New Year's Eve and New Year's Day

New Year’s Eve.

Busy day all round. Spent the morning making CDs in a last ditch attempt to ensure I had enough songs for the evening. It was a bit of a nightmare, trying to guess the audience that I would be playing to, but guessed that they would be mainly 30-50 year olds and filled my CDs with ELO, Monkees, Stevie Wonder type stuff, with a few 80s classics (Love shack, Wham, Michael Jackson, Summer of 69) thrown in for good measure. Turned out to be a good decision, although I could have done with a few more tracks and kept having ideas for tunes all though the night which I had forgotten to bring (Hey Jude, Don’t You Want Me). Then the afternoon was spent lugging gear and doing my back in. Bless my Peugeot, stacked up to the roof with amplifiers, cabs, PA systems, bass guitars, disco lights, and I still had to make two trips!

The gig with the band was cracking, we kept the dancefloor filled all night, even with the tunes that no-one knew, like Speed Racer and Barefootin. I think that’s one of the strengths of the band, the tunes we pick – even if we play songs no-one knows, they’re always good enough for people to dance to. Songs which in particular stood out for me were Stay With Me, Honky Tonk Woman and I Saw Her Standing There. We seemed to really gel and for the first time, Justin + Drink seemed to = Result. DJ set was good, as I said before, the tune selection was pretty spot on, although I did play a couple of songs twice (Daydream Believer, Brown Eyed Girl), but no-one seemed to care. I was getting worried about getting the countdown at 12 o’clock spot on, but as Mambo Number 5 faded out, there wasn’t time to play another song, but it wasn’t quite time for the bells. I realised no-one would know if I did it 30 seconds early, so I did, and we celebrated the new year 30 seconds before it actually happened. Although my watch could have been wrong anyway, so who knows?

Enjoyed the night, but got a bit solemn and lonely towards the end when everyone was heading off home. Stood alone behind the decks as the last bars of Purple Rain faded out and the last couples staggered from the floor, I felt very alone, but content with the night’s work. Mum and Dad dropped me off at home and I fell asleep on my sofa, woke up at about 7 and crawled into bed. I had to be up at 9.30 to go and pack everything up and bring it back to the flat, and once that was done I fell asleep again and didn’t emerge until gone 2. Spent a lazy day in front of the telly- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the football and made it to bed about midnight, still dazed from the night before.

Here’s to a brand new year