Lauren and I saw a bit of everything on Saturday when we ventured 81.9 miles southeast to the town of Byron, just outside of Rochester, to DJ a wedding dance for a couple at a ritzy country club.  Lauren saw my panic attack when the speakers were emitting a loud static noise during setup.  It really sounded terrible and I deducted it was the Y cable that was the problem, so Lauren tried putting my worries to rest and drove into Rochester to a Best Buy and bought the most expensive cable they had.  I’m not sure if it worked because the noise of the crowd could have drowned out the static noise, but I was at least calmed down!

The bride and groom actually had met me before when we DJ’d that dance in Wabasha, so they knew they were in good hands.  This was possibly the largest crowd for a dance yet—275 guests, and they were all dancing all night, no matter what songs I played.  80s, polkas, oldies, techno… kids, senior citizens, teens were loving everything.  Lauren, like last weekend in St. Cloud, tried to entertain herself by going to a movie to pass the time.  I don’t blame her, would have been boring sitting there for that whole time watching me play music.  She came back around midnight to witness the weirdest ending to a dance ever.

With eight minutes to go at 12:52, I had two songs cued up that would take us right up to 1am—a Justin Timberlake song and then what I told everyone would be the last song of the night, Piano Man.  Only the Timberlake song was a bad file and it quit after 1 second and went right into Piano Man.  So the song played out and was over by 12:57, and every last person there realized there were three minutes left and wanted one more song.  Being the nice guy I am, I asked the crowd to choose the final song of the night.  Bad idea!  At least twenty people swarmed the table yelling songs.  “Ce’st la Vie!  Don’t Stop Believin’!  Piano Man again!  In This Life!”  I never would have thought that so many people would have had such a strong opinion as to what song was played last.  After a full minute of being screamed at, I played Summer of 69 and planned to shut it down.  Just then, the brother of the bride approached the table with a request for two more songs for $20.  I agreed, and at 1:11 the dance finally came to an end. 

But the dance set several records for me.  1) best dancing crowd ever.  2) biggest crowd ever.  3) Most importantly, the biggest tip ever… $200!  If you include the $20 to play two more songs, travel cost, and base pay, it was a very profitable night of almost $400.  The drive home went well until I hit Minneapolis.  I was so exhausted I really should not have continued driving.  I put the windows down, cranked the AC, cranked the radio, and basically held my eyes open to deliver us home safely by 3:19, 14 long hours after we had departed.