The Night I Had to DJ With My Nose
3 02 2007As most of you already know, being a mobile DJ means that you have to be ready for anything. And the worst “anything” that could happen is equipment failure. It was a cold Winter’s evening when I faced this obstacle at a High-School dance.
It was a dance in Missouri, at a local High-School. If I remember correctly, it was a Homecoming dance. Anyway, I was just starting out as a DJ along with my friend Norman Dalager. I was at the dance setting up while Norman was driving back from his day-job in Independence, MO. Everything was going fine, I had set up the speakers (no telling what they were at that time, I think we used MTX’s), the American DJ CD players, our limited light show, and our fancy Gemini mixer. I was putting everything through a trial run when I smelled smoke.
It was coming from the mixer, and it was the only thing coming from the mixer - no sound or anything! We had no spare, so I had to think of something fast, the dance was starting in minutes! Well, I got rid of the mixer altogether, and put our American DJ CD Players side by side on the table. I decided that the only way I could mix between the decks was to plug them directly into the amp, and plug and unplug between songs.
So that’s what I did. I would cue up a song in one of the CD players (I couldn’t use headphones either), then unplug the current CD player from the amp, and quickly plug in the one with the next song. Meanwhile, I had to hit “play” with my nose since my hands where tied up with plugging and unplugging the CD players.
Fortunately it worked, and Norman showed up later on that night so that I did not have to use my nose anymore! The moral of the story - carry spare equipment! At least a mixer, a small amp, and a couple of cheap CD players. You won’t regret it!
