Song Decisions
Weddings. I honestly can’t tell you how many I’ve been to, it must amount up to the hundreds over the years. And the view from the stage is a unique one. Some are civil affairs where family members natter over brie and grapes while nephews and nieces play happily, ‘We’d maybe have a little dance later on but for now I’m catching up with loved ones, thank you very much’.
Others are quite the opposite. The sound of group singing and laughter fill the air, and the sight is of crowds and couples lurching from one end of the dance floor to the other while further afar guests wilt over chairs like wounded soldiers. The sea of wine bottles, cake and flowers gives the impression of a debauched, drunken battlefield. These guys want to party.
The point is, every wedding is different, and you can’t force the same show on every group of people indiscriminate of the atmosphere because it simply won’t work. More to the point you have to bear in mind that 99% of weddings are a combination of the two extremes depicted above. You’ll have a certain percentage of the group wanting to feel like they’re experiencing a friday night in Ibiza and another percentage wanting to enjoy high tea at the ritz. And herein lies the challenge of the job. Tailoring our approach to suit a crowd we don’t know.
We appreciate you’ve done your research, watched the videos, studied the repertoire and come to the conclusion that, yes, The Tricks is exactly what we want for our friends and family! But nevertheless we are still confronted with the same types of dilemmas and challenges at every show;
- It is quite chilled out here, should we allow people to warm up for the first half an hour and keep it quiet or grab it by the scruff of the neck and kickstart the night?
- How can we keep everyone happy?
- How can we sustain the momentum on the dance floor? (competing with a tasty and long-awaited buffet is hard)
- How can we second guess their taste in music?
Adapting our approach to a party on the fly is an art, and we’ve been doing this for years. These are conversations that occur every time we work because we want to get it right and the truth is, if you have a good night, then we have a good night. Our repertoire has been tried & tested, chopped & changed and you can bet that while we consider how one song goes down, we’re figuring out what to play next which is right for your crowd.
Alex Karban
Bassist for The Tricks
www.thetrickslive.com
