I’ve also volunteer DJed for the Neon Run and I’ll share a couple things”
1. Everything will get dirty! You, your laptop, your controller, speakers, lights…everything. At our station they kept throwing colored dust into the air to drop onto runners heads and even though we were a good 20 meters away the wind blew it our direction and it was nasty. Protect what you can by saran wrapping your laptop, garbage your speakers, put an invisible force field around your gear and pray the wind doesn’t come your way.
2. You’ll likely get waves of runners come through so expect maybe five minutes at a time where people will actually be able to hear you play and the rest of the time there is you and maybe a few people around. You may get a few people stop, dance crazy around you and take a few pictures. Enjoy it for those flashes and show some energy! It’s different then playing in front of people at a party but its fun all the same.
3. Don’t stress too much about the lights. Heck I didn’t have any. Just three pairs of 12″ speakers and a 15″ sub and it worked. Sure you’ll see people with trusses, fancy lights that looks like they are playing at a wedding but unless your able to sell any tickets they give you to recoup your cost then its not worth it to shell out a whole lot of money.
It’s a fun time, I totally recommend doing it. In fact I’ll do it again this year most likely. It wasn’t the first time I played out but it was the first time I played for that type of crowd and it was awesome! That feeling you get when you first see people getting hyped to you playing music is like an addiction and you’ll want more and more of it.
Do it! Take action and it’ll motivate you to do more!
Good luck!
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