Arnie Carver

One of the worst things a DJ can do is to drink on the job! In absolutely no way does being drunk on the job help your performance. As everyone knows, while you’re intoxicated a lot of bad ideas seem good at the time. It’s very bad when you’re trying to make announcements but no one can understand you because you’re speech is so slurred. The occurrence of brainfarts multiplies exponentially as well. I like to drink up just as much as anyone else, but not at work. Being a DJ is still a job, don’t be drunk on the job.

Arnie

Another common mistake that I see DJ’s make is letting their personal taste get
in the way of business. This is very bad. As a professional DJ, it’s my job to play
music that people want to hear. My personal taste in music is completly irrelevant.
When someone hires me for a job, it is to do what they want and this usually does
not include trying to expand their personal taste. I can listen to all the metal
I want in the car or at home, not while someone else is paying me to play Madonna.

Besides, there are a whole lot worse jobs out there. I know, I’ve done more than
enough of them.

’til next time,
Arnie

Here we are with my second of many installments sure to come about the business of
entertaining people. To dive right in from the start, my earliest memories are of
beating on pots and pans with wooden spoons pretending to be “The Cat-Man” Peter Criss
of KISS. As a child growing up on rock music, Kiss were the ultimate super heroes and
I wanted to be just like them. I guess I got my way, having played drums in several
rock bands as well as wearing a costume and makeup whilst claiming to be a super hero.
Just not at the same time. Maybe I’ll get into the whole super hero bit some other time
as it’s quite ridiculous.

I knew as a young child that settling for a regular 9 to 5 office job just wasn’t for
me. The next bug that bit me came when I was 6 or 7 tears old when I saw the movie
“Poltergeist”. To this day, I can’t remember being so scared. I had an old, half dead
apple tree in my back yard that looked all too much like the one that attacked the
little boy in the movie. How could something of pure fantasy illicit such a strong
emotion as fear? I’m still not sure I have a good answer for that one, but I’ve certainly
learned to recreate that feeling in others. Through the years after that, I became
increasingly fascinated with the genres of horror and scifi. I watched every horror movie
and TV show that I could find. Everything from “The Twilight Zone” and “Tales From the Darkside”
to the gore soaked classics like “Day of the Dead” and “The Thing”. My fascination evolved
quickly from fear to the art of creating monsters.

I would get my opportunity to try my hand at both soon enough. When I was in 8th
grade my school had a tradition of putting on a haunted house on Halloween to help
finance a field trip. Myself and a group of friends were charged with putting the
spookshow together. I wonder if the school district had any idea what kind of monster
they were feeding. With a big help from my dad, some cardboard, paint and a whole lot
of inspiration, we pulled it off rather well. Now 19 years later I couldn’t fathom doing
anything else during the Halloween season. Welcome to the haunted attractions business!

Lots more to come very soon……..

Arnie

There’s nothing like experience.

There’s a repeating issue in many job markets that goes something like this; “You can’t get experience unless you have experience.” Rookies make rookie mistakes. Of course I was a rookie and did the same and I bet you did too. It does not matter if it’s a hobby, a job or a new class in school, there’s always a learning curve.

The nightclub business is certainly not for everyone. As someone who has been in charge, I think it’s ok to hire inexperienced people as long as they have the right personality to fit the job. Just don’t hire too many “rookies” at once. These people need to be shown the ropes and that takes time. This also serves a dual purpose
as you can train them the way you want them to behave without bringing bad habits from their bars or clubs. This should not be a big issue because if they don’t work out, send them on their way.

The bigger issue that I see is inexperienced owners and management. This can cause immediate failure. Having been part of a crew that opened several new clubs, I’ve seen this repeatedly. Inexperienced owners or managers who thought they knew more than others with hard earned experience. I have personally seen three businesses utterly fail and another currently teetering on failure for this reason alone.

In closing, I have only one point with this blog:
There’s nothing like experience!

Arnie

In all of my years in “showbiz”, I can’t say I know it all, But I’ve learned alot.
Not just about entertaining people either. I think that I have learned more about myself
through work than I would have anywhere else.  Nearing my 20th year in “the business”
I still have just as many if not more questions as I did when I got started an the ripe age of
13. Of course then I thought I had it all figured out. I actually had it figured out when I was
about 4 years old. Yours truly was going to play drums for the rock band KISS. Well, I’m not
Peter Criss, Eric Carr or Eric Singer. I have however, played drums in a number of rock bands.
None of witch ever made it past the local bar scene, but most played a Kiss song or two.

With the entertainment industry you get both the best and the worst of people. Relationships,
both personal and professional have been formed and broken. Through the years many good people
that I’ve known have lost everything while some very despicable souls have excelled. This
isn’t always the case and just as often the opposite. One thing that I am sure of is that success
is relative to definition and determination with a little dash of chance. I’m not just referring
to becoming a “rock star”. I certainly am not nor have ever been one. This theory applies to any
walk of life that someone chooses, stumbles into or is just stuck dealing with for any amount of
time. To quote someone who’s name currently escapes me, “life is 10% what happens to you and 90%
how you deal with it.”

Much, much more to come on this subject……..

Arnie