Bijou refurbs AGAIN

'It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.'

-Oscar Wilde, novelist, poet and playwright

Manchester celeb club Bijou closed last summer for a refurb, and opened Saturday 4^th July '15- I know because I went to it. I enjoyed what I saw of it, but I was tied down at the time as I'd pulled before I got there and had brought her with me. That and I was STEAMING. We didn't stay long for reasons I won't go into. Well, guess what- Bijou closed again on 29^th May for ANOTHER refurbishment. Where do these places get the MONEY?! Maybe it's from the £10 drinks they sell and the endless supply of people prepared to buy them.

25^th June is the date set for their reopening- I can't make that one, as much as I'd like to. Keep your eye on Cool Bars, as I'll probably put up a meetup to one of their nights in the next few months.

We Are FSTVL

Last weekend I went down to London for We Are FSTVL, a 2-day dance-music extravaganza.

Generally speaking, when you plan to go to a festival it's wise to buy a ticket at the earliest opportunity. This is as opposed to somehow convincing yourself that you've bought a ticket, meaning a big wake-up call at the last minute and that you have to wait to find out if there are any on the door.The former is the cheapest method, the latter the dearest. The beginning of We Are FSTVL was, for me, a nerve-jangler.

I traveled down with a mate I met through Meetup group Manchester Party People, and we met up with another who we'd met through the same group. He introduced us to loads of other party-goers, a sound crowd. We all stayed in a Via hostel in Limehouse, a good 20 miles away but with good transport links, a lot better than in Manchester. It's a clean and modern facility with fair pricing and plenty of power sockets next to each bed.

We then got the tube to Upminster and from there got on a coach to Damyns Hall Aerodrome. This guy tried to sell me a pre-printed ticket, but I didn't risk it.

To my eye-watering relief, tickets were available at the venue's kiosks. I paid just under a hundred on the door each day to get in (earlybird weekend tickets were less than that). So that was a huge weight off my mind (but also off my bank account. Oh well).

The festival requires you to buy a sheet of tokens for drinks, which I didn't think was respectful to ticket-holders. We've already paid a fee to get in. We've come with cash and some of us only want to drink small amounts. Asking us to buy a whole sheet of tokens means we're already paying more than we're getting value for. Also, day 1's tokens are invalid on day 2. I guess also it stops the staff from skimming, as they're unspendable anywhere else. Is it not easier, though, for the organisers to accept cash and trust their employees, like Parklife does?

Back to the music. Check out my mate's Facebook video of Claptones' remix of Gregory Porter's Liquid Spirit being played on the main stage (and me dancing like a tit).

After this, Naughties throwback Craig David took over performed his classics like Rewind and 7 Days. I'm a fair bit older than my group (as you can tell from the apparent lack of hair) and was about 18 when most of his music came out so I was in my element. He also played some new and unreleased tunes.

Here's another Craig David Facebook vid.

Away from the main stage we saw great DJing in the numerous tents.

Here's Hannah Wants in the Area 10 tent...

...and Frankie Rizardo in the Defected tent.

The highlight for me was seeing MK play his set, again in Area 10's tent, which included a PA from Becky Hill singing Piece of Me. MK uses a lot of piano riffs, and piano house has always been something that has struck a chord with me, if you'll allow a pun. Devastatingly, my battery had gone by this time and I'd typically forgotten to dig out the external battery from my bag before we set off. Here's someone else's video. I've not managed to find Becky Hill's PA.

Later that night I saw Fatboy Slim give an entertaining rave set, featuring a number of giant balloons being bounced about through the crowd, and surrealist video displays featuring Yul Bremner. It's the second time I've seen him and not filmed anything. I've found this:

Here are a few official Facebook Albums from We Are FSTVL:

Saturday Day

Saturday Night

Sunday Day

Sunday Night

Just as I was getting off the coach in Manchester I noticed the USB ports for charging phones fixed into the back of every seat. For fuck's sake.

I would advise walking boots for a festival like this. Don't wear wellies like I did: you'll absolutely destroy your feet. Most people were in trainers, and as the weather was great (so much so I got burned even with factor 20 on) it wasn't too muddy.

Whatever type of house music you like- vocal, tech, deep etc- you'll hear little bits of it scattered through various sets in the different tents on the site. Great weekend. I really want to go again next year and be more organised, enjoy it more and offer a more substantial blog post on my return. 

 

 

 

 

The 'Do Not Sleep' Tent, a branded night from Ibiza

Biblical queues for coaches after the festival

 

Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia

My memory is worse than usual at the moment. Here's something I wrote in March and forgot to upload.

I booked off last week so that I could do a few weekday nights out. Tuesday night is Taboo in Tiger Tiger, their weekly student night out. I put up a Meetup event in advance so people could get the time off, and a surprising amount of people came out for it. We started in Hard Rock Cafe in the Printworks, which I hadn't visited in YEARS.

The bar is an incredible homage to the music industry. Almost a museum with a menu, the bar's walls are adorned with vintage music memorabilia. You can take a walk around and gaze at the guitars used by Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, or the outfits worn by The Beatles, or the memos and posters created preparing for Cliff Richard concerts. More wandering reveals treasure troves from The Animals, The Doors and Queen.

Get there early to avoid disappointment- I say it's a bar, but it's really a daytime cafe with an alcohol license- Hard Rock's midweek last orders are at 22:15. Good starting place for nights out.

Bongo's Bingo

The young lad who shouted 'bingo' hands his card over to the male assistant (who's dressed as a French maid), and he takes it up to the DJ booth in front of the giant church organ as naughties dance music blares out of Albert Hall's top quality speaker system. 

 

Johnny Bongo, architect of all this chaos, checks the numbers. He picks up the mic. “You've got it wrong, you're a number out! Knobhead!” He makes the official fist-to-head 'knobhead' gesture. The crowd join in calling him a knobhead. It's all in good humour though, and before long, the next numbers are called out.

Suffice to say, this is not your regular game of bingo. This is Bongo's Bingo, the new feature Tuesday evening event on Peter Street.

A small entry fee gets you a book of bingo numbers and access to the aging renovated church hall. Most people are students, although one older couple look like avid bingo enthusiasts who've accidentally stumbled on a less-than-subtle reworking of their favourite pastime. One can only imagine their horror when two girls had to dance-off (in as slutty a manner as possible) to win after both having the same numbers.

The prizes for winning the games start off dubious: a rubber seagull head, an Elsa doll from the film Frozen, a garden gnome (which was held aloft Bongo's head as the opening of Karl Orff's Carmina Burana slams out of the speakers) a double-ended dildo (which Bongo used to knight the winner), a swingball set and, the final top prize, £500 in cash.

I WON A FUCKING GNOME AT BONGOS BINGO pic.twitter.com/HFR3cfl8md

— Han Crawford (@bad__w0lf) May 24, 2016

To break up the games, Bongo gives you toilet stops. You'll have to be quick, though, as you'll miss the lights going out, more 00's dance and Bongo's two assistants (the other dressed as a grandmother) shower the crowd with popcorn, glowsticks and Coco Pops (the latter to the sound of OT Genasis' CoCo.)

Albert Hall's Facebook pictures are here.

It's the kind of game where you sort-of want to win, but you're sort-of glad you didn't. But it's the taking part that counts, and the taking part is hilarious. Next week, yeah? Tuesdays from 6pm...

A World Without Men

This was a prompt from a recent Writers Connect meetup.

The UN building in Manhattan would gather dust, were it not compulsively cleaned out of habit. The Mogadishu arms factory lies desolate, the last bullet rolling off the production line into obsolescence, no soldiers willing to pick up the arms for which it's intended.

The only busy buildings in the world are clinics, were women line up day and night to be met by doctors. Nobody specifies 'female doctors' any more.

The women want babies. A lot of them would love a son, but this was disallowed decades ago. The UN took the drastic measure when it dawned on them that every war- without fail- was started by men.

As the decades passed after the rule was put in place- After Hillary's inauguration, and the women that followed her- the world seemed, on the surface, a more peaceful place. But the sentiments- the bitter, meaningless hatred of others- steadfastly persisted.

Independence Day: Resurgence Predictions

The new Independence Day sequel trailer has dropped! I've waited 20 years for this bad boy to arrive. Watching the original in the cinema (probably the long-since-demolished Roxy in Hollinwood) was a high point in 1996.

Wait a minute: didn't the scientist guy die? And didn't the crop duster guy sacrifice himself into the middle of the primary weapon? How have these come back alive?

And how can a ship have gravitational pull when it enters the Earth's atmosphere? Have you seen the size of our planet compared to their ship? Bollocks.

And didn't Bill Pullman's character say that he read the alien's thoughts, and that it was their whole civilisation that came to Earth on the (subsequently destroyed) mothership?

Anyway. Here are a few predictions about Independence Day: Resurgence.

1. The film will be a runaway success and be the box office hit of the summer.
2. I will probably watch it at the cinema, despite not having gone there for AGES.
3. Will Smith will eventually say, “shit, I should have been a part of that. I should have offered to work for a smaller fee, or taken a share of the profits.”

I wonder if it'll be released with the holographic cover of something being blown up, like they did with the VHS version of the original. I gave mine to a charity shop!

Meeting Tim Westwood

“I want all the virgins to scream!” Shouts Tim Westwood.

A handful of women do.

“You're not a virgin. Didn't I fuck you in Ayia Napa last summer?”

The Radio 1 and Capital Extra hip hop DJ doesn't hold back when he's not on the air. It's Friday 20^th and tonight he's in Suede in Manchester, playing contemporary and classic hip hop to a sellout crowd.

Before he got on the decks I managed to get a handshake, explaining I'd been listening to his show since 96. He thanked me for my support over the years. He's pretty cool despite his bizarre accent.

Great venue and music. A good mix of classic and contemporary hip hop. Westwood strayed into Bashment later on, which isn't my kind of thing, but it was popular. Not easy for white guys to pull, if you get me.

I went with Manchester Cool Bars- Westwood has sets in Suede semi-regularly so there may be another event to get involved with.