The Famous Final Scene

The Famous Final Scene

(June 2015) May seems to be the month of the Grand finale, maybe even more so than December. We have big TV series finales such as Mad Men and The David Letterman Show recently, college and high school graduations and proms. For my family personally, we had highs and lows this past month. Our daughter graduated from High School and was chosen to be one of two students to deliver the commencement speech to her class and I also had a cousin who graduated from medical school. Yay! Our first doctor in the family. On the negative side, there was the passing of an uncle who was the youngest of my mother’s family - and my daughter’s senior prom.

My oldest daughter has been to every school dance that has been held in her 13 years of school. From the school fun days and fundraisers in elementary school to the high school formals, her and her energetic and social butterfly friends have been to all of them. The Big One, their Senior Prom, was a big letdown.

For the record I have done several high school dances in the past ten years – but never one that our children attend. By this age it would be somewhat of an embarrassment for them to admit to their friends and classmates that the DJ up there was actually their dad. I’m not sure if they would have even attended if they knew I was going to be the man playing the music.  For this years prom our schools student council decided to make a statement that prom was getting too expensive and leaving the less fortunate out. They made the decision to cut the cost of the ticket price in half and have the event held in the school’s brand new gym rather than having it take place at one of the areas event centers like years past.

 I’m only guessing that they decided to cut the cost of the DJ as well.

Prom day started out following all of the traditions. There was an appointment at the hairdresser and then off to do make-up for my daughter before getting into her prom dress for the one and only time. And I guess I should explain here that I had never participated in the festivities of any of the formal school dances for either of my two children that have gone through High School because, of course, all of these dances are held on Saturday nights when I am typically at an event myself, but this year I promised my wife that I would blackout that first Saturday in May and join her for all of the revelries. So after the hair and make-up and getting dressed it was off to school to meet her group of friends and many of their parents for formal pictures. After that the parents escorted the group to other locations around town for more pictures before the kids said adios to Mom and Dad and were picked up by a limousine and made their way to dinner. From there it was off to school for the prom and then the after-party.

These are milestone moments where people are expecting great memories to be made.

I guess my first inclination that the students may not be in for a rocking evening should have come when, while at school for formal pictures, I peeked inside the gym to see if the DJ had set up yet and if I maybe knew who it was. I did not recognize the setup but what I saw was a mess. Two subwoofers were placed on the floor with a pair of top cabinets on a speaker stand directly behind them. However, the top cabinets were not set up high enough to be above the subwoofers and were partially blocked by them. There was a vast number of lighting effects but they were not set up on a truss system but rather T-bars, which is not a bad thing except that they were off-balance. There were three bars on one side of the setup but only one on the other. And there were wires and cables running everywhere – across the floor, hanging from the T-bars and under the table, which was not skirted or covered with a façade. I pride myself in not being too critical of others in the business. There are different styles, different routines and different ways to program music and I readily admit that I don’t have all of the answers, but still my first impression was not good and caused me some concern – particularly the exposed wires. How would the students get through the melee to make requests without tripping over the cords?

It was a late night for my daughter but when she did arise the next day we asked her all about Prom 2015: the dinner, the dance, the after-party. It was a good time she said, except that - and this was the first time in all of her school years that she said this - the dance was not fun. The DJ, she said, never really talked on the mic or interacted with the crowd, and he only played bump and grind music all night long. At one point, she said, the gang talked about leaving early, but this was there senior prom!

A couple of weeks later I ran into a cousin, whose son had attended the prom for the first time and I asked her how he liked it. The dinner and after-party were a good time he said, the dance not so much.  Just days later a friend, whose daughter had been to the dance, echoed those same sentiments. They live on a farm and are country music fans, and none was played.

The point I guess I’m trying to make here is that as DJ’s, Emcees and Entertainers we have so much more responsibility than just packing the dance floor. Whether it is a wedding, a bar mitzvah or even a senior prom these are milestone moments where people are expecting great memories to be made. And though some of these celebrations can be considered new beginnings they are also grand finales because most often you will not pass this way again.

The way I see it, sometimes we are the last ingredient that people add to their celebration, but we also are most often the last memory that people will have of that event. I hope as a community we take that seriously and give consideration on how we can help create those memories for everyone that is involved.

Until next month,

~ Michael ~

Michael J. Lenstra is a twenty-plus-year veteran of the Mobile DJ industry, a full-time DJ/Entertainer, and owner of Alexxus Entertainment in Dubuque, IA.