Setting up a club night in London

First off – it’s usually not too difficult to get some sort of night started in London, there’s lots of venues and seemingly plenty of people with money to burn on most nights.

The eclectic/diverse angle though is not really as novel as you think. Really, since the late 90s a mix’n’match of styles approach became the typical antidote to yer standard fare of DJ’s showing off their mixing skills and thus boring the non-DJ enthusiasts. Now after half a decade of dropping-a-bit-of-everything and marvelling the punters with your eclecticism (I’ve been as guilty as anyone) I think the people are ready to hear sets/nights which are a bit more defined.

Where in South London were you thinking?

I like the idea of people playing diverse kinds of dance (in the most catholic sense) oriented tunes and sets.

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If you're asking "Is there scope for clubs where people play anything they like as long as you can dance to it?" then of course there is. There are loads of nights like that in London (I do some myself with varying degrees of success) but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's reached saturation.
Personally I agree with you that (unless I'm on drugs) I generally, but not always prefer a mixture of styles as opposed to eight hours of minimal techno or whatever. I guess Bun-U has a point as well though, some people do prefer that but London's a big place with a lot of people so there is definitely room for both. Of course you could have a club with two rooms to cater to both extremes.
I'm afraid that I don't know south London that well so I can't really advise on venues but in my experience (except for a few honourable exceptions) pretty much all of the venue owners/managers I've had to deal with have been money-grabbing cunts who won't lift a finger to help you promote things or in any other way but still expect it to be rammed every time and will blame you if it isn't. Sorry if I sound bitter.

sound systems like Unsound & alt.ctrl already run nights like this at redstar and telegraph. In fact goto Unsound b4 even thinking about starting a night 3rd Base in Brixton is a manageable size although the place has as much character as the Israeli separation wall.

Does anyone have any specifics on costs and good ways to promote from their experiences?

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For flyers, Urban Design (I think they're called) are good. It costs about £130 for 5000 (and gets cheaper the more you order), you email them the design and they will bring them round your house in two days. In fact, if anyone knows anyone better than that let me know please.

Beware, Londoners are lazy, people will travel to Brixton for good nights but you'll really only get locals and interested South Londoners travelling to Norwood or Herne Hill...well in my experience anyway.

Always exceptions though.

micmack said:

I like the idea of people playing diverse kinds of dance (in the most catholic sense) oriented tunes and sets. I'm a bit tired of going to a place and it’s the same tempo or style of music all night.

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In Manchester it's mainly a bar scene rather than a club scene these days and almost every single poster I see will say "hip hop house reggae funk soul techno electro blah" - i'd actually prefer it if people would stick to one theme all night (and do it properly) instead of the same old same old 'bar anthems'.

micmack said:

A bit of an assumption that I'm talking about 'bar anthems'.

Maybe for many people after their fourth of fifth pint they are happy to hear 'bar anthems'. I've heard of cases of dj's (in Ireland) getting paid to play nights and just putting on mix cd's because the punters are too pissed to care and nobody's listening.

If you’re on a pill, you probably want to hear the same tempo beat all night - although not in my case.

People on Dissensus talk a lot about music and most people seem to have very diverse tastes. In the last few years my tastes have diversified a lot. If you take grime for example, I've been into this for the last couple of years; however I don't think I've heard much grime played in clubs / bars outside a club hosting a grime night.

Personally I love hearing new and challenging electronic music on a night in a club or bar.

Can anyone tell me of a night in London, with a diverse good music policy (bar and underground anthems)?

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The problem with bars as opposed to clubs, is that its usually impossible for a DJ to do any kind of decent mixing or try anything different on the decks as he/she is constantly battling to hear the tunes over shitty soundsystems and loud punters. Ive played in practically every bar and back room in Dublin at least once down through the years, and not one of them had any kind of decent facilities... (Bodkins was OK when they had that DJ 'room' though...)

it's a much costlier proposition (and for most people unrealistic), but i think the winning formula is to open up your own small club (large bar) and have a different theme each night -- helps to have live bands and PA's too

could possibly be done if you were to investigate spaces just outside the zone of gentrification

i say open up your own club, b/c simply having a club night somewhere in some club/bar space seems to have very little appeal to most people -- b/c they have (1) too many other places they could go to and so forget about your night OR (2) have to work the next day and so aren't even going out

plus, i think most people are bored with standard club spaces, standard bar spaces -- there's no danger, nothing special -- it's all so routine

but if you have a space that's open 7 days a week, you'll always have people passing on through; the scene, if successful, will be much more closely knit; and once you have a few successful nights per week, you can take greater risks with the other nights -- you can strive to get your CONCEPT across

i say this having become a denizen of basically one place in nyc -- all the other places tend to bore me b/c the crowds are too transient, there's "no there, there," there's nothing at stake, etc, etc

and i also say this having taken a crack at holding a club night somewhere this past december, and it was a total failure -- albeit december was a bad time of year to try something, and we weren't very persistent b/c we felt that the crowd we wanted was at the place we'd otherwise be hanging out (so now we simply lobby to get nights at our usual hangout and look for loft spaces to do one-off's)

dominic said:

i say this having become a denizen of basically one place in nyc -- all the other places tend to bore me b/c the crowds are too transient, there's "no there, there," there's nothing at stake, etc, etc

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OR if there is something going on there, but it's not my thing, then i feel like a tourist, a feckless transient, etc

i.e., there's plenty of rock'n'roll places in w'burg, but they're not my thing -- or else the crowds are too young = see sputnik