This Halloween I had the opportunity to DJ with The Crystal Method, Moby, and Paul Van Dyk on the main stage in front of 8,000 people in Seattle. It was a crazy show. Seeing as it was Halloween I wore my viking outfit, but ditched the Viking sheep coat ’cause it was way too hot on stage. Most shows go as planned, but even the most simple technical mishap can catch you off guard. At nearly every gig there is  a Pioneer DJM-800 mixer provided, which are great – I prefer Allen & Heath mixers for their sound quality, but the design of the 800 is nice and fairly straightforward. I plug my Xone 3D into the DJM-800 and it works like a charm. But before I went on we weren’t seeing any incoming audio signal. We tried everything, but the last song from the previous DJ was running out and it looked like there was gonna be dead air. Of course, the guy before had some crazy fx setting on – I think it was a filter, but there was no flashing light or obvious indicator – just the "color" switch turned down. The sound guy managed to catch it in time thankfully and it was smooth sailing after that.

At every gig you have to plan for the unexpected and things rarely go as planned – that nice neat itinerary always goes out the window, and you’re forced to improvise. Here’s a quick list of 5 bizarre things that have happened at gigs

1. Laptop vibrated off the stand or table in the dj booth – and was caught one-handed,
2. Had a bongo player ejected from the venue because he was overpowering the music
3. Viking helmet got in the way of DJ headphones (Halloween)
4.  DJ’d without monitors in Miami in a venue that was basically a hallway
5. Played behind a curtain for 30 minutes at one of LA’s biggest venues, until they sorted out the stage issues – and people came streaming in.