Wednesday, February 11, 2009
 
Ok, wow -where to begin….? Jamal Chehemi (pronounced She-He-Me) and his fiancee Danielle Maurone – Now Mr. and Mrs. Chehemi… met with me about 6 months ago to discuss Lethal Rhythms handling their reception.  I knew within 5 minutes of meeting with them that 1) this was probably one of the most laid back couples I had ever met 2) the reception was going to be a real challenge, and that if another DJ company tried to handle the style needed – they would most likely fail … miserably!
I only say this NOT because I am egotistical (ahem!) but because of the unique mixture of music request. Jamal and his family have Arabic blood. Jamal wanted Arabic music played as well as Greek “Debki” dance music. Danielle wanted a mixture of everything else!
Fast forward to the night of the event. The Hilton seems unprepared to handle the guest count of 300+. If you are planning a wedding of 250+ be sure to find a good wedding coordinator! The facility seemed a little overwhelmed with the guest count. I saw guests sitting around watching other guests eat (and worse – standing in line at the Buffet table…) waiting for clean plates to be provided.
Little things like that – can easily kill the mood of the event. And it becomes a lot of work to keep those people entertained.
So back to the music… as we finished dinner, we went right into the toasts and cake cutting… as is usual for our format. We believe the cake cutting should be done right away after dinner… for many reasons. Once the special dances (Father/Daughter and Mother/Son) were completed we went right into the party… started it off by looping the intro to Michael Jackson “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” and announcing the importance of the day… the floor was packed before the loop was released. It stayed packed for over an hour.
I really enjoyed tackling the challenging music styles, I mixed songs live such as Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” with Amr Diab “Nour El Ain” and Greek Debki. It was very interesting. I recall one of my favorites was when i was mixing the track “What You Like” by TI with Nancy Ajram “Ana Yalli Baheback”. Now of course you have heard the first track, but probably none of the Arabic stuff. Understandable. I only put this in writing to demonstrate our flexibility with different music styles… The best part of the night (at least for me) was when a guest came up and told me to “quit using remixes – you can’t mix!”. What was funny was, he thought I was using special remixes of everything and had no idea i was making those mixes live! LOL. I wanted to say “thanks for the compliment” but he would not have got it…
So, he was the only one (out of 300) that had something negative to say… I was told he used to be a “wedding DJ” at one time… those Wedding DJs…they never figure it out =) Ok, so many different fun things went on this night… can’t wait to post the video and more photos.. coming soon! For more info, check us out at https://lethalrhythms.com/
Posted by Joel Of Lethal Rhythms at 2:21 PM