Wedding DJ Background

So, my Dad was a DJ back in the 1970s

Throughout my childhood, I was exposed to a hugely varied selection of music.  There was always music playing in the house.  I attended a few family nights where dad was working, and always ended up behind the scenes, watching and learning how it all worked and by the age of 11 I was regularly setting up and playing a couple of tracks under dad’s supervision.

School Disco – The Early Years

At the age of 13, I started DJing on my own – standing in for a teacher at a school disco, my first taste of actually entertaining a crowd for a couple of hours got me hooked.  A few months later, after pestering my Dad endlessly, he would let me DJ whole evenings instead of just a couple of tracks.

1980’s – The Local Radio Years

Now with a deep love of music and all things disco, I was lucky enough to be accepted at a local radio station for work experience.  Although I worked in the news department, I also made a lot of friends amongst the presenters.  This enabled me to visit regularly once the work experience had finished, and I was offered a part-time job as a “Tech-op”, running the studio during outside broadcasts and in the days before automated shows, I would actually play the music and some pre-recorded content when presenters weren’t available.

Wedding Breakfast Inspiration

Some of my most valuable lessons were learned here – including how to “drive” a busy studio during complicated and fast moving events (such as a live broadcast from the British Grand Prix).

I also learned a new skill here, how to put playlists together to control mood and emotion which can be used to gradually get people into a party mood even while they’re sitting chatting or eating a meal – great for wedding breakfasts.

Birthday Disco Parties at the Scout Hall

I was an active member of a local Venture Scout group.  We were lucky to have a large, modern hall as our HQ, and we regularly threw large parties, inviting various other scouting units from around the area to join us and fill our nearly 200 capacity venue.  This led to a lot of work for birthday parties, with 18th and 21st parties being a natural progression as my friends and their friends aged alongside me.

Throughout my 20s and most of my 30s, I continued to work part time for the radio station, both in the studio, and as a DJ at events where they needed someone to play the music while a presenter would interact with the audience.  This exposed me to loads of different presentation styles and ideas which helped shape my own performance at my own events and bookings.