We played at a Marriot hotel/manor just off the A10 in Herts last night for a wedding. Very young crowd - mostly in their 20s and early 30's, also very hard work to begin with. They stood around for the first set and watched us while chatting but towards the end of the first set they started to bop about a bit. Second set was a lot better, we played 'Ain't Nobody' and a couple of the ushers had a 80's breakdancing dance off!
Third set was pretty good and more what we're used to, lots of drunken people jumping about and having a good time. Great that the girls brought the party to them by taking control of things rather than losing confidence. They did a really good job of turning that one around.
The room where we played was in a conservatory, The Summer House, great for low volume acoustic instruments like a string quartet but for us it was a nightmare. We had to keep our volume low at the start so we could all hear ourselves but the more people that came in, the more dampening we had! So we could turn up a little louder. Volume definitely stopped people talking to one another and got them dancing instead.
One usher is going to be in the dog box tonight though. He was so pissed that he couldn't take his eyes off the singers, his gf/wife noticed and started giving him the evils. He was still standing there slack jawed and gawping and after some determined arm tugging and nudging, his other half gave him a right bollocking there on the spot and hauled him off!