Lady Gaga and Me: My short, thankless career as a wedding DJ

When one of your dearest, closest friends asks a favour, you agree. When he is getting married and asks you to serve as one of his groomsmen, you accept. When he says that the groom's party will be wearing off-white suits, you dutifully run to your nearest chain menswear outlet and rent an ivory tuxedo with champagne accents. And when he asks if you and your other old, dear friend, Miss Imperial, will handle the music for the ceremony and reception, you fire up your PC and scour the hard drive for appropriate songs.

In the final weeks before the big day I prodded the bride-and-groom-to-be for direction. “What kind of music do you want?” I asked. The answers indicated to me that what they were looking for was music to shake their rumps.

But the first challenge was the first dance. “No Celine” was all the input I got for that one. No problem; after a few days of indecision I came up with “I Love You Because” by Elvis Presley, and they loved it.

But what to play after that?

Miss Imperial and I put our heads together and came up with a vague direction, and I went to work putting together a four-hour set that we figured would appeal to folks of our age and mindset. It ranged from old favourites to hip hop to reggae to the Clash to modern dancefloor rockers (Justice, LCD Soundsystem), with a lot of funky detours along the way. It was a good set. We would load the MP3s into Miss I's laptop, create an iTunes playlist, add a few songs from her library, then press PLAY and walk away to join the party.

Everything started well. We had tested the PA system and it worked fine. The ceremony music – JS Bach's Orchestral Suite in D Major, Air for the processional, and the Beatles' “Here Comes the Sun” for the joyous recessional – had gone beautifully. The outdoor ceremony, beneath shading trees and just feet from the banks of the Mississippi River in Carleton Place, Ontario, was airy, sun-dappled, fragrant and just about perfect. Then all retired to the Canoe Club, in the hall on the second floor with the balcony overlooking the river, for dinner, cake, and then dancing.

Fed, watered and increasingly relaxed, we began. I looked around during the first dance: smiles. Then a second slow song, “Loveable” by Sam Cooke, in case anyone else wanted to be rocked gently. Then we gradually increased the tempo. “To Love Somebody” by Nina Simone got my three-year-old daughter to the floor (during the ceremony she had been the escort of the flower girl, a chihuahua in a wedding dress), and she was joined by a few others during the Stones' “Get Off My Cloud.” All seemed to be going well. An upward trajectory in the dancing population was a good indicator, Miss I and I felt.

But then it plateaued, and soon it began to fall. Before long the dancefloor was a sparsely populated region. We started to panic. Maybe the Pixies, scheduled next, wouldn't get quite the reaction we had anticipated. We axed that. “American Girl” by Tom Petty was only mildly successful. Everywhere you looked: unimpressed faces. This was bad.

Then teenaged Cousin Jeffrey pranced up to the table. He handed us a CD. No case, no liners. “Lady Gaga,” he said. “Play track four.” We did so. It was “Pokerface.” Family members, young and old, flooded the dancefloor, danced exuberantly, climbed up onto the stage. Cousin Jeffrey knew every word. There were high fives, smiles, laughing, shouting. Oh heavens.

This, Miss Imperial and I knew, meant trouble. It was an extremely humbling moment.

Maybe, if you're of a certain age, you know the precise moment you first realized that you were completely irrelevant, but probably you don't. For me, that moment occurred at a friend's wedding, on Saturday, June 27, 2009, at the Carleton Place Canoe Club. It was early evening, warm and close, the sun dazzling as it set over the river. I was surrounded by good friends, my wife and daughter, even my parents. I was thirty-two years old, and in the realm of youth, relevance, with-it-ness, I no longer mattered.

We scrambled. Luckily, Miss Imperial has a deep iTunes library. We scored with the Peas' “Boom Boom Pow” and Beyonce's “Crazy in Love” (a classic, apparently). But our choices grew slim. “How long can we keep this up?” I asked her. She looked worried. Improbably, Justin Timberlake cleared the floor. But as the evening wore, older disco stuff kept the people moving. Cousin Jeffrey was judgemental, folding his arms and scowling when something wasn't right, laughing and clapping like a circus seal when we got it right. Over the course of night we would play Lady Gaga's “Just Dance” and two or three more from The Fame that I can't now name. Every damn time they filled the floor. My faith in humanity was rocked, and I was reminded of the Sean Paul Rule, which was taught to me several years ago when I became a product buyer for an HMV store in Ottawa. Soon after landing the job I happened to run into an old friend who was doing the same job in Toronto, and I asked him if there was anything I should know. “Just don't run out of Sean Paul,” he said, “and you'll be fine.” And he was right. (Cousin Jeffrey also requested Sean Paul, coincidentally, and it too was a hit.) Likewise, as a wedding DJ in 2009, just don't run out of Lady Gaga, it seems.

I need to step back here and thank Miss Imperial profusely, if she reads this. It was her, six-months-pregnant belly and all, who took over the laptop and saved the evening, remaining chained to the table and constantly fretting over where to go next. She eased us into the disco (Cousin Jeffrey seemed particularly taken with Diana Ross' “I'm Coming Out”) and from there, into the '80s stuff, where were in something of a comfort zone, and from there we were able, finally, to steer ourselves into material we felt closer to, the night having fallen and many of the guests having taken their leave.

When the night was darkest, we knew that anyone left on the dancefloor was probably loaded or old like us, so we had some more freedom, though I never did get my Horace Andy-Toots and the Maytals- Skatalites-Clash-MIA set in. Finally we were able to hand off responsibility to the groom's brother, plugging his laptop into the PA and letting him take things in a Diplo-and-hip-hop direction while we packed up and joined all our friends (minus the bride and groom) in heading back to the motel for the after-party.

There things were nice and comfy, all thirty-somethings who were fairly appreciative of all the stuff we had chosen. We put the playlist on random and sipped bourbon and coolers (though not the pregnant lady, of course), ate salty things and chatted into the small hours. By my fourth bourbon, after several gin & tonics back at the Canoe Club, I had more or less forgotten the trauma of coming face to face with my own old-and-lame nature. But there was a residual sting, and it lingers still.

In retrospect it's hard to imagine what I had been thinking in assembling that playlist. What fantasy gathering would I be attending where the guests would enthusiastically greet music by Steinski and the American Princes? Who exactly was going to shout “Oh snap!” when I dropped that Editors remix right after the Chemical Brothers and Justice? What the hell was I thinking? It would have been the wedding reception that I longed to attend, wearing through the soles of my replacement shoes (no way I could dance in those rented plastic things) as we all pogo'd, skanked, vogued and bopped the night away, but it bore no resemblance to reality.

So here I am, days later, gradually coming to accept my folly and the commentary it provides about me and my life. I don't mind being old. My friends are old, and for the most part we're happy. But I worry for a future populated by people who could find something appealing in the music of Lady frigging Gaga.

PS (July 1) - I've just spent a few minutes ruminating on the rich tragedy that is the fact that I didn't even get a chance to play "Losing My Edge," when in fact, that's exactly what was going on. Losing my edge. Huh.

The 21st Century never done me no favours.

Over the weekend my wife and I were doing some housepainting, and in the course of choosing some music to soundtrack the chore she said to me, "Let's relive 1995," and proceeded to throw some Verve, Cardigans, Massive Attack and Superchunk into the deck (yeah, we were those people). It was an enjoyable excercise, but yet another in a string of moments that make you think, Will I ever be relevant again? Which is to say, have I discovered all the music I'll ever love?

Fast forward to today, a rainy Monday, and my daughter and I were futzing around the house, making guacamole, hacking up a watermelon. These activities required musical backing, so I fired up a bunch of MP3s. None of which were from the current century, as it happened. None.

The culprits: Fela Kuti (pictured), Charlie Parker, Woody Shaw, Tlahoun Gessesse, Otis Redding, Mongo Santamaria, Toots and the Maytals, the Lovejoys, Eric Dolphy and Tony Allen.

Maybe the 20th Century didn't make any sense, but the '00s make even less. I miss "sir" and "ma'am." Rotary dial. Looking it up in a book. Formalities.

And right now I'm watching a ball game, Diamondbacks-Dodgers, and digging it because Vin Scully is doing the play-by-play, and I love Vin Scully. Why do I love Vin Scully? Because he works alone, and because he sounds like 1950.

All of which begs the question: Am I a man out of time?

In Rotation: To Willie

What? To Willie by Phosphorescent, Matthew Houck's reverent ode to Willie Nelson, and therefore to plain old regret, doubt, the pain-muting qualities of various substances, and the fresh regret engendered thereby.

Why this? Why today? I can't fully explain it, but something about spring run-off invariably sends me scurrying for the comforts of country music and its off-shoots. Recent days have seen me cozying up to Neko Case and Merle Haggard, but this is the one that sticks, the CD that gets carried from the car to the house and back again. It stirs memories of pre-adolescence, when my dad would mumble along to Willie's albums (cassettes) and I'd try to figure out just what there was to be so damn sad about. Now I'm older, and I understand. So does Matthew Houck.

This was a test, in a way, this season. I mean, if in fact this is spring, because who the hell knows around here, but the sun's out, the snow's all but gone, and we're up to our armpits in mud. If we don't have a snowstorm in the next few weeks, we might even start to see shoots. But this is the first urban spring I've experienced in eight or nine years, and I wasn't sure it'd be the same. No flooded fields, no overflowing ditches, no gravel road turned into a mudpit. I wasn't sure I'd have the same musical impulses. Would I open the windows and bleat along with Gram Parsons the same as I used to? Happily, yes.

What's strange is the degree to which my two year-old daughter has taken to the record. Thing is her favourite song is "Reasons to Quit" (sample lyric: "...the coke and booze don't do me like before...") and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Father Knows Best

Father's Day, and what better way to celebrate on Now's the Time than to have my very own father (second from left) join me in the studio to play some favourites?

In truth, dad dug deep and donated $100 to the show during last fall's funding drive, and according to an IMC tradition, that automatically entitles him to co-host an episode of NTT. "Name your date," I told him, but we weren't able to co-ordinate our schedules until this past Thursday, June 12. It just so happened, of course, that that was the show closest to Father's Day. Fortuitous, no?

So JGF programed the music and sat in the studio with me to rap about jazz, his memories and experiences and, as it happened, the manner in which generations can pass music back and forth to one another. See, Dad fell into jazz in college (military college, no less), and he favoured the cool school and the Third Streamers. Somewhere along the way, he sort of left it behind. Cut to thirty or so years later, when his youngest son (that'd be me) began to develop an interest in jazz, beginning with Chet Baker and moving on quickly to Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and so on (and so on and so on). Well, in doing so, I unwittingly pulled dad back into that world, and for that he has proven grateful. So having him sit in with me behind the microphone was a wonderful way to tie all that together.

We played some George Shearing (that's him in the Ray-Bans), some Oscar Peterson, a little Dave Brubeck. We went to New Orleans, we swung with Duke. And we iced the proceedings with some Miles, by way of Spain.

Suffice to say we both had a great time, and the proof is in the digital recording:

Now's the Time - June 12, 2008: Guest host Gordon Forbes

(Playlist available here)

Happy Father's Day.

PS - I'll be back on the airwaves in July with a show I've chosen to call Free Radicals. It'll be a skronky affair, with plenty of noise for noise's sake. Cover your ears.

Dedicated to You: Cut Your Hair

"... And that's a pretty nice haircut!"

For Addy, on the occassion of her first (and probably overdue) haircut, a jaunty pageboy number that makes her face look rounder, but that's okay because, you know, she's a year and a half old.

You don't know Pavement, daughter 'o' mine, and if/when you do, they probably won't sound as good to you as they did to people my age. But take my word for it: they were kind of a big deal - especially to the boys who, decked out in full slacker regalia, would show up to the bar to drink Newcastle and dance to this band and this band only (an awkward dance that involved standing in a circle and looking at the ground). So, to you, sweet baby: "Cut Your Hair," off the seminal Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.

I expect you'll like, and quickly start to sing along to, the goofy "Oooh-oooh oooh-oooh- oooh-oooh" refrain. That's okay; I sing along to that part, too. But like both the scraggly hockey hair you've left behind and those Pavement fanboys, who are probably family men like me now, let the song serve also as a reminder: don't forget where you came from. Silly as it all looks to us now, it's part of who we are.

Young Folks

What a wonderful long weekend – sunny, warm, easy. I celebrated my 31st birthday with family, and it was good. My wife, my daughter and my parents celebrated with me, as did my niece and nephew and their mother, who were in town from the coast. We went to a ballgame, ate hotdogs and cotton candy, watched the home team win it in the bottom of the 9th, and then returned to the scene of my upbringing for food and fun. The kids played and laughed and fairly fawned over the babe while the adults looked on contentedly.

And imagine my surprise when, in the middle of the proceedings, my sunny 15 year old niece began to hum a tune I recognized. I turned, flung an accusatory finger at her and said, “Peter Bjorn and John!”

Dedicated to You: Work Song

In honour (or is that sombre acknowledgement?) of my wonderful wife CC’s return to work, after a year of raising our most perfect and beguiling daughter, I present a musical dedication to CC.

Duke Ellington composed a “Work Song,” as did Nat Adderley. My personal favourite is the Charles Mingus tune by that name, which manages the not insignificant trick of sounding at once slinky and downtrodden. But I have a feeling that CC would prefer Adderley’s “Work Song” as performed by ex-Maniac Nathalie Merchant, so I’m sending that one out to her.

It can’t be an easy thing, putting your life on hold and completely revamping the way you do things in order to give birth to and then raise to toddlerhood a lively little girl, and then to put all that aside and reenter the work force. Today, surely the cruelest Monday of all, I know that CC is feeling a little less “Whistle While You Work,” and a little more aligned with the work song tradition of field hollers and the quasi-musical chants of chain-gangs.

If it means anything, CC, your efforts are greatly appreciated.