Hi. Just  a quicky this week as I'm off to another gig this Sunday afternoon. Just want to say thanks to James and Donna for looking after me last night. Great gig. They set the room up like a night club and I used the uplighters around the room to enhance the pink theme.

I started out by smacking my head on the door frame as I manhandled a bass bin in. I only realised I was bleeding after I went to wipe the sweat from my head. "Things can only get better" I thought. Which was one of Donna's song choices and went down a storm. (sorry, tedious links are for Dave only) The great thing about the night though is that there was no song list. Only three songs were asked for and one of them got canned due to a change of direction at the request of the host. All that was asked for were certain musical directions at various points in the night ie: start out with swing/big band/rat pack, after the singer guitarist had done his hour go into a motown/soul set, then disco 80's, then 90's piano house etc moving up to modern Mr. Saxo beat type funky house and finally some trance/house right at the end (one of which was a special remix by yours truly for Donna). This is so much better than a mile long song list, as you get to choose the classic tracks that sound great and work well on the floor. Any requests on the night just get fitted in with the plan and the BPM so no gaping holes in the dance floor. As I've said before. I will do a song list if you want, but having a long list is like having sex with your self. It may be reliable in your eyes, but it's never as good and there are rarely any nice surprises.

Anyway, Donna and James were over the moon at my set and told me so several times (Donna had to come up and kiss me to say how "amazing" I was - read latest feedback here) and this is the point! Request a few in advance of course if you like, but you're shooting yourself in the foot (and "locking me in a cage of no creativity") with a long song list!

Take care, have a great week and feel free to re-post this blog if you're another DJ or have some related site. (please credit me Mike Stryk: cloudandsun.com) Let's put that monster (song list) back in it's cage and go back to the days of real fun on the floor!!!

Hey there! That sounded very American didn't it? Well I felt like exclaiming as it's been a while since I've blogged here. Well I've been working on myorganic health foods site as well as other things.

We've been to Germany to see Becky's mum and she's still there in hospital. (Becky, not her mum) Nothing stopping me from saying that now, as she's had the operation and all went well.Thank god, it was a worrying time! One funny thing to come out of it was that I had to take the hire car back to Hamburg from Bremen without Becky and all was going well until I hit a traffic jam. I waited and waited not worried about the time as I was way too early in order to get the paperwork sorted with the car before closing time in Hamburg at 18:00 when the actual flight didn't leave until about 21:00. Well as the jam cleared I looked at the sat-nav and noticed to my horror that it had crashed and only had about four vertical lines of grey on the screen! Oh crap. No map. No idea of location. Try as I might I couldn't turn the damn thing off to re-boot! So I'm in a queu of traffic and I decide to head for Bremen and see if I can pull over somewhere. This I did and through sheer rebeliousness, I'd smuggled my tiny (can't do without it) swiss army knife in the hand luggage (which is all I had). I pulled out the tooth pick and whittled it down to a point, so I could access the hole in which the reset button resided. And thank god it worked! About 6 frantic minutes were passed while I waited for it to come back online and then it was as good as new for me to proceed along the worst autobahn in Germany today, with more roadworks, treacherous narrow overtaking lanes and contraflows than any M6 nightmare. I guess that was my S.A.S. moment this lifetime...

Anyway, I just want to announce that I finally got my shit together and got an availability checker for all you lovely customers out there to see if I can do your gig straight from the home page, contact page and booking page . If I can't do it on your chosen date, Drop me an email anyway and I'll recommend some good reliable Deejays that I know who won't let you down like some out there. It's a free service designed to help you steer clear of the cowboys in this business (I don't get commission) of which there are a few.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, if the DJ is more important to you then try to find one BEFORE securing the venue, as you stand much more chance of having a great party with the right DJ than you do with any particular venue. Not only that, I have a page that gives you a little info about some of the more popular venues and their possible pitfalls like noise limiters etc.

Well that's quite enough work for one day. Time for tea and telly.

Have a great weekend and see you soon,

Mike

Hi all. Dj'd for a children's party this week. I like children's parties. It's definitely not about the money! Is it ever about the money? Well we all have to pay the rent, but lately I have looked into the world of online business (no, I'm not giving this job up) and my idea that if you're not passionate about it, it will be hard to do indeed, seems to be prevalent there for sure. Anyway, children make great punters. They don't have to have a drink before they summon up the courage to get on the floor. They just go for it from the start with their wonderful shrill voices and the parents looking slightly stressed. I'm glad we didn't have any smoke detectors in the venue, as they were asking me about once every two minutes for more smoke! I was happy to oblige of course, but I have to say that before long, I couldn't really see anyone from about 1 foot past the front of the console. Hello to Josh, Faye and possy if you're reading this. And thank you to the church hall/coffee morning lady who offered me a bacon sandwich out of the blue (Very nice it was too I should say. Havent had bread like that since I lived near an ASDA!)

Why does stuff always go wrong with your mobile disco van just before the weekend? My vans are well looked after and maintained but in this business not many (actually nobody I've ever met except someone who came into an inheritance) can afford to buy a brand new one, so you're always going to be catching up with the result of the previous owners thrashing of their company vehicle. I was no exception on Friday evening. On the way home that night, I got within a mile of home and guess what? I heard this clanking noise on coming from underneath and assumed that the spare wheel frame had dropped. That reminds me, what happened to my spare wheel? I'm sure I had it when I bought this van! I must get another one. Do they sell them at scrap yards? Anyway, no it wasn't the now empty spare wheel frame dropping through lack of content. No of course it was the exhaust pipe falling in half some 2 weeks after passing its MOT....?? I had nowhere to pull over far enough to do anything, so I continued home with the hazards on and the pipe clanking along the road. As I pulled into home, a friendly faced neighbour looked sympathetically at me jangling and clanking up to the garage. It was then I recalled that I'd left my tools in the car, but as it happens, all I needed was a jack and something to tie the loose pipe up to the chassis. Of course I am covered for breakdowns, but I seem to have this fierce independent streak that a lot of us men have, that only if the van is broken in two halves would I sit and wait for an hour whilst the rescue service locate and attend. So I got to the children's party next day with my exhaust tied up like an amateur bondage victim having taken it to the tyre and exhaust place for them to ascertain which bits they needed to order that morning. After the lunch time party I sweated as I loaded the van up to make it in time for the actual fitting in Littlehampton before they closed. I have to tell you it was an experience driving there for the second time that day. As I headed down the A"%( or A259 if you remember to take your left finger off the shift button, the engine gradually got louder and louder and louder and louder thus precipitating the fear that I wouldn't actually make it there before the whole thing fell off at the manifold/engine/other end. I was about 1/4 of a mile away when I hit the wonderful Littlehampton police station gas pipe replacement  project with it's unbfeasably long traffic light delay, but I was prepared for this so I simply switched off the engine for the five and a half long minutes before the green light came back on. Finally pulling into the exhaustmiester's yard, the sense of relief was that of someone being pushed along a hospital corridor on a stretcher into the operating theatre thinking: "I've done all I can for myself to get here. Now I'm leaving it in your capable hands." Excuse me whilst I retire to the waiting room to enjoy my sense of relief with a cup of that tea from the vending machine and an obscure magazine about classic cars that will no doubt be waiting for me on the table in the middle of all garage waiting rooms, whilst trying not to get too interested in the diagrams of exhausts and tyre types on the wall. So anyway the upshot is that a few minutes into the repair the dude came into the waiting room and apologised but the suppliers had only sent one of the bits that he ordered earlier that day, thus denying me instantly the full satisfaction and post traumatic relief of a fully repaired van. Oh well, back for the rest this week. Yes they did a temporary repair on the other part for which they had no part so as long as I don't drive to Liverpool, I should be OK.

Well I've just paid our rent today, so after that I think I need a lie down...Have a great week and see you soon.

Mike.