A buddy of mine, we call him the Colonel, is a high end DJ. We call him the Colonel after Colonel Flagg on MASH because he is nuts. His olady finally left him, but years ago other buddy asks her "Why don't you leave him then ?" and she said "Are you kidding ? I can see him on top of garage roofs with binoculars and ****". Ex marine, and works for the post office. (I **** you not) Twenty years ago he was getting like $800 a night to DJ, and most of the time it as cash so it was tax free.

He had my other buddy simply watch the van. He did all the loading and unloading himself, considered it a good workout. (yup, Colonel Flagg) Then Jack, technically "working security" got free drinks at the wedding or whatever event it was. But really, it would be impractical to relock the van with every trip up the elevator or whatever.

The Colonel used to have thousands of CD, and literally sat there and ripped them all, put in all the info like genre and all that and put it on TWO PCs. One ran, the other was an exact duplicate and even loaded with that night's playlists. And he didn't use a DJ machine, he didn't to it like that. Some of these jobs were for the wealthy, weddings and such and it might be all classical music, or polkas (ugh) or whatever.

For a DJ, probably the best thing you can do is put all that **** on PC. In fact Karaoke as well. I've seen that done. It's just a bit different software that's all. I saw it done on a laptop, and I was thinking about how some laptops have **** sound (mine does) but then I thought again - THIS IS KARAOKE, good sound and Karaoke are in two different universes.

Of course he had the LASERs and the fog machines. And this guy is like, well he is very gregarious and outgoing, but when you get to know him he a kind of obtuse. He is good at getting the little old Ladies up and dancing though, the crowd loves him, but then again, you know when he is in like that mode ? Well that's not a mode. Sometimes you want to shoot the guy.

Never got any audio work off him, he takes his stuff to Empirical downtown here. Little does he know that I now might have an in there and might just work there someday.

What I am finding right now is that people don't seem to understand what "line level" is in that business. Other day I got this reverb unit. Complaint is something wrong with the switches. Makes noise when switchihg modes etc.. I get it on the bench and I KNOW what I am doing by just playing a guitar through it, it is going to be noisy. Talk to the boss, then I found a mahual, just an owner's manual for it and there are lights, Like ay -40 dB or someting it lights green, changes to yellow at 0 and goes red if over, something like that. The guitar doesn't even light the light. I had to SHOW HIM. Grabbed an amp that has a proper effects loop and showed him.

I can see education is going to be part of this job.

And those two amps blowing at the same time, I am almost sure they did not disconnect one before connecting the other.

But then again I can't bitch, this sort of thing generates work for me. Hmmm, maybe I shouldn't push the education too much...