80’s club and top 40 wedding, Pelican Inn, Muir Beach, CA.
“James was great for our wedding. Made everything really easy. Met with us as many times as we needed to get our day right!” - Randy Grimes
”James was great. He met with us as many times as we needed before the wedding to get the music and announcements right! Very pleasant to work with and made the process fun.” - Jasmine Littlefield
A Fun, Casual, Mixed Genre Wedding at The Pelican Inn
We get a lot of folks of various stripes that are just real music nerds. Essentially our whole business is built around music nerds, and music nerdery. But don’t let me give you the impression that that’s all we do or can do. Little known fact, we honestly do this because its fun.
Our Classic, Fun First Approach
After years of doing this, I’ve come to realize that DJ’s fall into one of two categories. Either they love music and they want to share it with the world, or they love a particular subset of that music and want to put a wall around that knowledge. What qualifies as this or that genre, what constitutes performing it correctly, how historically accurate your terminology is. You might have met these guys at record stores or swap meets. The classic record store guy, like Jack Black in High Fidelity. We’re not that guy. We’re more like Ducky in Pretty in Pink.
A Particularly Laid Back Couple
And you know who is even more like Ducky in Pretty in Pink. Randy and Jasmine. Well, more like Randy. I guess that makes Jasmine Molly Ringwald. (Not bad!) Randy and Jasmine weren’t trying to get all nerdy with this thing, they just wanted to have fun. And I gotta be honest with you, Randy’s attitude with regards to fun is somewhat infectious. We were at the meeting trying to work out the ceremony music, and Randy is like “I’m just going to go with Michael Jackson, ‘The way you make-a-me feel.’”
And he’s doing the dance, and I think he’s kidding, and maybe he is. But by the end of it we were like “Nope, we’re really going to do the Michael Jackson!” I got him the sick extended remix and it was really great. You see them smiling up there in the photo? That’s kind of the Randy magic, I guess. It sounds insane, but it really came of lighthearted, genuine and sweet. So before you go thinking all we can do around here is pop off random music history facts, know that we can most definitely have fun with it.
DJ’ing as Comedy Routine
For Randy and Jasmine we did a mixed genre set with an emphasis on cool, fun, accessible classics and clever DJ joke juxtapositions. We can do Boston “More Than a Feeling” but what’s funnier than playing it into Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit” which is famously based on the riff from the original Boston classic.
When I first started DJ’ing, it was about 2001 and the whole mash up thing was going in full force. I actually learned to DJ with a lot of the now well known guys in the club scene in San Francisco, but back then we all used to crack each other up with who could pull off the funniest song in a dance set and play it into and even more unimaginable song next.
Our buddies used to have a party called “Worst Music Ever” which was really kind of the epitome of this. They would play “I’m Blue, abudi-abuda” into some Spice Girls song or whatever, but all quick cuts like at a hip hop night. So you wouldn’t even finish laughing at the first song before another even more ridiculous song would come on. Aside from being really self aware and clever, it was just a lot of fun. We would jump up and down to increasingly ridiculous songs. Limp Bizkit “Nookie” into Crazy Town “Butterfly”. The 12 inch remix of Sugar Ray “Fly.”
It was really hilarious.
A Serious Ceremony, A Very Not Serious Dance Party
Anyway, this is how we tried to approach Randy and Jasmine’s wedding. We played it straight with some folky stuff before the ceremony and some upbeat soul for the cocktail hour and all, but for the dancing we really just tried to get silly with it and have some fun.
So don’t think I’m out there just trying to be intimidating with my music nerdery. Part of the reason we do this is to prove any song is danceable if you’re a good enough DJ and I do my best to deliver on the fun, whatever that means to you.
Now I’m laughing thinking about how ridiculous that Crazy Town song is. But I have the 12 inch!
Big Ups & Shout Outs
Special shout out to Andrea at Pelican Inn for always being awesome, always believing in us, and frequently sending us work so we can eat.
Special shout out to Mill Valley Flowers who’ve been doing this for about 50 years and still love it.
Special shout out to Randy and Jasmine for being such easy going good sports. I hope you dudes had fun!
Ceremony Songs
Prelude:
Haley Reinhart “Can’t Help Falling In Love (Instrumental)
Processional:
Haley Reinhart “Can’t Help Falling in Love”
Recessional:
Michael Jackson “The Way You Make Me Feel (Remix)”
Requests:
Addis Harmandyan “Karoun Karoun”
Aram Asatryan “Sireci Handipman Oric”
Venue: Pelican Inn / DJ: Ceremony DJs / Florist: Mill Valley Flowers
