No, it’s nothing kinky. For me, it’s a way of trying to understand some of the concerns that people might have when they’re thinking about hiring a band (or not hiring one). For musicians like me, it can be easy to forget that many people have no experience whatsoever with our business. We’ve played for hundreds of weddings, but for a bride and groom, we’re likely to be the first band they’ve ever hired. There may be all sorts of questions and concerns running through their mind which I wouldn’t otherwise think to address, and which they might be too shy to ask. So, enter the bridal forums.

I thought I’d choose a forum post now and then, and post my answer here for other people to read. So here’s today’s question, and it’s a pretty basic one. On the Australian Bridal Directory forum, Julie asks:

I was wondering what would be better?
A Band or a DJ?

Here are a few responses. First from repgirl04:

My way of thinking is that a band may not play the songs the way they are meant to be, whereas if you get a DJ they are basically playing the song off a track.

From Jill:

from our experiences, good live band is better than dj that plays all your wedding favourites.we went to a few band on open days and won’t sway live band for dj, having said that, live of course is more expensive than dj.

From Stacey:

The upside to a DJ is that they can play absolutely anything you want. A live band can only play what they know.

And from Rosa:

I think a band gives more Atmosphere

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that I think a wedding should have live music, of some kind. Generally, I think a great reception deserves a great band of some kind, bearing in mind that live music comes in lots of different formats to suit the size of the venue, and to fit within the budget of the wedding. Ok, but why?

Firstly, because live music is unique and distinctive. A wedding is often the biggest day in a person’s life, and I think it deserves to be marked with music that is out of the ordinary. When a DJ plays music for you, he or she is (usually) playing the music off the same CD that you have at home or on your iPod. It will sound much the same. From the point of view of repgirl04 and Stacey above, of course, that’s a good thing. To me, though, it represents a wasted opportunity. Hearing a recording for the hundredth time, no matter much you love the song, is never going to have the impact of hearing the song interpreted just for you, by a living breathing musician standing right in front of you. That performance becomes a unique and special part of your celebration in a way that a recording never could. If it’s done right, you should hear it as if for the first time. Nothing could be more romantic.

Secondly, because a band symbolises the importance of the occasion. You might really love pot and parma night at the local pub (and rightly so), but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s what you should be eating and drinking at your wedding. You can hear a DJ spinning hit songs from the last 30 years on any night of the week. You hear it every time you turn on your radio. Like the pot and parma, it’s easy and familiar and safe and cheap, but it’s not very special. To walk into a room, the music swelling to greet you as the crowd rises to its feet and cheers: that’s an experience that you’ll probably never have again, unless you win an Oscar. You should make it count.

In a related point to that, Rosa is right. Live music provides an energy that recorded music can’t. There’s a reason why people still go to the theatre even when a play is available on Blu-Ray. Being entertained by humans is fundamentally different to being entertained by machines. It’s hard to put your finger on, but something about being in the same space, breathing the same air, connects you with the performers. It puts you in an emotionally heightened state that makes you feel everything more intensely. At a wedding, where you and your guests are hopefully going to be happy and excited to begin with, that’s a good thing.

Fourthly, live music is easier than you think. Big wedding, small wedding, big budget, small budget, big venue, small venue, there’s always a way that you can use live music to make the occasion something extraordinary. Maybe not a big band, maybe not for the whole night, maybe just for the ceremony, or between the ceremony and reception. There is no template that you have to adhere to. There are lots of possibilities, some of which you probably haven’t thought of. If you’re in doubt, just call me, and we’ll talk about it. Seriously, right now, call me.

And lastly, you don’t have to choose between having a live band or hearing your favourite recordings. I’ve played at lots of weddings which have both a band and a DJ. Dancing to your recorded music with your friends can be quite a sweet way to finish off the night, when everyone’s tired and merry and a little disinhibited. In fact, if you want to do that, you don’t even have to hire a DJ. If you hire The Mood Merchants, you can pay a small extra fee, give me a list of your favourite dance tunes, and I will mix a good, continuous, level-adjusted, mood-appropriate track for your last hour or so, to be played autonomously through our PA system. If you can live without a guy in a baseball cap and sunglasses, twiddling knobs behind a comically oversized subwoofer, it works remarkably well.

Have I left anything out?

On the one hand, The Mood Merchants is a band, in much the same sense that other jazz bands are bands. Yes, it has several different possible formats, but so do most jazz bands. Yes, it really consists of a single leader and a pool of musicians to be drawn from according to the needs of the job, but most jazz bands actually operate in a similar way (even most of those that would prefer to think of themselves as a band of myth, with a stable set of members and a shared Kombi van).

On the other hand, the idea of a band is really too small to encompass everything that I’m offering. What I’m really offering is myself, as a professional musician with an unusually broad level of experience and an unusually diverse skill-set including good communication skills, the benefits of my contacts with potentially hundreds of great musicians in this great music city, and my capacity to arrange it all (in both the administrative and musical sense) into something that perfectly suits the needs of a particular client for a particular job.

I don’t think there’s a commonly-understood category that I can put all this into, though, so for now I’m marketing it as a band (because what else are potential clients going to be looking for, after all?) and if it means as I come across as a bandleader rather than a musical-director-at-large, then that’s completely fine. Not least because for much of the work that I expect to be doing, the two are basically the same thing. Lots of people just want to book a band, and that’s everything that they need. I’ll always be more than happy to help them on that basis, and I’ll never be pressuring anyone into putting on more of a production than they’re really up for.

But whether it’s something bigger, or smaller, or something a bit unusual, or whatever, I want people to know that what we do is not limited by the combinations that we have listed on the site (as great as they are), and I stand ready to listen to what they have in mind.