The real wedding singer By Sarah Avery STAFF WRITER You have to hand it to Alan Atkinson and his band. A thousand times they've been asked to play "The Electric Slide," a thousand times they've lit into it with a reckless abandon. That takes some doing, there. Think about it: How many times do you actually want to hear that ditty, much less play it with a reckless abandon? "I'd play 'God Save the Queen' if that's what the bride wanted," Atkinson says. "The bride is the boss." 'You have to love it,' says Alan Atkinson, after 17 years of weddings. STAFF PHOTO BY KEITH GREENE Want "Endless Love"? It's yours, hon. Got to do "The Macarena"? Ehhhh, yeah. "The Electric Slide"? "Give it up, y'all!" Atkinson calls out, hitting the groove on his Roland keyboard and flashing the rainbow array of lights, drawing even the most rhythm-impaired groom onto the dance floor. Par-tee. In the 17 years since Atkinson answered an audition to play for the Central Park Band, for which he is now the leader and manager, he's seen every kind of wedding, every kind of bride, every kind of reception in the 50 postnuptial bashes he presides over, on average, in a year. And they all want him to be the life of the reception. It takes a special kind of musician to do this - someone with great reserves of enthusiasm, with a repertoire that includes, however reluctantly, "Daddy's Little Girl," with the flexibility to play a living room one day and the Velvet Cloak the next, with a hide thick enough to buzz off the drunken groomsmen who demands to hear "Stairway to Heaven." "You have to love it," he says. "People can see right through you if you don't." And what's not to enjoy, really? Wedding parties are happy affairs, where a bride such as Caren Turner, the new Mrs. Randall G. Turner, can kick off her white satin shoes at Southern Grace Wedding Chapel in Garner and dance with her bridesmaid to "God Bless Texas" while the rest of the party nibbles pimiento cheese sandwiches and watches. For the band, it's steady money, especially compared to the bar gigs the band lived on years ago when Central Park was a beach music group. "We got tired of not getting paid," Atkinson says. And while Central Park commands fees up to $3,000, all the band members have day jobs. There's an accountant, a guy who sells manhole covers, another who owns a transmission shop; Atkinson is band director at West Lake Middle School. Come the weekend, they pull on their tuxedos and put on "The Electric Slide." "There's a wedding in every town on every weekend," Atkinson says, "That's our motto." Sarah Avery can be reached at 829-4882 or savery@nando.com

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