Bristol Party People — The Everyday

Clubs don’t change much, people and music do, fashions come and go and come again, but clubs carry on.

As we might recognise them today they’ve been carrying on since they started to emerge as places for dancing and political activism in the 50's, although they’ve been a thing for a lot longer. These were safe spaces for people a little outside of conventional society where you can let go and be yourself! Room for every genre, every class. My parents started the first jazz club in Amersham in 1958 for want of a place to dance and meet like minded folk. My brother attended Northern Soul all nighters in the casinos and halls of the north with a pocket full of talc for the dance floor. My sister donned her tight satin trousers and sequin boob tube to go down Skindles for a disco. And my first experience was in the 80’s, the sticky carpet corporate towny dress code kind of place, but we were allowed to have one to ourselves on Sundays for Alt/Indie nights. I got my first sniff of the rave subculture here but didn’t know what it was yet.

It’s about dancing and finding your tribe. I found mine in the 90’s when I moved to Bristol, a mixed bunch of travellers, hippy/punk ravers and techno mad nutters. I spent a fair amount of time at Lakota on the weekends (not sure you’d get away with calling a club that now). I’ve chosen to write about a BIG weekend that centres around this famous venue as an illustration of its significance to me, then and now. It continues to be important and it’s imminent closure is very sad. If they knock it down I will cry and lay flowers and mourn its loss.

Clubs were SO important in my 20’s, not just to me. There’s always been a huge DIY scene in Bristol, a fantastic history of clubs and underground music and it seemed to really peak in the 90’s.

1993 - 1997, DOWN BY THE LEFT HAND SPEAKER

Friday, about 9pm, we’d meet up at mine and start getting ready. Not clothes and makeup and gossip, but booze and drugs and far too many roll ups while playing a mix tape of some night we’d been to the other week, remembering every detail of the party. We’d all noisily spill out of my basement flat, up the road, down The Brewhouse. A lock in usually and a chance to boost our energy levels, our growing group would all trundle down a noisy Stokes Croft to Solid State at Lakota. The euphoria of the heavy beats pumping out would fill us with electricity. We’d often bypass the queue and thoroughly enjoy our high status and free entry! We got this because we worked on the same road, in the same business. We exchanged friendly greetings with the bouncers and whoever was on the door that night, turned into the bar, and the music got louder and the fizz got fizzier. Drinks in hand and loads of hugs and kisses as we approach the dance floor.

‘Because my eight k rig goes boom boom, my eight k rig goes boom.’

(Massive Attack, Daydreaming, 1990)

And every boom fills our bodies with light and colour and joy, or it’s quite possible we’re all coming up like motherflippers! Goosebumps, rushes, tingles, clamped jaws, feet as light as air, no feelings but good ones and we dance almost constantly. We’re only not dancing when we find ourselves tangled up in our own limbs on the floor in a corner having a deep and very meaningful conversation with someone we only just met who is our best friend!

We’ve moved onto water now, clutching the bottle and sharing it when we think somebody needs it, connecting with friends and strangers in magical dances, hugging and sweating and dancing and smiling as if we invented it! The club is pretty; all sparkly light shows and video graphics, fluro backdrops and colourful clothes. The usual crowd would be there, down the front, and you could guarantee finding someone at the left hand speaker on the hour, every hour. We had a system that worked at every club, field or warehouse. We still employ it now!

This beautiful and perfect night seems to go on forever, but suddenly it’s the last tune. We only know it because about halfway through, the lights go up. We see the club for what it is, dead bottles and flattened cans everywhere, cigarette butts, puke, little rivers of booze and dirt, discarded t-shirts, muck! The carefully painted hangings that looked so amazing under the black light now look scruffy and dirty and everyone’s looking at each other a bit shifty like; red faced and very sweaty, gurning, chatting, shouting for ONE MORE. The anonymity of the darkness gone, all artifice lifted, we concede defeat and plan our escape. We go to the places we stashed our stuff and congregate outside to listen out for the next party place. Bodies still dancing in auto mode, talking too loud, half the club lingers in the street. If nothing comes of it then we all pile round to St Nicholas Road and stick on some more tunes, do hot knives, bucket bongs and if there is any...more speed and E, and we talk and talk and laugh and make spaghetti with our legs on grubby sofas with cats and dogs as we contemplate the port and sherry bottles on the mid century sideboard (you could get them for a fiver in those days, nobody wanted them)

Eventually people peel away or fall asleep and the inevitable come down begins. We often share this experience as it’s SO much easier with friends. We play SEGA games to techno tapes or “come down albums” and smoke more spliffs to ease ourselves into near sobriety or at least total exhaustion.

The dingy kitchen of my flat...and Mortimer

By Saturday afternoon I’m crawling home to my basement flat to get some sleep before we do it all again tonight. When I wake up I’m thick headed and slightly nauseous. There’s a few stragglers, my Canadian friend J who was with us last night and our Aussie mates S, B & K. My flat was like a hostel for a couple of years, all the waifs and strays would come for a week or so and stay for 3 months! I drink a cup of tea while a bath runs and contemplate the scraps in the fridge. Once all the sweat and grime of the night is gone I make some really bland food, it’s about all I can stomach and I don't really want it but I know I must. We all grumble and laugh as we chew for what seems like hours to get it down our necks! If I’m to make it to Lakota tonight to see Carl Cox, Sven Vath, Gayle San, Sasha and John Digweed, Billy Nasty, LTJ Bukem, Miss Kitten, Laurent Garnier, Dave Angel, then I absolutely must get my shit together.

(obviously they didn’t all play in one night!)

Once we’ve all taken a turn in the bath and found something clean-ish to wear we go to the Brewhouse at around 10. I’m aided once again in my tiredness with a few party favours. Back down to Lakota for Temptation this time, an excellent techno club night run by our mate Leon. After another long and dazzling night of dancing, with a post club free party in an old storage place behind Old Market, you might find us sitting on the benches outside The Farm Pub waiting for it to open so we could soothe our way out of our stupor via a different kind of substance, cider, plenty of it and maybe even an attempt at some more food of some kind. There was a DJ keeping us up and running and some wobbly dancing and a lot of chat about last night’s various parties. By late Sunday afternoon we were absolutely spannered, broken, undone. We stopped making sense hours ago, voices cracked, eyes like saucers. I’d float home, down the steps, into my damp basement flat and clear a space on the bed, fall into it and sleep for days!

OTHER CLUBS WERE AVAILABLE
Our whole weekend would be about the party, If it wasn’t Lakota it was it’s kid sister Club Loco, or The Trinity, The Depot, Thekla, Easton Community Centre, Malcolm X Centre. They always had great names like Strange Fruit, Shimmy, Ripsnorter, Revolution, DIY, Tribe Of Frog (still going), Club Seal, Tokyo Sex Whale, Resistrance, Electric Orgasm, Conscious Club. At the time I knew a lot of people involved in putting them on, some incredible local DJ’s as well as the bigger names. Shimmy was every other Wednesday down at Club Loco, one of the long lost venues, so those weekends started early. If we didn’t have a warehouse or field to dance in, the clubs were a safe bet for us. Lakota was wildly popular in the 90’s, I’d meet people from all over the world there. Trinity had some immense nights and for a while I helped with decorations on some of them, it felt really cool to be involved like that. I still feel a strange obligation to help my friends pack down after a night somewhere.

RECYCLING THE PAST

There’s loads of great new club nights too, Don’t Tell Your Mother, Horseplay, Kiki, PLU, and great venues like The Island with the old police cells, Motion and The Exchange. They aren’t the same of course because I’m much older now and very clean living. I enjoy them in a different way. But I see people in their 20’s and 30’s that remind me of my baby raver self. The hedonistic, free, experimental stuff that seems to come easily when you’re young. I’ve spoken to some of them about it and many say that it doesn’t feel like it’s the same, that we had a special moment in time. I think that’s probably right...but doesn’t every new generation create their own freewheeling culture? Each decade seems to have its unique mood board. A new/old thing. We recreated the summer of love...for quite a few summers! We knew we had something special but over time everything becomes part of the rich history of youth, music, fashion, politics.

In fact it was pointed out to me recently by my friend that the 90’s for kids now is like the 60’s was for us...which, apart from making me feel ancient, is quite astonishing isn’t it! Castlemorton in ‘92 was like Woodstock in ‘69, chaotic and lawless. They seemed a lifetime apart, but looking back...23 years doesn’t seem much at all. So I suspect there may be a sort of misty eyed reverence to it all. What will NOW feel like to the cool club kids of today when they are old codgers like me!

I think clubs will keep going, once they can restart their engines (my god I hope that’s soon, there are so many places in dire financial peril, and I miss sweaty dance floors!) and once they do maybe a whole new wave will come, a new approach, a new club culture. A lot has been learned in 2020 about how to be adaptable to change, to go with the flow, to find very new ways to do things, and every time a big thing happens it feeds into the music and culture. I’m excited to see what might come next. Young people have had a rough time this year and have broken restrictions to gather and party and I don't blame them! As reckless as it seems and as sensible as I am these days...if I was a kid right now I suspect I’d be partying too!

There were loads of clubs in our time that came and went. Some endure. That’s the natural order of things. I have faith that clubbing isn’t going anywhere but the music and venues change constantly. Actually, some of the music stays the same, the kids are listening to our 90’s stuff. When I hear them talking about how brilliant Carl Cox is just as I did at the same age a quarter of a century ago I think...well, if Carl can still do it, then so can we all!