WORK SOUNDS GOOD
Sergio Galvez’s new job as DJ during practice ranks pretty high with the Rams
Each week The Times will examine some of the behind-the-scenes jobs associated with the Rams: Jamon Brown felt the beat. The Rams’ offensive lineman danced between reps as music blared and the bass thumped across the practice field at the team’s temporary facility in Thousand Oaks.
“The DJ has to be next to the nutritionist, which has to fall after Jeff Fisher,” Brown said after the workout, ranking the importance of each position on the Rams’ staff. “You think about music, it gets you pumped up, it gets you going, it gets you ready. Music is essential to a successful practice.”
Sergio Galvez isn’t a trained disc jockey and didn’t apply to be one. But when the sound engineer was setting up audio equipment at the team’s training camp facility at UC Irvine, he was asked if he also could play music. Of course he could. So Galvez took out his laptop and created a 70-song playlist.
He moved with the team from UC Irvine to Cal Lutheran, and for a couple of hours during practice days his normal tasks within the audio and video department come to a halt so that he can manage the tunes.
“I’m a huge football fan since I was a kid, and the fact that I get to play music for the Los Angeles Rams, I can’t think of anything better than that. To get paid for it, I think it’s pretty cool,” Galvez said.
A Downey native, Galvez meets with a coach before practice to determine when music can be played. Some drills require silence.
“At first I thought it was pretty cool, I get to play music for the players,” Galvez said. “But now I see it’s important. They listen to the music and it sets the tempo for practice.”
Said linebacker Alec Ogletree: “He’s important since just kind of getting everybody kind of loose and getting everybody ready for practice at the beginning, and during practice we we use it as the crowd noise.”
As for the playlist, Galvez admitted it’s “pretty tough” to keep everyone happy with music preferences that range from hip-hop to classic rock, and even some country, but he said that he welcomed the challenge.
“I’ve heard some of them yell out ‘change the music’ or ‘change the song’ or whatever, and it’s OK,” Galvez said. “We’ll play something else and a few minutes later I’ll see the guys dancing.”