Live Music for a Ball
It was November 2023 when I received a Facebook message asking about our availability for an event at Aston Hall in Sheffield in January.
I arrived with a car full of gear at 6pm and was directed around the back of the hall to a function room. I was able to park very close to the fire doors making the loading very easy. Inside were dressed tables for the 300 guests.
I began the process of plugging stuff into other stuff. The organiser came and found me and about 7 and told me a little more about the event; Parklands Equestrian Centre’s annual ball. Here parting words were “They get quite lively, be prepared”.
I put a playlist on and let the auto-DJ work its magic.
9:30 rolled around and it was time for the first set. Seeing as our audience were full of dinner and dessert we weren’t really expecting much in the way of audience participation during the first set but people were up and dancing by song 2, which is Teenage Dirtbag and not Song 2… which is song 1.
Still following…? But why?
The first set flew by and I put some tunes on to keep the dance floor jumping. Set 2 kicked off at 10:45 and it seems that we’ve found a series of songs the chime with the audience, unleashing a wave of gyrating enthusiasm. We had a high heeled stage invasion and I am surprised that a stiletto wasn’t put through a cable. The only thing that caused a power outage was hitting the noise limiter which cut the power to the stage a couple of times. Most unnerving.
A warm “welcome back” to Andy on drums following his period of convalescence. You’d never know he’d been up on bricks for the last three months.
We rounded off the night with Seven Nation Army and then packed up while continuing to DJ. The guys said their goodbyes and left me to deal with aggressively drunk young ladies, demanding obscure Chris Brown songs. Yay!