There’s more to a wedding and party entertainer than spinning discs and singing songs. Entertainers who perform at weddings, bar mitzvahs and anniversary parties must also be a mediator, a pop-psychologist and, in some cases, a program director.
Keeping families from freaking out and devising a musical plan that makes a wedding unique and memorable are all part of the job.
Most entertainers who specialize in parties and special occasions do it because they love performing and working with clients. However, unlike Justin Timberlake or the Rolling Stones, they spend a great deal of time getting to know their audience and enjoy tailoring the entertainment to the style and personalities of the families involved.
Hiring the right band or DJ can make or break a party, said Kim Oliff, who co-owns the MenloPark-based Always r.s.v.p. with Suzy Somers.
“It’s one of the most, if not the most important thing. Music really makes the event. It’s the difference between a good time and a great time,” said Oliff.
“It creates energy. Having a party with everyone on the dance floor is one of the goals.”
Local musician and musician Joel Nelson of Joel Nelson Productions agrees.
“Many, many things make an event great, but only one thing can take it to the next level — entertainment,” says Nelson, who has been in the business for 24 years.
In addition, notes musician Joel Abramson, “Music is part of the Jewish tradition of celebration.”
Pre-planning is the key to a successful party. “It’s all driven by the client, “says Nelson. We put the client as producer of the event, and then we take all those pieces and turn it into exactly what they want. And we put it in writing.”
Adds Abramson, ” When I work with clients, it all comes down to this: What’s your vision? What do you want to happen?”
Atlanta DJ and president of Magic II Productions Steve Grabia keeps smiles on celebrants’ faces by playing games with the bar mitzvah’s peers.
Line dancing, contests, musical chairs and twister are all ways Grabia keeps the kids on the dance floor dancing the night away, awarding them with sunglasses and other prizes.
“I have a whole variety of shtick that I do, games, activities, that work every time,” says Abramson, who has been in the business for more than 20 years and in the Bay Area for 10 years.
Nelson says many performers dread bar and bat mitzvahs because they have to please teens and their musical tastes and their parents, who often have very different musical tastes. “It would be tougher for people who don’t know what to do. What I say is, I love the challenge.”
If at the end of the event kids and the parents are happy, then, he says, “I feel like I won!”
But even after 24 years in the business, Nelson learned a lot by his own son’s bar mitzvah last month. “There were certain things I never needed to know about, having never been at that portion of it. Now I’ve learned. Now I have real-life answers” to help his clients, he says.
Still, getting to the dance floor on the big day is the final stop on what can be arduous journey.
“It’s almost like psychology,” says Nelson. You have to analyze the crowd and see what’s working. Sometimes it’s a small thing, sometimes it’s dramatic.
“You have to have a lot of tricks, a lot of shtick.”
“The first call bar and bat mitzvah families make is to arrange the music,” says Carlos Romeo, who has been entertaining at parties in Florida and Atlanta since 1991.
He has had encounters with parents and teens that reflect both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
“I’ve had people come to me with lists of things they want and don’t want and things they absolutely will and will not do,” he says. “But pulling people out of their shells is really fun,” he adds, laughing. “I had a father who told me he absolutely didn’t want to do anything corny. But by the time the party came around we had him in a costume and having a better time than he ever imagined.”
Romeo says most bar and bat mitzvahs worry about their party entertainment. They want their party to be the best one ever, but they are often intimidated by the size and scope and budget of the party and leave their parents to make the major decisions.
Trying to find out what the teen really wants and doesn’t want is the key to a successful party, but sometimes Romeo says, there’s also an art to finding out what families really want.
Romeo remembers coaxing a tearful teen out of the ladies room and gently bringing her into the conversation about what kind of bat mitzvah party she’d like to have. “It turned out she had some wonderful ideas and a terrific imagination,” he says.
One trend local party planners and musicians are seeing is all-music all the time. That means not all band members take a break at the same time. “So you never have that down time,” says Oliff. “It has a lot to do with the energy. When a CD comes on [during breaks] the energy goes down. This keeps the ambiance.”
Abramson always features a band and a DJ:The band plays all the old favorites and the DJ plays all the up-to-the-minute tunes.
Another trend: interesting, often ethnic, music. “We’ve been doing a lot of Cuban, salsa and Parisian jazz. It’s different,” says Oliff. “Not only is it not what you’ve heard before, it encourages a lot of fun dancing.”
Nelson says he’s seeing more requests for klezmer. He’s planning to incorporate a more Sephardic, belly-dancing kind of sound as well.
Of course, for every success story, there are a few parties every DJ would rather forget.
Romeo winces when he remembers the bridal couple who came from very different backgrounds. One family was made up of hip, trendy, cutting-edge music lovers. The other was a more traditional family that preferred Alan Jackson to Janet Jackson.
From the moment the band was hired until the day of the wedding there was nonstop bickering, fighting and name-calling.
“I thought it was going to be a complete disaster,” Romeo remembers. “I felt so bad for the couple. With bridal couples you must focus on the bride and the groom and what they want. It’s a day they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. It has to be as perfect as you can get it. But when things like this happen, you have to do whatever you can to make everybody happy.”
He says it was quite a challenge to find a compromise that would get both families onto the dance floor and most of all please the bride and groom. “I don’t know how but we made it work,” he said, showing pictures of the wedding where everybody is smiling — and dancing.
But not every party has a happy ending. Romeo remembers a bar mitzvah several years ago that was trouble from start to finish.
“You could just tell this family had very unpleasant relations from the start,” he said. “Moshing was really big at the time and the son had a request list that was a list of rap songs that had no clean edits.” (Most party DJs subscribe to a service that will provides less-offensive versions of popular rap and hip-hop tunes.) However in this case, the raw versions were the only ones available.
“The parents stood off to the side and the kids moshed,” he said. “The father was yelling at me on the stage during the party. I was explaining myself over and over again.”
For reasons Romeo still doesn’t understand, after the party the father told Romeo he wanted to book him for his other children when the time came.
“I said no,” Romeo said. “I couldn’t do it again.”
Grabia has one way to keep both parents and kids happy: “Certain songs work everywhere,” he says, citing “YMCA” and other rock ‘n’ roll and disco hits.
But when a party really rocks, he says, it’s worth all the behind-the-scenes aggravation, tearful teens, stressed-out brides and perfectionist parents.
“There’s something so special about seeing of families and friends gathered together to celebrate a happy occasion,” Grabia says. “It’s an amazing thing to look out and see all the generations in one room. Sometimes I have the bride and groom come up on the stage so they can look out and see what I see. It’s something you remember forever.”
Even though Romeo has performed at perhaps thousands of parties for all occasions, he says he’s still moved by the love and closeness he sees at most of them.
“The best thing is when you look out and see smiles on people’s faces,” says Romeo. “You can be having an off-day, but when you see great-grandparents dancing with the 6-year- olds, it just feels great. Seeing people of all ages having fun is the greatest kick for me.” n
Frances Katz of the Atlantic Jewish Times and Vicki Larson of J. contributed to this report.