On subs, cheap camcorders, sarees, short sets and Bollywood songs

[Vito Corleone]

We played our first Indian wedding last weekend. All sorts of interesting happenings.

First off, one of the biggest weddings we've ever played. Over 500 guests. The majority of which were under 35. It was held at a winery, but this place had a big ballroom they rent for such events and even had power supplied by a spider box. After having played at a number of wineries this year with questionable and substandard power supplies, this was a nice change of pace.

A DJ was there to play Indian dance music before our set, and he offered to let us plug into his system. Nice, since there was no way our PRX 518S subs would have covered the space sufficiently. His 618-XLFs kicked ass. The 518Ss are now up for sale and as soon as they are sold, we're upgrading. The difference between the two was astounding.

This was one of the biggest 'production' weddings we've ever played. A flash mob of about 30 people burst in and did a 10 minute choreographed dance routine. Culminating in--what else---"Gangnam Style". After this gig we decided we could no longer wait for this song to pass, and will be working a bit of it into a medley tonight for tomorrow's show.

They even flew in a small group of Bollywood dancers from LA to perform for the crowd. The DJ played a set of modern Indian pop/dance music. Which sounded to me just like American pop/dance music, except I couldn't understand any of the lyrics. That's OK. Everyone dancing certainly seemed to know them all.

At one point this little old Indian man--looking and sounding like every cliche/stereotype you can think of--comes up to me and demands that "this music is killing the dance floor! You need to get up there and play Dynamite by Taio Cruz right now!" I look back at the packed dance floor and tell him we'll get up and take care of it as soon as we can.

One of the requests for the wedding was that we learn a popular Indian song. We were assured by the guy who hired us that simply our effort would astound the crowd so much that it wouldn't really matter how poorly we played it. We told him we'd give it our best shot but that his wife would need to sing the verses as mastering the dialect without completely butchering the language was beyond our abilities.

So she comes up and sings and was horribly off-key, but the crowd really enjoyed it. The whole thing felt like a scene from the "Wedding Band" TV show. The only thing that might have completed it would have been had we been wearing Indian outfits as well. Here's a bit of us playing the "fast" singalong bit of the song that we went ahead and 'rocked' up just a bit more.

Fortunately, it does seem that our efforts alone was sufficient. Recorded from a cheap camcorder set on stage just inside the PA stack. But, as you can hear, even these cheapy recorders pick up the low-end pretty well these days. So yeah, if there's no low-end on your cheapy camcorder recording? Then there probably wasn't any in the room either.

Pretty sure we're not going to be adding any Indian songs to our songlist anytime soon, but it was fun to do it just for the challenge alone.



I loved all the bright colored dresses on the pretty girls.



Really cool is the henna handpainting ritual the bride does.



These two pretty young girls came up afterwards and told me that they thought the band was great because, while the young people will dance to pretty much anything, we were able to get the "old Indian people" (her words, not mine) out of their chairs and dancing because they never dance to anything.



We had the crowd moving pretty well.



But like a lot of these events, things run so late that our set ends up being very, very short. We MIGHT have played 10 songs altogether? Which means we were working at about $500 per song or so, which is always very strange to think about.

[TIMKEYS]

Originally Posted by guido61

We played our first Indian wedding last weekend. All sorts of interesting happenings.

First off, one of the biggest weddings we've ever played. Over 500 guests. The majority of which were under 35. It was held at a winery, but this place had a big ballroom they rent for such events and even had power supplied by a spider box. After having played at a number of wineries this year with questionable and substandard power supplies, this was a nice change of pace.

A DJ was there to play Indian dance music before our set, and he offered to let us plug into his system. Nice, since there was no way our PRX 518S subs would have covered the space sufficiently. His 618-XLFs kicked ass. The 518Ss are now up for sale and as soon as they are sold, we're upgrading. The difference between the two was astounding.

This was one of the biggest 'production' weddings we've ever played. A flash mob of about 30 people burst in and did a 10 minute choreographed dance routine. Culminating in--what else---"Gangnam Style". After this gig we decided we could no longer wait for this song to pass, and will be working a bit of it into a medley tonight for tomorrow's show.

They even flew in a small group of Bollywood dancers from LA to perform for the crowd. The DJ played a set of modern Indian pop/dance music. Which sounded to me just like American pop/dance music, except I couldn't understand any of the lyrics. That's OK. Everyone dancing certainly seemed to know them all.

At one point this little old Indian man--looking and sounding like every cliche/stereotype you can think of--comes up to me and demands that "this music is killing the dance floor! You need to get up there and play Dynamite by Taio Cruz right now!" I look back at the packed dance floor and tell him we'll get up and take care of it as soon as we can.

One of the requests for the wedding was that we learn a popular Indian song. We were assured by the guy who hired us that simply our effort would astound the crowd so much that it wouldn't really matter how poorly we played it. We told him we'd give it our best shot but that his wife would need to sing the verses as mastering the dialect without completely butchering the language was beyond our abilities.

So she comes up and sings and was horribly off-key, but the crowd really enjoyed it. The whole thing felt like a scene from the "Wedding Band" TV show. The only thing that might have completed it would have been had we been wearing Indian outfits as well. Here's a bit of us playing the "fast" singalong bit of the song that we went ahead and 'rocked' up just a bit more.

Fortunately, it does seem that our efforts alone was sufficient. Recorded from a cheap camcorder set on stage just inside the PA stack. But, as you can hear, even these cheapy recorders pick up the low-end pretty well these days. So yeah, if there's no low-end on your cheapy camcorder recording? Then there probably wasn't any in the room either.

Pretty sure we're not going to be adding any Indian songs to our songlist anytime soon, but it was fun to do it just for the challenge alone.



I loved all the bright colored dresses on the pretty girls.



Really cool is the henna handpainting ritual the bride does.



These two pretty young girls came up afterwards and told me that they thought the band was great because, while the young people will dance to pretty much anything, we were able to get the "old Indian people" (her words, not mine) out of their chairs and dancing because they never dance to anything.



We had the crowd moving pretty well.



But like a lot of these events, things run so late that our set ends up being very, very short. We MIGHT have played 10 songs altogether? Which means we were working at about $500 per song or so, which is always very strange to think about.

Did the groom ride in on a big white horse or elephant? One of by friends daughter married an indian guy and he had a white horse... I guess is the budget is big enough they have an elephant. It was quite the production.

[Vito Corleone]

 

Originally Posted by TIMKEYS

Did the groom ride in on a big white horse or elephant? One of by friends daughter married an indian guy and he had a white horse... I guess is the budget is big enough they have an elephant. It was quite the production.

 

I don't know. I didn't see the actual ceremony which was in another location. That would have been cool though.

[TIMKEYS]

 

Originally Posted by guido61

I don't know. I didn't see the actual ceremony which was in another location. That would have been cool though.

 

There was part of this ceremony that was out of the general publics eye. You just saw the end of it with the horse. this wedding was in mishawaka ind. The horse was brought in from chicago. It was a pretty high zoot deal. It was a polish/ indian wedding ,,, the food was good lol. Had a DJ that played a lot of indian music.

[StratGuy22]

That's pretty neat!!

Good luck with the subs!!

[GtrGeorge!]

Wow...what a cool experience!!! I can add so little...it sounded almost surreal.
But it seemed you approached as pros and were gracious as can be. I have had to play very odd requests and always do my best. Last year I did a St Patricks Day gig, and it was all traditional Irish music,,,the entire gig,with very few exceptions....its a big lift for a rock/pop guy like me...but it was a really good experience to do it. I had to sing some Gaelic!!!!!
Working along side DJs is a reallycool thing creatvely, but sadly in the NY area there is a certain seperateness to the two crowds. Musicians dont like DJs and visa versa ,usually. I guess because alot of live musicians loose gigs to DJs and also DJs charge alot for their services and some of them dont do much for it (bring an ipod and a playlist!!!)..but I am falling OT...sounded like a way cool gig and the DJ was a team player. Way cool!!!

[Vito Corleone]

Originally Posted by GtrGeorge!

Wow...what a cool experience!!! I can add so little...it sounded almost surreal.
But it seemed you approached as pros and were gracious as can be. I have had to play very odd requests and always do my best. Last year I did a St Patricks Day gig, and it was all traditional Irish music,,,the entire gig,with very few exceptions....its a big lift for a rock/pop guy like me...but it was a really good experience to do it. I had to sing some Gaelic!!!!!
Working along side DJs is a reallycool thing creatvely, but sadly in the NY area there is a certain seperateness to the two crowds. Musicians dont like DJs and visa versa ,usually. I guess because alot of live musicians loose gigs to DJs and also DJs charge alot for their services and some of them dont do much for it (bring an ipod and a playlist!!!)..but I am falling OT...sounded like a way cool gig and the DJ was a team player. Way cool!!!

A lot of bands are starting to incorporate their own DJs into their act. A couple of bands on this forum are doing that. It's something I keep talking about doing, but haven't gone full in on it yet. But we always get along well with the DJs when we've done weddings where they've hired both. In this case it was cool because he was playing only Indian music and we played all the other stuff. His only instructions were to not play the one song we learned. But I was really glad he was there because our system wouldn't have cut it really. Something didn't get communicated properly and I didn't realize the room was going to be so big.

But doing the Gaelic stuff sounds cool. Our bass player is Irish and he's pulled out some traditional Irish tunes for a couple of gigs. It's a bit corny sometimes, but I LIKE learning all these odd ball requests for these gigs. The challenge of learning songs we never would otherwise is fun. We almost drew the line at learning this Indian song, but they were so nice about the way they requested it that it made it impossible for us to say "no". And it ended up being a lot of fun--although more work than most. But how many times am I going get to use the "tabla" sounds on my keyboards?

[Lee Knight]

I love Indian women.