Encinitas – Peter and Helena Havlicek 60th Birthday Party Luau

Client: Renate Lee Simons on behalf of Peter Havlicek
Venue Type: House
Venue Address: 955 Sidonia St, Encinitas 92024
Number of guests: 50+, ages 35-65
Services Provided: Cocktail music, Dinner music, Open dancing focusing on classic rock and oldies. Full lighting system 2 Quad Gems, 1 Mystique, 1 Vue III, 1 Galaxian Laser. Fog Machine [club grade, 1700w pushing 15,000 CFM (cubic feet per minute)].

Renate Lee Simons (Lee) contacted me about performing at a luau that was going to be at her house. The luau doubled as a birthday party for her friend Peter who was turning 60. After talking with Lee a bit, I realized this wasn’t a standard gig. Unlike a wedding event, this get-together was going to have a very defined group of people with similar musical tastes. When DJing a wedding, you get to a fair comfort level because your job is to cater to all the guests and their diverse tastes, so you really have a lot of music to choose from, and a lot of genres to select from as well. When DJing other events, especially house-parties and birthdays, sometimes all the guests want the same thing! And also, they were excited to have a full light show. I personally had just upgraded my fog machine to the biggest one American DJ makes, so I asked them if they wanted fog and was excited when they said yes!

I sent Lee an event planning form (standard procedure for me) and asked her to fill it out so I could understand what she was looking for. When I received the worksheet back it confirmed what I had already surmised: This was a party that demanded a DJ that knew classic rock well, owned lots of classic rock songs, and liked to play classic rock. To sum up the worksheet, here were the bands that they listed as favorites: Creedence Clearwater Revival, Eagles, Beatles, and Rod Stewart. And what’s more, the party was six hours long! Of course, they wanted hawaiian music during the cocktail and dinner, but that still left at least 3.5 hours for open dance. How many of the younger mashup-playing DJs would be up for this task, hmm?

Fast forward to the day of the event. I arrived, and set up equipment. The place was decorated beautifully and really emphasized both the luau theme along with the birthday theme. The backyard had lots of foliage already (garden theme) so adding a few more palm trees and such really made an amazing luau setting. Since the dance floor was relatively small, I chose to go with a pair of Yamaha 15″ speakers and a B-52 18″ subwoofer. The combo sounded amazing, and I’m convinced I made a good choice.

san diego disc jockey luau lighshow

I played traditional Hawaiian music during the cocktail hour. For hawaiian music, I prefer non-vocal music with a good deal of steel drums. To me, that says ‘island of paradise’ best. Plus, without vocals it gives everyone a chance to talk and not worry about the music.

Once the dinner began, I switched the style to Hawaiian/Drinking/Paradise-themed music. I varied the playlist extensively, so one minute guests were listening to Israel
Kamakawiwo’ole, then they were enjoying Jimmy Buffett, and then Rupert Holmes. The guests loved the playlist, and several took time to stop by the DJ booth and compliment me on the song selections or discuss how much they loved Izzy (Israel’s common nickname) and were sad that he passed away. During dinner, Peter made a speech about how he was thankful to everyone for coming, and I played John Lennon’s “Imagine” for them.

Then, it was time to shine, as “let’s dance!” was proclaimed by Peter. Game time for Dennis.

Classic rock was what they like, and classic rock was what they got. I don’t think they expected it to be beatmixed, but it was, and they enjoyed the transitions and really started packing the dance floor. After a bit, Helena came over and asked me to play a slow song, saying that they were too old to continue dancing to fast music. I took this as a compliment, announced that we were going to slow things down, and obliged her request.

The friend of mine that got me this gig told me that the client had seen him perform at a wedding where he was playing modern music as well, and that they enjoyed modern music too. This was sooo not the case. To test the waters, I tried twice to mix in some more current material. Each time I got close to clearing the dance floor! After the second time I knew for sure that this crowd had one genre in mind and I needed to go into full gear with it, so I did.

I blended and I blended… ZZ top into Journey, Santana into Beatles, Tom Petty into Neil Diamond. And for those that are wondering, NO, I didn’t toss in mashups. This crowd wouldn’t have appreciated that, and by reading the crowd I could tell that. About 10pm Peter decided to open some presents so for a while there it was present commentary and jokes. Once this was over, I figured it was time to kick the lightshow into full gear so I announced that everyone who was near the fog machine might want to relocate. I then started up a dance set, waited about 1 min into the first song… and then let loose! Wow, what a display! 15,000 CFM of fog shoots out quick and thick! Within seconds the dancefloor was a cloudy visual oddysey. They loved every bit of it! I set the fog machine to fire up periodically and then release 1 second of fog (one second with this beast is a large amount!) and kept the mix going.

At the end of the night, Peter gave a another speech about how wonderful the night had been, and his wife, Helena, grabbed the mic herself and mentioned that “their DJ, Dennis” had made it all possible, which was really nice. Peter then got on the mic and asked me to reserve Helena’s birthday next year on my calendar, stating that I was “their DJ” forever now. Everyone gave me a big round of applause and I felt, well, appreciated. That doesn’t always happen, so it’s nice when it does.

All in all, I got to mix some great music for an amazing group of people, in a style that I’m not sure they had ever experienced. Since warm praises were being handed out, I asked them if I could send them a request later for some written recommendations. They did one better– At the end of the night Helena and Lee both went into the house and came out with written recommendations ready for me to take home.

Now that is how I like to end a night. Thanks to Lee and Peter for allowing me to participate in their celebration, and congratulations again to Peter Havlicek!