the event, enjoyed dancing to a wide variety of music.

Last Friday, Dustin and I headed to Aversboro Assisted Living Center in Garner to disc jockey a prom for the center’s residents. The event was organized because many residents did not have the opportunity to attend a prom in high school. Theresa Gaddy, the center’s recreation director, said:

They never got to go to the prom because they were busy working in the fields… they were raised on farms and had to do farm work. (source)

12 or so students from Cardinal Gibbons High School in Raleigh volunteered as beauticians and helped residents get ready for the event. Then, they accompanied the residents as escorts to the dance, where they talked, ate, and danced with the residents.

This was actually the second senior citizen prom that we DJed. Two weeks earlier, Dustin DJed a similar dance for seniors that Cardinal Gibbons put on at a local community center. That event was smaller, about half or two-thirds the size of this event. We had expected this event to be bigger, but we still had over 100 residents!

You can read more about this event and watch the video newscast on NBC17’s website.

Music

Many of the music selections we had picked out from the other senior event, but still this was a different crowd with a different dynamic and they wanted to hear different music. Dustin had pulled together a lot of old music, like Barry Manilow, but as soon as we started playing that someone came over and told us not to play “dead music” because it was depressing the residents. Dustin laughed, and said “Barry Manilow isn’t dead” (he came out with 8 or so albums in the last decade). Nevertheless, we switched up the music.

Not long after we started getting some requests. People wanted to hear:

• Twist (Chubby Checker)
• Stroll
• general 50s and 60s hits, love songs
• Beatles
• Beach music

I think 50s and 60s ended up being the optimal timeframe for music at this event. Love songs from this era were very popular, as were our standard line dances/ icebreakers (Macarena, YMCA, Cha cha slide). We played some soft rock at the beginning as well, but after about 45 minutes or so we mastered the crowd and were able to play the right kind of music. The goal of each song that we selected was to get people up out of their seats and onto the dance floor enjoying themselves.

We were able to get a lot of residents up, dancing, and having a great time. We did play Crank Dat by Soulja Boy, and I know the students enjoyed that (and at least some of the residents). There was one kid, this boy who had to have been about 7 years old, and as soon as we put on Soulja Boy he was out on the dance floor breaking it down. For the rest of the dance, this boy was on the floor, busting his moves, and making everyone laugh.

Photo 2 (above): Nick and Dustin take a break to listen to the music during the dance.

Reflections

I know that the residents of this assisted living center thoroughly enjoyed themselves at this dance. After Dustin, Al and I had packed up the van, we returned to the porch to talk with some of the residents. One resident told us he, too, had been a DJ in his youth. Regarding our music selections, he said it was understandable that we had trouble, because we didn’t grow up during this time. He told us about 20 times, “if I had DJed this event, I would have played more music for the old folk” (a large portion of the music that we did play was from the right time period… he just wanted more).

He told us that even if it looked like not all the residents were dancing, they were still having a great time because they love being around young people and they enjoyed seeing how much fun the student were having.

He also said that we should get leather jackets that say “Dynamic” on the back arched up with “DJ” in lettering underneath (sweet!). We gave him a business card, and he said that he would give it to his contacts in the radio business, and told us “if you guys hear your name on the radio, you’ll know it’s because of me!”

From Mr. Ulku-Steiner’s (Upper School Director at Durham Academy) blog, Community Matters at Durham Academy’s Upper School:

Dr. Drago (aka Senior Nick Drago) shared the link to his impressive website. Whether you’re planning a house party or just want to see one of our enterprising students in action, check out http://dynamicdj.org, which includes a post about his most recent gig at Special Olympics.

Photo 1 (above): Athletes, student volunteers, parents, and teachers alike enjoyed dancing at the party tent!

Today we DJed the Durham County Special Olympics, which was hosted by the Durham Academy Upper School. It was an awesome day to hold the event; the weather was beautiful! There was not a cloud in the sky and temperatures were in the high 70s to low 80s.

We arrived at 7:40 and drove down onto the field where we were going to set up. There were a number of Durham County/City employees and volunteers already there setting up. They were assembling everything from Durham Parks & Recreation’s portable amphitheater to tents for different areas. Students from Durham Academy were volunteers at this event, and just as we arrived the Field Ops team started to put up signs corresponding to the schools that were coming and put together many of the events on the field.

Our setup

Our set-up was very relaxed as we arrived a bit early and were able to drive right up next to the area we would be DJing. We put a table under a tent and unloaded our two powered Behringer monitor speakers and our subwoofer. We connected a 15″ LCD monitor into Dustin’s laptop because since it has a TFT LCD display it was not bright enough to see outside.

Many people were quite interested in the equipment we used and about our business in general. We enjoyed explaining how the speakers work and how we got started as school & event DJs.

Photo 2 (above): Nick and Dustin selecting a song to play after setting up their equipment.

Dancing!

The school set up a small stage platform (raised about 6 inches off the ground) in front of our tent for people to dance on. This worked well; though afterwards we realized it would have been better (more stable) to set the platforms directly on the ground.

The athletes and student volunteers were at our dance area throughout the day and we could see were definitely enjoying breaking it down to our music. We played a wide range of popular music, starting out with some pop rock and a lot of techno (Calabria by Enur) and then got into classic (In da club by 50 Cent) and more modern (Soulja Boy) hip hop hits. We played a bunch of icebreaker-type songs (Macarena), a song from High School Musical, La Vida Loca, Go DJ (we seem to always play that), and a Spice Girls song. So clearly, there was a range of music represented.

Overall, I felt we did a good job with the music selection, really keeping a pumped up vibe for most of the time people were dancing.

This weekend Dustin decided to record a video explaining our lighting setup. It is a little technical towards the end, explaining how the system works and showing some closeup shots. We have four sound-activated lights, which you can also read about on our equipment page:

• Chauvet Intimidator DMX Intelligent Scanner Light (two of these)
• Chauvet Mini Line Dancer Effect Light
• Eliminator Lighting E-145 Double Double Effect Light

These are set up on a t-bar stand. If you jump to around 4:00 in the video you can see what it looks like with all the lights on (but keep in mind this is in a bedroom, not a larger room).

We are very satisfied with all of the lights that we use and would recommend them to any DJ in the market. They provide a nice atmosphere and definitely fill the room with color at the events we DJ.

You can view the original video on YouTube or view other YouTube videos by Dustin.

Here is an “event log” or “gig log”-type video that Dustin and I created that follows us throughout the night of the STM dance earlier this month. Quite a few mobile DJs have started filming gig logs and uploading them to YouTube, and we thought we might give it a shot.

So, without further ado, here is the first in many event log videos that we will upload to give you a better idea of what goes into DJ-ing a school dance and to show you how much fun we have (I created a similar video last year for a school project, which we will also upload later).

You can view the event log video on YouTube or view other YouTube videos by Dustin.

Photo 1 (above): our DJ setup outside for a HS back-to-school dance.

Photo 2 (above): our effect lights inside in a small auditorium for a middle school dance.

Two minutes after I got off the phone with Dustin last night, he called me back, excited and half-yelling:

“Nick, get the van! We’re DJing tonight at my school– they don’t have a DJ!”

I grabbed a nice shirt, threw on my shoes, yelled to my brother to jump in the car, and drove the van over to Dustin’s house. He had already started bringing the equipment downstairs from his bedroom and had most of it in his living room.

“Just throw it in the van, it doesn’t matter where it goes. It’s almost 6:30, and the dance starts at 7:00!”

We arrived at Dustin’s school 15-20 minutes later. As we pulled in, a swarm of students and parents enveloped our van, cheering with appreciation that we were able to make it on such short notice. Dustin hung out the window, yelling, “Okay everyone, everything goes in, just put it by the stage.”

Everyone brought the equipment in fairly quickly, and I parked the van while Dustin and my brother started to set up. When I ran in, I saw that they had the speaker stands and the light stand set up. I started setting up the console, and it was not long before we had all our equipment set up.

At 7:10, we started the music, which was welcomed by cheering from the crowd. It was time to get the dance started; less than 10 minutes late was not bad at all.

Here are some observations:

• There were a lot of requests. Seriously, every 2 minutes someone would walk over and request a song. This was perfectly fine, but in many cases we would tell people, “We already have that song in the playlist, and it’s coming up in 15 minutes.”
• The dance was 2 and a half hours, which is just about as long as most of the dances we do, but the time seemed to pass really quickly.
• We still had the equipment and the playlist ready from last weekend’s dance at my school. The music was already fairly organized, so we just had to adapt the music selection to the middle school audience.

As we were packing up, Dustin and I were talking to the dance’s organizer. She told us that when she realized that she didn’t have a DJ, she was thinking through her possibilities and thought of sending her husband to bring her stereo from home, but someone suggested that she call us instead. She later wrote in an email to us:

“It says a lot about you that you were willing to react so quickly to help the school and your fellow students.”

Dustin replied, “Hopefully all the students had as great a time as we did!”

This past weekend, Dustin and I disc jockeyed a high school dance. Here are my observations and reflections regarding the dance:

• There were not many people there until about 1 hour into the dance, which was probably due to the fact that many people arrived late after going out to dinner.
• We are gradually getting more organized. I had to drive back to Dustin’s house because we left the screws for the component rack and the lightstand on his bed. As a result of this, we decided (in the future) to keep our wires, cables, and small components (light hardware, mics, power strips, screws, etc.) in a medium-sized Rubbermaid bin.
• We did well setting up, especially considering that Dustin had an injured shoulder and was unable to lift anything. I brought my brother to help us set up.
• The tech room in the auditorium was locked and we were unable to find a key, so we didn’t get to use the disco ball. This was not a problem, as our lights worked very well.
• As far as music, we learned that you never know what people are going to request and what you will end up playing, so you need all your music on CDs. There were several songs that people wanted us to play, but they were on the laptop! People requested salsa, spanish songs, 60s rock songs, and others. We had the songs, but we couldn’t play them. In any case, next time we’ll bring blank CDs.

Before we DJ our next event, we will probably need to rethink our speaker configuration. We usually use our 2 15″ speakers on 1 amplifier, and our 4 10″ speakers “daisy-linked” on the other. This weekend, we tried giving each 15″ speaker its own amplifier, and not using the 10-inchers. This did not work too well, as we were pushing the big speakers on power (ok, well Dustin says we were fine) and the quality was not as good as it could have been. Before our next dance I will talk about this in detail.