Almost everyone has nightmares about their job-but strip club DJs have some of the most entertaining work-related nightmares. Since the DJ controls the rotation of the entertainers in the club as well as the music playing, any number of situations that effect the DJ can throw the club into immediate chaos. We asked the members of PANDA for their best DJ nightmares, and we choose some of the funniest responses to share below.
I just had the worst Dj nightmare ever. I was at a new club. The place was huge. There were so many computers and the monitors were in separate rooms from the keyboards. If you hit a wrong key, the keyboards would switch to another computer. I couldn’t find CD players or amps. No one was helping me find out girls’ names. I couldn’t find a mixing board to plug in my laptop. I was in tears trying to get music cued up and the GM wanted me gone so he wouldn’t train me. It was like that times a million. The other DJs were laughing at me. It was a dream job too.
-James Lockwood
I have the strip club dreams pretty regularly. Usually it’s just a technical issue like the computer crashing or dead air on a busy night. A DJ’s worst nightmare. But occasionally I have some really bizarre strip club dreams. In one of these dreams the club somehow double booked porn star Lisa Ann and a gospel choir. The choir was on stage singing church songs and clapping and Lisa was pissed because they sang well into her set time and she was waiting to go on stage. I hid in the bathroom so she couldn’t yell at me.
In another one, it was our big christmas party. The owner expects a good amount of upbeat holiday music in the mix. For some reason the only song that would play was Junior Mafia Crush On You. Every song I tried to play was that one. On a loop. Over and over and over again. The owner was furious.
The most recent one involved fellow DJ Jerry Butler coming into my club as the new general manager. He hated me and tried to sabotage the sound equipment to screw me up and disabled my microphone so he could say offensive and racist comments on a wireless mic to make it look like I was saying those things. I’ve actually thought a lot about these dreams what causes them and what they mean. I think because we work late nights with loud music and blinking lights it might have an effect on the brain during sleep.
-Josh Fiore
I’ve had dreams about DJing since I first started a few years back. Every once in a while a dream will remind me of how fragile this business is and how much a club relies on a DJ. It also reminds me of how stressful this job can be at times and what it takes to get the job done.
My last dream was filled with confusion, music pauses and managers that were laughing at me. I was in a club where the booth was hidden behind a staircase for the second level dance stage, and there was a stage to my right. For some reason, I was put into a situation where I couldn’t see the stages or who was on them at the time, so it was hard to guess what kind of music I should be playing, or if anyone was even on stage.
None of the girls had checked in with me, even though I could see several of them walking around. It was almost as if the manager had told them not to even talk with me. So I would pick out some music for an average crowd, and take a walk to see if the girl made it to stage. It was so unnerving to see the managers in the corner laughing at me like I didn’t even know what I was doing!
As I’m looking for any dancers I can talk to, the music cuts out. I’m stuck in the booth trying to keep the music playing without being able to see any of the girls, both stages or what kind of customers are there.
Looking back on it, it was a dream I could only interpret as representing bad management. About two weeks later, one of the managers were replaced with a much better choice for the club overall.
My latest dream happened this afternoon – this time I could see the stages, and my DJ booth was at the bar! The room was packed, and there must have been 20 girls there, none of whom had even bothered to check in with me or tell me what they liked. I played average music here and there but finding songs was difficult as all I had to go by was a paper list to choose from.
I got frustrated with the situation and so I went outside to collect my thoughts. When I came back, there were at least 8 girls on both stages, getting tipped. I figured the manager had talked them into getting on stage.
The song was ending, so I went to my music files and chose the Psychedelic Furs song, Love My Way. Things started going great but the song quality was so terrible! So I kept adjusting it on my sound board. The song had ended and my only thought was, “quick play some Rob Zombie!” like some good old Rob Zombie was going to save me and the crowd that night. That’s when I woke up.
-DJ Michelle
Of course, DJ’s aren’t the only strip club employees to have hilarious work-related nightmares. We’ll end with one from a feature entertainer:
My nightmares always center around the audience either ignoring me or booing me. No matter how much energy I put into it, or how creative they just wouldn’t like it.
Then one nightmare, because I self medicated my sorrows one evening, had all of that but my props to came to life and attempted to kill me. I ended up finding that one humorous. I also have nightmares of being attacked by lollipops. I blame my little brother on that one.
