Team party NYC

[Useless member]

After an amazing Friday and having been so busy I looked forward to eating and relaxing at the Team party in NYC.
The food was great and after loading up a heavy portion I looked for some place to relax and munch. Space was premium but I Found small place on the corner of the stage next to a speaker from the DJ.
Yeah Yeah I know im an old (Person) who doesnt apreciate great new "Modern" so called music but some of the words "sung" on the records were TOTALY out of order. I wont even use the first letters of some of the words said but clearly most of the foul words used in the alphabet were used.
I saw many small children attending with their parents who heard this "stuff" and I would like to know if this is exceptable by other members. If I was to write some of the words said in a thread as an expression I would be hammered by every reader untill the thread was removed. Could F.I.R.S.T. find a DJ who could entertain but curb the foul Language in the music. Am I right or am I an old "PHART".....

[Chief'sDad]

If the language was crass, foul, and/or obscene, then it was totally out of line in my opinion(I wasn't there).
How do you feel about the music at the competition itself?

[Ian W.]

i agree about the team party. they never even played real music. all i heard was rap. while some people like rap, i favor the saying "You can't spell crap without rap". sorry if this offends anyone, just my opinion. as for the music played during competitions, some of it is ok, but some is just bad. brittany spears is horrible (it's not even music anymore), backstreet boys just plain suck (my opinion too), and the list goes on.

now, while i listen to a variety of music, during competitions, i understand that the best type of music to play is neutral music. no death-metal, but no classical. i think somethnig akin to Dispatch or DMB would be the best type of music to play at competiton, the only problem is most of their song's are either too long or not "fast enough" to keep the pace of the competition up. oh well, when you drive, you don't listen to music anyway.

[Kyle Hill]

The choice of music played by the DJs at the competitions is essentially left up to them. I'm pretty sure these people aren't a part of FIRST and are hired locally at the competitions, as are the entertainers at the Team Parties. (This is sort of evidenced by the different music played at the competitions - while KSC this year was mostly pop and more mellow rock, SBPLI the last two years has been more uptempo drum 'n bass, techno, and alt rock.)

So you're not going to get the same types of music at every competition, and there's of course no way you're going to please everyone at any competition. I much preferred the music at Long Island's regional, but other people (like my mom, for instance) perferred the downbeat music in Florida.

As for any choice vocabulary, yeah, FIRST probably gives the DJs guidelines, but how strictly they follow them is up for debate. (Remember the music video last year at Nats before the lazer show? )

[DanL]

Music was bad at NYC party, yep, I agree. But DJ's ARE hired locally, and this is NYC you're talking about, so I suppose local DJ's would play that kinda stuff. However, what FIRST REALLY did bad at the NYC regional was the announcer lady for the pits. The lady who did all of the announcements really should have shown more respect towards everyone. Instead of saying, "Hey Team 810, COME ON, EVERYONE IS WAITING FOR YOU!!" she could have something like "Team 810, it is your turn." She obviously did not care for what she was doing. By late Friday or Saturday, she pretty much gave up. She said herself that she's tired of announcing teams and won't bother if she has to constantly announce people. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but this was DEFINATELY against the FIRST spirit. Thursday morning she was just terrible. I'm almost positive she lightened up because people were complaining. Then on Saturday there was that one instance when one team turned on their music loud, she told them to put it down, they just turned it higher and suddenly everyone in the pits was cheering. Shows you how much everyone hated her. I'm not sure who this lady was or how she became the announcer, but I seriously hope she does not participate in future FIRST competitions - atleast not as the announcer. She was definately one of the bad parts of the NYC Regional.

[robomama]

Kyle & everyone,
I had a great time at the team party and
everyone I saw seemed to be having one too! What I really liked was the variety of music played. Something for everyone! Of course I did all my dancing far, far away from my daughter! She would have been totally embarrased to see her mom having so much fun. If anyone was in the conga line....she was the one in the photo booth!

[Ian W.]

dan -

i'm pretty sure the lady was not a hired part of FIRST, for she had no idea how the game was played. during the quarterfinals, i was down in the pits qwith Kedar, standing by the tvs, waiting for 810 to be up, so we could run the extra batteries up (yes, call it topping off the charge ). she came over to watch, and was clueless, and when we tried to explain, she didn't understand it all that well. i think she was just a volunteer from a nearby community center, and her attiude simple was not checked. it's really a shame she was so annoying, but in the end, at least she stopped bugging the teams.

[Anthony S.]

I have a very eclictic mind and listen to a whole variety of music, personally, I enjoyed just about all of the music played during competition at Lone Star, I think they really mixed it up which is good. The food at our party was horrible but the music wasn't that bad at all. In response to the original post, I think if the music had bad language it should not have been played at all. Dean would have been highly upset if he knew it were played.
If you remember at nats last year he got angry about Joe's videa 'stutter' I believe because of the sexual content of the video. But I guess Dean was out there when they were playing Brittnee Spears all of that chair in 'Stronger'. But listening to the music at competition is one of the main things I like about the competition.

[Christina]

I know when the DJ came into the LI Regional, I was the person who showed him to this media table. I pretty much told him what kind of music to play and avoid. I told him to keep it upbeat and to try to avoid "teeny bopper" music. I also told him, obviously, to keep it clean. They are hired by the people doing the regional. Sometimes, the people who hire them, kind of assume they won't play anything offensive. But, if a crew member goes over to them and gives them an idea of what to play and what not to play, they will generally listen. I would think, when a DJ sees the type of environment they're in, they would know not to use offensive materials. I wasn't at the NYC regional team party (regional yes, team party no...stupid midterms), so I don't know what they played. I enjoyed the music at the LI Regional. But, it's not FIRST who hires the DJ, that is left up to the regional.

~Christina

[Rich Wong]

Yep, the NYC Pit (bull) Announcer Lady is a local volunteer. She is actually very nice grandmom but she is a "real hard core New Yorker." Actually she was last year announcer too. Since I'll be meeting with the Directors of the NYC Regional, I'll speak to them about this issue for next year.
Last year a lot of people had the same complaints about the Team Party music too. Maybe they can use the same DJ that ran the music played at the playing field which I thought was fine (comments?). I also commented to the NYC Directors about the Party Music.
I already made suggestion to change the layout of the pit to reduce the traffic jams happening in front of the Pit Lady. Also the TV displays were in the wrong place because everyone was sitting in Team 41's area. (Sorry 41 and thanks for the inflatable tomahawks that was a cool team item)

[DanL]

Originally posted by Rich Wong
but she is a "real hard core New Yorker."

heh, you can say that again. Personally, I felt she took away from the FIRST spirit at the NYC Regional, and I'm sure lots of other people feel that way too.

[Elgin Clock]

Originally posted by Rich Wong

Last year a lot of people had the same complaints about the Team Party music too. Maybe they can use the same DJ that ran the music played at the playing field which I thought was fine (comments?). I also commented to the NYC Directors about the Party Music.

It was the same DJ I could tell from his corny lamp shade hat!

Anyways I think the music SUCKED at the team party and was OK at the event, he took requests, sometimes, but yeah that was one of the reasons my whole team left the party, the music......well, that and the fact of seeing high schoolers grinding 10 year old cheerleaders on the dancefloor is not what I want to see when I go to a FIRST event!

[Adrian Wong]

A portion of our small team went down to New York City and saw some sights. The new Toys 'R Us store was really interesting. We had dinner at Planet Hollywood. After that, we ran across a laser park and decided to play a game or two (there were eight of us, so we had to play with another group).

If our team goes back to the NYC regional next year, we'd be interested in setting up a team vs team laser tag match. It would be quite cool. Anyone up for it?

[DanL]

The definately sounds pretty cool. My team went to the team party and pretty much did nothing. Because we're little white suburban kids, the music wasn't really what we dance to, so we went into the back lobby and began playing hacky-sac. That ended after someone on the team got it stuck on top of one of the cieling tiles. So a few of us took out one of those beach balls that was given out (I think STUY was giving those out?) and we tried playing hackey-sac with that. A few people from other teams came over, as well as a security guard, so that ended that. Needless to say, "NYC" and "local DJ" don't really work for us. Next year we'd love to do something else, so count us in for laser tag =D

[Adrian Wong]

Because we're little white suburban kids, the music wasn't really what we dance to...

Hehe, us too. We didn't stay around long enough to notice (the food line was too long for us), so it definately sounds like a good plan for next year. Let's try to remember to bring this up next year, and we might be able to wrangle a few more teams into this.