TeamPartyDown

Seattle Prom 2010

June 10th, 2010

TPD Presents Seattle Prom 2010

Benefiting the Global Music Project

Hosted by LushLife

It’s finally here, after years of attempting to produce a legitimate formal event, Seattle’s top event production companies bring you Seattle Prom, the first event of it’s kind in the NW. This once a year occurrence will feature the following:

A nominated group of local celebrities vying for King & Queen
A nominated group of your peers vying for 6 spots in their court
Legendary Producer & DJ, DJ Solarz from the RockIt Scientists
Live music provided by one of Seattle’s top retro cover bands
Aerial Acrobats
Discounts on Tuxedo’s from Men’s Warehouse
Discounts at local hair salons
Gift Bags from local businesses
Prom Pictures
A Red Carpet entrance

This is prom just like you remember it, with an endless amount of excitement and flair on top, oh, and this time, you don’t need to sneak in your own alcohol. Remember, this is a formal event, and we plan on following that format. Not only will we have entertainment playing you the hottest music out (as usual) there will also be a few slow jams.

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Maybe…..

April 17th, 2010

Maybe….this is the most common responses when it comes to people committing to anything, from events to date nights, this answer plagues calendars everywhere. I’ve decided to blog about this, because i am guitly of taking it even further, i am slowly becoming a flake full of false promises, sometimes I flake on purpose, other times on accident. Rest assured I will be taking a lot of my own advice. On a side note, seeing as most of my blogs are nightlife centric, i’ll try to keep the rest of this relative to nightlife, but, feel free to extrapolate my points as you see fit.

One of the first things you learn as a promoter is that “maybe” normally means “no”. I’m not sure why it’s so hard to say no, especially to a promoter, but, apparently it is. I feel like the “maybe or false yes” is the easy way out for the time being, giving no thought to the bigger picture. Imagine spending 20hrs asking people to come to your event, imagine having a pretty good response, 150 yes, 150 maybes and 30 no’s. Imagine being really excited for one of your first events, only to have 50ppl show up. Imagine losing hundreds, even thousands of dollars because you planned for a much larger group. This kind of situation is what causes the floods of event invites and mass messages. Promoters quickly find out how unreliable/cowardly people can be so they begin increasing their invite capacity based on their initial return (ex. if i only got 50 out of 300 then i need to invite 3000). Older, more seasoned promoters just work harder on the relationships they have with their current friends/customer base.

If I have any advice to offer, i advise everyone to be up front (i need to take this advice myself). If you’re tired of telling someone no over and over again, then let them know you’ll be in touch when you’re at a point in your life that going out makes sense. You have to realize that you don’t owe us anything, just because we’ve let you in free doesn’t mean that you have to come to each and every one of our events, even though we do recognize and appreciate it. I have people that i see 4x a year, and I treat them like kings, often better than people i see 2x a month. I do so becuase these particular people respect me and put effort into our relationship.

You start being more up front with your responses and i promise you the spam and aggressive promoting will retreat. If I send out an event invite and get a %5 response, i’m more likely to stop sending them. If I get a %40 response, even if most of it is false, that’s large enough for me to keep taking the chance. The bottom line is this….if i’m not human enough to recognize that most of my friends don’t like going out 5x a week, then there is something wrong with me. Personally, i’m just as happy when someone tells me they are staying in with their significant other as i am when they say they are coming out (even though it makes me a little less money). The word no pushes me to create events that make friends/clientelle more comfortable, it pushes me to create events that are more desirable to attend, and, it pushes me to create new relationships that value the commodity i have. Going out doesn’t make everyone happy, but, for some, it’s the release they need when it comes to handling a stressful daily life, we as promoters need to help those people, not annoy the ones that are at a different stage in their life. So, unsubscribe from my email list, my text list, block my event invites, it won’t hurt my feelings, it will actually help me.

This blog will probably make very little difference in how people respond to promoters, there will probably be the exact same amount of “maybes” as there always have been. If you do take anything from this, please cut down on the “false yess”. Think of it this way, most of us have no problem telling someone yes and then coming up with an excuse or just plain no showing, yet, they expect their friends to be there when they have something important going on. How would you react if we actually returned the favor by throwing fake events. How would you feel if you were ready to show some friends a good night only to show up at an empty venue. At this point, I may know that “maybe” normally means no, but, every time it happens, it still takes a little piece of me, it still lets me know that people really don’t respect what it is I do, don’t take me seriously, or just don’t think about consequences. Something that may seem so miniscule to you may not be to someone else. Just because I have 200ppl bail on me every week, doesn’t mean I don’t notice when you do it. In closing, have a great weekend, no matter what you do.

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Oh no…my Facebook account got DELETED

April 11th, 2010

I was a victim of an account suspension about a year ago (if not longer) this was because i was importing my TPD contacts to my PERSONAL Facebook, 1 by 1. Luckily I had obtained this contact information legally and was within Facebook’s TOS. They did warn me that I needed to cease adding at such a rapid pace. Since that day (over a year ago) I have probably added under 100ppl, although I do approve nearly every request. This experience alone makes me sympathetic to certain situations. There are people out there with large personal friend bases that have been wrongfully terminated and I’m working to help some of these people restore their accounts. This post is for the people who have had their accounts deleted multiple times and still don’t get it.

It seems that there has been quite an influx of people losing their Facebook accounts lately, and, I hate to say, I told you so. It’s been a number of months since I put a Facebook post up complaining about the number of people using the Facebook platform as the sole marketing tool for their small businesses. This total reliance on Facebook is pushing people to use every facet of the medium for self promotion, resulting in an over abundance of business centric status updates, completely random friend requests and massive amounts of event invites.

The reason people are constantly losing their accounts is simple. What you are doing on Facebook is considered SPAM. Rest assured that Facebook is going to do all they can to PREVENT themselves from going the route of MySpace. If you spend your days going through the “People you may know” section and adding everyone, you will get your account deleted. If you go to someone’s account you know and add all of their friends, you will get your account deleted. If you are posting 10 events a week your account will get deleted. If you are continuously representing a business opportunity or entity through your personal Facebook, your account will get deleted.

It’s really frustrating to still see these practices. There are so many people out there doing it the right way, so many brilliant ideas. Take advantage of Fan Pages, take advantage of the amazing Facebook advertising system, take advantage of the talented developers out there that can really make your Facebook work FOR you. Seeing people attack the marketing challenge in a more subtle way is so much more exciting. Anyone can post 100’s of events, but to go through a post a relevant comment on each of those, closing with a link to your business or cause, that takes a brain. Interjecting yourself into friendly conversations resulting in furthering your network takes some social talent….Randomly adding people all day and night…well…the lack of effort is rewarded with a lack of results….

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Why They REALLY Closed !

March 24th, 2010

If you hadn’t heard, and some of you probably haven’t, a number of different restaurants/nightclubs/lounges have closed in Bellevue over this past month. I didn’t really pay it any mind, until someone took a shot at TPD when commenting on a Blog Post. This ignorance has prompted me to deliver one of my most opinionated and aggressive blogs ever. So, sit back and strap in, this time, I pull no punches.

So my friend “sushisnob” (our blog poster) do you want to fill your empty head with a few legitimate reasons as to why vertigo closed. Well, here you have them.

1. Location - You are at the bottom of an apartment building (okay 2nd floor) but still, you are by absolutely nothing, learn this, unless you have a built in following that has been loyal to you for years, you have a 2yr shelf life when located out of the central clubbing district. Unless of course you have something unique to offer, which, you didn’t.

2. Design - Your club resembles a bar bell. This would be absolutely fine if the bar was located in one of the open areas and the dance floor in the other. Unfortunately your bar is in the wrong spot, it completely ruins the flow. This is something that people will put up with for a period of time, but, fighting for a drink week in a week out makes your spot a little less desirable.

3. Creativity - With such a great bar staff, the management really should have done more. Guess what, everyone advertises in or with D List/The Weekly/The Stranger/Local Radio Stations. That takes no ingenuity what so ever. Just throw money at an advertising platform and hope the people come. News FLASH, you aren’t the only show in town, you have to set yourself apart. You got monotonous, it really sucks that such a great staff went to waste.

4. Demographic Selection - In the beginning your drew the support of the local Bellevue community, once they realized there was no special reason to go “off the reservation” your demographic became heavily European. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this demographic, except that it does not mesh with with other demo’s and, it’s not large enough to support more than 1 or 2 good nights on a weekly basis. You then moved to working with some of the more established promoters in the sound, like PURE, who were able to bring you some really spectacular events, however, the location and design of the building began to wear on their following, especially when the events went from monthly to weekly. Next up you went with the Urban crowd, initially, it was a grown up and respectful crowd from the likes of Marlon & Dru, but then, you went hood. Unfortunately, once you go hood, you don’t go back. It was all capped off by the last event that I saw heavily pushed, the Snoop Dogg after party. This just blows my mind, did the owners that took over the lease from Bill do ANY research at all, ANY !?!?! Who in their right mind would allow an event like that knowing how concerned the Bellevue police already are in regards to nightlife. Those going around bitching about the Bellevue Police need to learn who is in charge and need to not try and bring that type of event into the city, it will NEVER work.

Being a club owner myself I will be the first to tell you that losing a club isn’t always in your control, I’m learning this first hand right now, but, some things are. The bottom line is this, you can build the Taj Mahal, with the best of the best of everything, but, if you don’t work hard at what you do, it doesn’t matter one damn bit. Understand the market you want to go after, realize what it is that they expect when they come to an event. Make sure that you’re dialed ACROSS the board, and know, that you are going to have to make some concessions and you’re going to have to reinvest if you want to make things work over the long haul. It’s sad to see any place go, ugh..

So there you have it “sushisnob” the more likely reasons as to why Vertigo closed.

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The Shark Club Closes

March 8th, 2010

It’s been nearly 7 years since TPD’s first event at The Shark Club. The Shark gave an opportunity to TPD in it’s infancy, when we were merely yours truly (tj) & DJ Vinnie B. The reality of it all was that Vinnie B was one of The Sharks favorite DJ’s and has maintained that title for most of the last 10 years. When we formed TPD in 2003, he was kind enough to let me tag along and build a base of friends in the area. If it weren’t for the Shark none of this would have ever happened.

We did a number of different events at The Shark throughout 2003, Bikini Contests and such, but finally, in Feb. 2004 we made it our home on Thursdays. The great people that I met over the next 18 months of $1 Beer Thursdays were innumerable. Those nights were legendary, with Paul, Chase, Brian & Jon behind the bar, as well as 600-800 people every Thursday night, the formula never failed.

Our first run at the Shark ended in October of 2005, only for us to return 3 different times over the next 5 years. Whether it was Vendetta, Just Us, F*ck The Paparazzi or “The Bracelet” it was something to write home about. If you haven’t ever been to one, you’ve missed DJ’s like DJ Scene, Risk One, Evil One, Deniro, Reaction & Steve1Der. You’ve missed acts like Dan Purser, Shwayze & Dirt Nasty. Don’t worry, you have one more chance to make it down, this Thursday 3/11/10, at The Shark Club

Tags: Kirkland, Nightlife, The Shark Club, TPD
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Is your DJ Legendary, or not so much.

February 19th, 2010

DJ recognition in the electronic (house, trance, electro, techno, etc.) community has long been commonplace. The best DJ’s in the country/world are recognized for their production and entertainment value. The best of the best play sets that contain their own music/remixes, this allows the fan to develop particular allegiances, allegiances based solely on their musical preferences. Understanding why promoters bring in DJ’s that might play their own remixes, but, not their own fully produced tracks is a mystery to some, i’m here to address that mystery. ITS NOT ALL THE SAME

What Makes a Good Party Rocking DJ/How to spot a Rookie

Musical Knowledge - Next time there is a headlining DJ in town, listen to the opener. More often than not he’ll get the crowd going, but he’ll do it with all the “bangers”. Great DJ’s can get the crowd going with any type of music at any time. Anyone can hype up the crowd with Radio cuts, the good DJ gets you excited by playing that song you haven’t heard in forever at the perfect time. I’m a firm believer that any DJ can fumble his way through a 3 hour set, there is a large enough database of current popular music out there to accomplish that. Put the same DJ in Vegas and make him play a 6hr set, i’ll bet you hear the same songs 2 or 3 times a piece. Playing longer sets forces DJ’s to expand their musical knowledge and forces them to take chances. So, next time you’re at a club, listen to what the DJ is playing and watch what the crowd is doing. If he’s playing the current radio top 10 and only that, you probably have yourself a rookie. That might not make sense, especially if the dance floor is packed, but, i can promise you it will only be packed during the peak hour and if its the same DJ week in and week out, that hour of dancing will get shorter and shorter. Conversely if he’s playing the exact opposite and people are just standing there, you probably have yourself a rookie, someone who is playing “out side the box” just so he isn’t classified as a “mainstream” DJ. The best of the best will play the right things at the right times, it will seem new and fresh even if the songs are 20 years old, you’ll get that amazing feeling without the same old music.
Technical Experience - There are so many technical aspects to DJ’ing, honing these skills comes with a little natural ability and a LOT of practice. You want to get an idea of how good your DJ is, watch his hands. Watch how precise his movements are, how often he moves and what he’s actually doing. Bad DJ’s are really good at faking like their busy, they’ll fade into a song, then sit back and adjust volume controls. Watch the hands, pay attention to the music….are the transitions crisp, do the beats match, are the scratches clean and on time, does the DJ make the song his own by adding his own personal flair? DON’T FORGET, watch the hands. The reason I say this is because some of the world’s best DJ’s have taken their lives remixes and transitions and sold them to younger DJ’s. The younger DJ’s just download the transitions and let the computer do all the technical work, instead of mixing it right on the spot. This isn’t always a bad thing, it allows the DJ to focus more on music selection, but having your whole set pre mixed is lazy, the customer deserves better. There are other ways to spot pre-programmed sets though, if you have the same DJ week after week, listen for similar transitions, you’ll probably pick it up subliminally. I’m sure there has been more than one instance where you know what song is coming next, while some of this is expected (some transitions just work well) you shouldn’t be able to do this more than once or 2x in a night, if you can, your DJ isn’t doing his job and he’s getting lazy.
Playing to the Crowd - This does NOT mean taking requests. Just a word to the wise, there is a reason most big name DJ’s do NOT take requests. You have to understand that you are one person, you like what you like, others are not the same. You need to trust that your DJ has done his homework and knows what type of crowd he is playing for. A great DJ needs to be able to execute like a well trained boxer, he needs to be able to adjust his strategy/style if what he’s doing isn’t working. Too often DJ’s think they can come in with a pre-programmed set and kill it. This may actually work %60 or %70 of the time, but, if things go wrong, if the people aren’t feeling what you have ready for them, you’re fucked. Make your DJ work, don’t be afraid to make a casual comment, if it’s educated they’ll know it, if you say something like “why didn’t play my song” they’ll shrug it off and be on to the next one.

In closing, it’s up to you the customer to control your entertainment, be satisfied with the normal and force yourself to go out every week, or go in expecting to have the time of your life. Most of what you’ve experienced in the past, most of what you’ve picked up is probably more subliminal than it is painfully evident, but, now, you may be able to control another aspect of your good time. Trust me on this, whether you know it or not, if you have a GREAT DJ, you’ll have a great night, they can generate energy out of thin air, its amazing and it needs to be recognized and appreciated. You don’t need to go in and analyze every week, but, do it once, and see if you notice these little things, you’ll be surprised.

*Don’t believe the hype, a DJ isn’t good just because he lives in a major market city, has a good mixtape, or markets himself well, it’s all about the live performance.

Posted in DJ's, Nightlife, Seattle Nightlife | 2 Comments »

What you REALLY want to tell Seattle’s Promoters !!

February 11th, 2010

The last few days have brought a number of different things to light in the Seattle Nightlife scene, it’s been a real insight into the psyche of these children calling themselves promoters. Below is my take on the whole situation.

I think it’s really important to realize that most of Seattle’s promotion companies share the same demographic and oddly enough that demographic is relatively older in comparison to some other cities. It just so happened that our nightlife scene was flourishing between 2000 & 2007, and, it just so happens that most of the socialites from that time period have continued to involve themselves in Seattle Nightlife. The influx of new party people has been evident, but, it pales in comparison to the number of new patrons we were seeing years ago.

What does this mean ? Well, it means that your current crop of socialites have had their fill of mass texts, mass invites, mass messages and the general harassment that goes along with it all (if that wasn’t already evident with the death of MySpace). I’m not criticizing anyone’s practices, I’m just telling you how I feel. I’m sure you’ve seen a few status updates from me talking about the 20 mass texts, 100+ invites & 100+ messages I receive every week in regard to events. Believe it or not, I also talk to people and try to get their feedback on current practices. I ask them why they deny event invites, I ask them why they don’t go out as much, or, why they don’t go to certain places. The answers, more often than not, have to do with the heavy amount of promotional material they receive for events in general. So, here is a small list of behaviors that i’ve seen, i’d like some feedback from both sides of the fence on this one so please, feel free to comment.

1. Fighting over “friends” - You would be surprised how often promoters working on the same event fight for claim to a particular event attendee (ie. “I invited her” “No I invited her”) More often than not this results in 2 or 3 people bombarding the same person with “You’re on my list, or, make sure you talk to me and get on my list”, as if one persons list is better than the others. My take on it, how about no cover, so we don’t have to worry about lists, and how about using that competitive spirit to bring everyone TOGETHER instead of fighting for who gets who. Don’t you think people are stressed out enough with the economy and such, do you really think they want to have to worry about pissing someone off because they didn’t get on the right f*cking list ?

2. Facebook Invites/Messages - Okay, this ones tricky, here is my take on it. If you have a special event coming up, post an event invite. I don’t mind getting invites for once a month events, or events that feature special talent. However, once you send that event, don’t send me 4 or 5 updates a day on how your ticket sales are going, or, how close you are to being sold out. You have to remember that invites and messages are invasive, they aren’t like ads, ads don’t clutter up your inbox or your event invite page, ads don’t force you to act on them. You would be surprised how many people like to have their Facebook home pages looking pristine (meaning all messages, invites and suggestions handled), the current promotional practices make that nearly impossible. Lastly, if you do weekly events, change the date on your event the day of so you can re-use the same one, don’t send out a new one every week, we get it already.

3. Mass text messaging - Put bluntly, if you care about me then take the time to write a message that I know you didn’t send to 30 other people at the same time. I’m guilty of this, on a number of different levels, i’ll send out a mass text if we decide to do something last minute, just due to sheer time constraints, but, that probably happens once every 2 months. You’ll be surprised how much of a difference the extra 30 seconds per text makes in terms of response.

4. General Harassment - If you see someone’s birthday coming up (or if you have an event coming up), you should hit them up, see what they are doing. If they have plans already and you think you can better take care of them, offer what you have in a simple and cordial manner. What I see too often is “f*ck that place, f*ck those dudes, they’re a bunch of d bag’s, our party will be better”, or, “wtf, why aren’t you going out, you’re lame”. Newsflash people, you’re dealing with grown adults, and you should be a grown adult yourself, so act like it. If you really give a sh*t about the person you’re inviting then you’ll be happy for them whether they are at your club, at someone else’s club or at home on the couch watching movies, just as long as they are happy.

In closing, I know promoters are going to have some questions. So help me out here. When you don’t get invites/texts/messages do you question whether or not the event is going on or whether or not the promoter is still there ? This is something I personally battle with in regard to the TPD mass text as i’m sure some of the promoters sending invites and messages do as well.

Looking forward to everyone’s feedback on this, i’m not perfect, i have been or am currently guilty of a lot of this stuff, it’s feedback from socialites that’s going to help us all refine our processes. We want to make going out fun and relaxing again, not a situation that makes you feel like you’re letting someone down if you don’t come see them.

Tags: Nightclubs, Promoters, Seattle Nightlife
Posted in Events, Nightlife, Seattle Nightlife | 1 Comment »

Collaborations - The Answer

January 28th, 2010

Looking back on my last post, I may have spoken to quick in regard to the state of Seattle Nightlife. We have a new phenomenon that is sweeping our city, collaborations, a breath of fresh air. Long have our ego’s gotten in the way, ego’s that have prevented us from working together. If it wasn’t out ego’s it was our greed, it was always a situation where we never had enough left to go around. Now though, we are marching to the beat of a different drum.

I’m not sure when the switch flipped, but, i’d like to think that it started with a combination of the local club owners devising better profit sharing strategies and local promoters recognizing how awful our nightlife scene is. Collaborations are nothing new though, SNL/Rareform/True/Xcite, Steady & Whisper, Pak Pros & Pin Point as well as others have been using this formula for years with quite a bit of success. It’s the rest of us that have been slow to catch on.

Examples of great collaborations have never been as evident as they are this weekend. A Friday collaboration with Lush Life/Steady & TPD came to fruition at the last minute when it came to light that TPD needed a place to call home this Friday. The fact that this happened 2 days before the event is miraculous, it shows that people in this industry are developing trust again, that people in this industry value their relationships, for this I am thankful. There are more than a few promoters out there that could learn a lesson from this, i won’t name names, but this goes out to those of you who think you are dope enough to burn every bridge in the industry and still get work, good luck.

Another good example of this is Saturday at Tia Lou’s. PURE productions has had their 4yr anniversary mega-party in the works for 6 weeks. They had planned on throwing it at the brand new club Republiq, unfortunately some last minute administrative issues made that an impossibility. Did PURE freak out and cancel the event, no they didn’t, they called upon every company in the city to push this event as hard as possible (for free i might add) and everyone came to their aid and put it down, as they should have.

If you don’t work in Seattle Nightlife, this might not mean much to you, but for those of us that do, this is a new era, we are on the way back up. These collaborations are bringing together people from all circles, which in turn creates larger circles which in turn increases our socialite population as a whole. So, for me, for all of us, attend these types of events, they are amazing, so much great energy, so many people to make sure your night is fantastic, trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

Posted in Events, Nightlife, Seattle Nightlife | No Comments »

Seattle Promoters can K!$$ My A$$

November 4th, 2009

If you’re a promoter and you’re reading this, this is for you. If you’ve never spent 20 hours on a weekend flyering cars all by yourself in the pouring rain, you have a lot to experience. If you’ve never driven from Olympia to Everett delivering flyers to malls, you have a lot to experience. If you’ve never spent 40hrs during a week working on a party, you have a lot to experience. The bottom line is this, this sh*t isn’t easy, and I’m sick and f*cking tired of everyone making it out to be. Creating a social network presence and exploiting the hell out of it is not how you promote events, as a matter of fact, that strategy is ruining our industry. Turning in a Guestlist of 500ppl only have 20 show is a joke, no one gives a sh*t. Quit treating your customers like numbers or names in a phone book, they aren’t. This industry shouldn’t be about making extra money on the side, it shouldn’t be about doing it to “look cool”, it should be about building business networks and eventually making real money. I see some of you posting MySpace bulletins, Facebook event invites & comments like they are going out of style, only to have 50ppl show up at your event. I see people whoring out the industry just so people will look at them in a more positive light, just so people will accept them. These type of people are destroying Seattle nightlife, they are undercutting legitimate promoters and making their jobs 10x more difficult to do.

Where are the real promoters at, where are the companies that can take an empty venue and put 700ppl in it on their first night. I’ll tell you where they are, they don’t exist anymore and unless someone steps up and starts regulating this sh*t, they never will. I sound angry don’t I, and I am, there are too many people, promoters, owners, bartenders, bar backs, cocktail waitresses, security guards and managers that have poured their lives into this cities Nightlife scene and all these new “promoters” are f*cking it all up. You want to know where this is coming from, I’ll tell you, it’s coming from me being absolutely sick and tired of people TALKING about what they can do. There are no weekly event promoters left, take that as a challenge from me, unless you’re a promoter with a niche market and limited options, you’re a joke, and there’s nothing you can say about it because you haven’t accomlished shit. Call me when you’ve produced 1,000 events, call me when you’ve had 2000+ people in a club, call me when you’ve worked with every major DJ talent in the country, call me when you develop some type of technology that revolutionizes your nightlife scene, call me when you successfully spin off 7 promotion companies, call me when you purchase and rejuvenate the nations largest photography company, call me when you open your own club, call me when you do ANYTHING that brings a positive vibe back to Seattle Nightlife, until then, f*ck off.

Posted in Seattle Nightlife | 3 Comments »