70’s punk and power pop wedding, Mavericks Event Center, Half Moon Bay, CA. Photo: Lily Chou
“Jamie is a fantastic DJ. Besides playing exactly what we wanted and knowing how to mix and match music to make the flow perfect, Jamie is also extremely professional and reliable. He is in constant communication from the planning stages to the day of the wedding. He is a very pleasant person to work with, and his enthusiasm and knowledge made me really happy because I knew he cared a lot about what he was doing and wanted to do a fantastic job. All my friends loved the music, and my husband and I are extremely satisfied. Music was one of our top priorities in our budget and Jamie fit the bill perfectly. Highly recommended!” - Karen Choy
“James had a great feeling for what we wanted, a wedding with great music finally. We had people from all over the US and other countries coming and still he made everybody dance!” - Jan-Ole Simon
Super Hip, Punk and Power Pop Wedding by the Sea
So Karen and Ole are another example of clients that may as well be me. It turns out that Karen is also a DJ at KALX who’s favorite genres are indiepop, C86, punk and power pop and Ole is from Germany which is one stop short of where I used to live in Copenhagen, Oslo and London before I moved to SF.
A Couple More Punk Than I Am
Karen and I hit it off right off the bat since she’s obviously into exactly the same flavor of obscure indie music I am, which happens to be one of my specialties! Only being a girl, and being incredibly accomplished herself as a DJ, she had a million way better ideas than I had ever even thought of, so it was a rare case of someone being even better than me at a genre I was already pretty good at!
We immediately set to work in full, gloriously music nerd-er-ific tandem to construct the ideal wedding playlist that either of us would want and it was truly a merging of the musical minds.
A Power Pop Ceremony
We did 70’s power pop ballads for before the ceremony, so like Nick Drake “Pink Moon” and Big Star “September Girls” but also David Bowie “Be My Wife”. For the cocktail hour we tried to lean into the surprise rain element and do some 80’s indie stuff like Aztec Camera “Oblivious” and cult classics like Primal Scream “All Fall Down”, My Bloody Valentine “She Loves You No Less” and such.
A Subtly More Punk Rock Dinner
For the dinner we slowly punked it up, but more like Elvis Costello “Alison” and Nick Lowe “Cruel to Be Kind”. The hardest part was incorporating Ole’s german indie rock requests, but we nailed it by opening with Can and then transitioning through the more 90’s indie rock stuff melodically for an all german cake cutting set!
A Classic 80’s Dance Set
For the dancing, we dropped the hammer on classic 80’s remixes, but they wanted to open with something like "David Bowie “Let’s Dance” so we kept the whole thing kind of tropical and rhythmic in that beat range like Duran Duran “Notorious” and Howard Jones “Things Can Only Get Better”.
All and all, I think this might be the most punk wedding we’ve done! But there are a handful of contenders, which is why we were so prepared. It was really Karen’s hard work and 435 requests (an all time record!) that put the whole thing over the top.
Big Ups & Shout Outs
Special shout out to Karen for the many amazing suggestions that will live on at other peoples weddings.
Special shout out to Wild About You Photography (also a DJ at KALX!) for the amazing engagement photos of Karen and Ole in their natural habitat.
Special shout out to Mavericks Event Center for pulling off the whole event without a hitch despite the rain.
As the Beatles once said, “Rain-ain-ain-ain-ain, I don’t mind.”
Ceremony Songs
Prelude:
Processional:
Felix Mendelssohn “Hochzeitsmarsch Wedding March”
Recessional:
The Beatles “Eight Days a Week”
First Dance:
Leonard Cohen “Take This Waltz”
Requests:
Nick Drake “Pink Moon”
Paul McCartney “Every Night”
The Faces “Cindy Incidentally”
The Velvet Underground “Sunday Morning”
David Bowie “Be My Wife”
Lou Reed “This Magic Moment”
Buzzcocks “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays”
Brian Eno “I’ll Come Running”
Television “Careful”
The Shoes “Karen”
Sweet “Fox on the Run”
Undertones “Teenage Kicks”
The Modern Lovers “Astral Plane”
The Verlaines “Death and the Maiden”
The New York Dolls “Looking for a Kiss”
The Kinks “Victoria”
Nick Lowe “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll”
The Clash “Spanish Bombs”
Richard Hell and the Voidoids “Love Comes in Spurts”
Gary Glitter “I’m the Leader of the Gang”
New York Dolls “Personality Crisis”
Plastic Bertrand “Ca Plane Pour Moi”
The Fall “Totally Wired”
Cheap Trick “I Want You to Want Me”
The Ramones “California Sun”
German Cake Cutting Set Requests:
Le Mans “Hello”
Lassie Singers “Es Ist So Schade”
Neu “Fur Immer”
Kraftwerk “Trans Europe Express”
James Kirk “Felicity”
Udu Jurgens “Ich WarNoch Niemals in New York”
Die Goldenen Zitronen “Scheinwerfer und Lautsprecher”
Stella “Lower Saxony”
Jaknigja “Diese Schmerzen Musst du Teilen”
Super Punk “Man kann Einen Ehrlichen Mann Nicht Auf Seine KnieZwingen”
Venue: Mavericks Event Center / Photographer: Wild About You Photography / DJ: Ceremony DJs
