Manchester
house music club Sankeys is to go the way of The Hacienda: It's to close and be turned into flats. It was loved and hated in about equal
measures by most people I knew. The revamp a few years ago didn't sit
right with a lot of people, and the change in crowd from serious
clubber to wannabes and dolly birds put off a lot of traditional
house music aficionados.
Plus,
living in Oldham, it's hard to get any of the locals to venture out
of their own town with it's shamefully and unshakeably terrible
nightlife. Over the decades I've really wanted to visit Sankeys to
see particular DJs in action. The club's lineups always had an array
of cool groups spinning records, usually people who'd just released
an absolute banger. But I've only managed to visit the club, in
total, six times. Occasions when people could make it to Manchester
were usually times when we had another club lined up, like Ampersand
or Ohm, or when people just weren't that into house music and wanted
a regular bar night.
Still
today a few mates say that, when they've been to Sankeys, they've had
more bad nights than good recently, or that they preferred other
house music places, but I really enjoyed the times I'd spent there. I
first went in 2002 with some uni mates, although I have no idea who
was playing. A year or so later I went back and saw Armand Van
Helden, and some of the tunes he played stuck in my head so clearly I
had to Youtube them when I eventually got the chance in 2007.
After
that night in '02 I didn't go back for over a decade. On a couple of
occasions I strayed in on a last-minute decision, and then for
whatever reason had to go pretty much the moment I got there. But in
the last year I've been twice and stayed all night- to this Martinez Brothers night,
and to see Secondcity.
Both were packed-out, down-and-dirty, sweat-drenched superb house
music events. The latter of these I ran a meetup to coincide with, so
people could meet new people and attend the night at the same time. I
just wished I'd been more organised and prepared more of these meetup
events, particularly to Sankeys.
But
nothing lasts forever, and house music- once the staple genre of
high-end clubbing in Manchester- is now on its way out, replaced
evermore by repetitive generic RnB in the newer popular clubs.
Seasons of events like The Warehouse Project and festivals like
Parklife will spring up here and there, but house music is getting
harder and harder to come by. We'll have to keep our eyes peeled from
now on, but Sankeys- as the narrator from Mad Max 2 says- lives now
only in my memories...
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