WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
Caked right up.
Dancefloor moments
- Thread starter boxedjoy
- Start date
I need to know more about this. How far did this couple get before she realised what was happening? What happened when she moved, ,did they just fall down?
Other people's reactions, individuals or a whole crowd going nuts will imprint moments.
This is why I think context is so important: something like "Beam Me Up" is on the surface a very straightforward, functional but ultimately unexciting bit of retro pastiche, yet in the context of me/my friends/what I'm doing etc, it becomes something more. Some of these choices are songs that I wouldn't mark out as great individually but in the moments of significance they've felt like pivotal experiences.
This is why I think context is so important: something like "Beam Me Up" is on the surface a very straightforward, functional but ultimately unexciting bit of retro pastiche, yet in the context of me/my friends/what I'm doing etc, it becomes something more. Some of these choices are songs that I wouldn't mark out as great individually but in the moments of significance they've felt like pivotal experiences.
4) Gunman, 2012
A few years pass and things are different. I was never serious about job-hunting in a way that used my degree and I've completely given up. My hometown pals have all moved on to different cities to work, but expect me to be available for birthdays and gatherings instead of moving on with my own life, and a particularly bad bout of festive depression extinguishes any idea that we could remain close. Meanwhile a second holiday with the uni pals is a disaster: we go to Lisbon and spend the weekend around dull English TEFL sorts, they insist we go to steakhouses when I'm vegetarian, I hate it and when I storm off I wander into being mugged at knifepoint. We make an uneasy peace long enough to come home, and then I'm too bitter and miserable to make any effort and self-exclude myself from the group.
I didn't feel that bad about doing it then, and I don't feel bad now. I wish them all well, they're good people, but they're not my people and I wish I had figured it out when I started uni. When you've been made fun of all through school for being a geek and a homo, It's easy to mistake being liked and respected for meaningful friendship.
Instead I'm working full-time in the retail job, hanging out with my colleagues who seem more on my wavelength despite having less in common. I've thrown myself into online dating and adventures, basically accepting any invite because I'm up for a laugh and no matter what happens, I can always leave and go home. I go to clubs and warehouse afters, I have a fling who turns out to have a wife and two kids, I shave my head and wish I had did all this sooner.
We take on a girl at work, KL, who becomes one of my best pals. She's a door steward from even further out in the country than where I am from and she is hard-core. She's been going to raves since she was 14 thanks to her older brother and she speaks my language when it comes to dance music.
Every year Glasgow School Of Art has the degree showcase and a party for the students. KL manages to get us tickets despite neither of us being art students. It's at The Arches and it is incredible. In all honesty I've always thought it was an over-rated venue - I've seen good and bad acts there, had all kinds of nights out at it but never felt an affinity to it. This is the one time I think it's excellent. I have zero idea who was DJing but they were exceptional - UK funky, 2-step garage, r&b Jersey edits, "Getting Me Down" and this. We were up at the barrier, going ballistic, still only drinking but ready for the night to take us wherever. We ended up at a flat with a girl who looked like Eliza Thornberry. This was one of my favourite nights because it was exactly what I wanted to hear and to dance to, everything I knew I should have been enjoying instead.
Gunman is also a long-time favourite. It's on one of those Massive Dance! compilations I had when I was a child, and it's just a great track isn't it? I mean it's overplayed and obvious now and probably has been since 1998. But whenever I hear it it still does the business, that rumbling bass and tacky gunshot sample. This sticking out as a memory from that night is probably because I think of Gunman as part of the canon proper.
A few years pass and things are different. I was never serious about job-hunting in a way that used my degree and I've completely given up. My hometown pals have all moved on to different cities to work, but expect me to be available for birthdays and gatherings instead of moving on with my own life, and a particularly bad bout of festive depression extinguishes any idea that we could remain close. Meanwhile a second holiday with the uni pals is a disaster: we go to Lisbon and spend the weekend around dull English TEFL sorts, they insist we go to steakhouses when I'm vegetarian, I hate it and when I storm off I wander into being mugged at knifepoint. We make an uneasy peace long enough to come home, and then I'm too bitter and miserable to make any effort and self-exclude myself from the group.
I didn't feel that bad about doing it then, and I don't feel bad now. I wish them all well, they're good people, but they're not my people and I wish I had figured it out when I started uni. When you've been made fun of all through school for being a geek and a homo, It's easy to mistake being liked and respected for meaningful friendship.
Instead I'm working full-time in the retail job, hanging out with my colleagues who seem more on my wavelength despite having less in common. I've thrown myself into online dating and adventures, basically accepting any invite because I'm up for a laugh and no matter what happens, I can always leave and go home. I go to clubs and warehouse afters, I have a fling who turns out to have a wife and two kids, I shave my head and wish I had did all this sooner.
We take on a girl at work, KL, who becomes one of my best pals. She's a door steward from even further out in the country than where I am from and she is hard-core. She's been going to raves since she was 14 thanks to her older brother and she speaks my language when it comes to dance music.
Every year Glasgow School Of Art has the degree showcase and a party for the students. KL manages to get us tickets despite neither of us being art students. It's at The Arches and it is incredible. In all honesty I've always thought it was an over-rated venue - I've seen good and bad acts there, had all kinds of nights out at it but never felt an affinity to it. This is the one time I think it's excellent. I have zero idea who was DJing but they were exceptional - UK funky, 2-step garage, r&b Jersey edits, "Getting Me Down" and this. We were up at the barrier, going ballistic, still only drinking but ready for the night to take us wherever. We ended up at a flat with a girl who looked like Eliza Thornberry. This was one of my favourite nights because it was exactly what I wanted to hear and to dance to, everything I knew I should have been enjoying instead.
Gunman is also a long-time favourite. It's on one of those Massive Dance! compilations I had when I was a child, and it's just a great track isn't it? I mean it's overplayed and obvious now and probably has been since 1998. But whenever I hear it it still does the business, that rumbling bass and tacky gunshot sample. This sticking out as a memory from that night is probably because I think of Gunman as part of the canon proper.
5) Love Sensation (Acapella), 2013
Paradise Garage: A Tribute To Larry Levan. That was what the flyer said for the club night. I had a rare Bank Holiday Monday off, so managed to rope pals GN and OL into coming out. Both of them were guys I'd had romantic dalliances with that had fizzled into nothing, friendships without chemistry to take them further. I thought they might enjoy it, even though they didn't know each other. It wasn't labelled as a gay night but disco is gay music, why not come along and dance and maybe cop off with a guy, and it means I don't have to go alone? GN loved disco as an exercise in camp pomp, OL loved disco as purist authenticity fetishism. I just loved the music - the compilations with Levan's named grated on to them, the dodgy recordings on Youtube.
The promoters, Melting Pot, are known in Glasgow for being audiophiles, and their nights attracting an older crowd. In our early 20s, we were a good ten years younger than most of the people there. But the thing about people who go clubbing in their 30s and 40s is that they are committed. They haven't settled into a boring heteronormative life of nappy-changing and DFS furniture sales: music is important to them enough to make the effort that clubbing takes when you're older, it's different to being 19 and being able to just head out whenever. These people are serious about their fun, and it shows - some of the most up-for-it crowds I've ever seen are at Melting Pot nights.
Meanwhile, at work I've got new managers who've come in and they're some of the worst human beings I've ever encountered. Not just personality clashes and adverserial aims but vile personal politics and complete social disinterest. We are all miserable for the six months it lasts. My brother is still living with me, but now he's old enough to be responsible for himself and it turns out that for now he's just a lazy, irresponsible, thoughtless shit. I'm trying to look out for him as a friend and a brother and a surrogate parent but all he wants to do is fight me and seemingly make my home life as dismal as possible.
Paradise Garage doesn't start particularly well, if I'm honest. GN and OL are getting on but not comfortably. The DJ plays "Vogue" and "Two Tribes" and while they sound great and people get up to dance, it feels a cheat: maybe Levan would have and did play these but it's not what we came looking for. We go to the bar in the other room, and when we come back it's much better: straight into the 80s Post Disco Proto House anthems, "You're The One For Me" and "I Feel For You" being particularly irresistible as anyone would expect. There's airings for early Levan canon too - "Heartbeat", "Don't Make Me Wait" and "Weekend", plus lots of Salsoul-style opulence I don't recognise.
There's an afterparty at a warehouse and all you need to do is turn up and know the secret word which is only being given out at the club. GN is too tired so OL and I head down ourselves when the club finishes. The warehouse DJ is playing the late 80s/early 90s birth-of-house anthems - "No Way Back", "Good Life", "You Used To Hold Me" etc - it sounds incredible. The crowd is sparse and flagging but at this point I've been drinking for five hours and this music is wonderful so we manage to carry on until about 5am, when a new DJ takes over and, having missed the theme, plays the already-rinsed "Inspector Norse" which we take as a cue to go home.
When people talk about Levan and Paradise Garage they tend to focus on one of two things. They either talk about Paradise Garage as a refuge for opressed people, a haven of escape and liberation, where people who lack social privilege could enjoy themselves without the pressures of discrimination feeling present in the way that ambient racism and homophobia can permeate everyday life. Or, they talk about Levan's technical skills - the way he DJ'd and edited, how he made songs sound better through audio techniques and sound design. But the link between the two only becomes explicit when you're on the dancefloor. That when you're enjoying yourself, relaxed, dancing, under the influence, safe in the company of people like yourself, listening to songs that tell stories and explore feelings broad enough that you can relate to, made of textures that make your skin tingle: that can all feel like bliss. Especially if it's your escape from the drudgery of a life that's turned out more frustrating than expected.
The last song the DJs plays before the club closes is the acapella of "Love Sensation." On another night, it would be an act of audacious kamikaze, but tonight it's a communal celebration. Every voice in the venue is singing along, and most of them don't even sing it as "Ride On Time" but as the original (GN and OL do, which is why I notice). "Love Sensation" is so bound up in the history of dance music that it feels like a core text, so it feels fitting that it's the last song at an event celebrating the joy of dancing and its culture. 300 people are roaring along to it, I'm having a great time, and all the things people say about the history of dance music, of clubbing and its pleasures, they make even more sense now.
Paradise Garage: A Tribute To Larry Levan. That was what the flyer said for the club night. I had a rare Bank Holiday Monday off, so managed to rope pals GN and OL into coming out. Both of them were guys I'd had romantic dalliances with that had fizzled into nothing, friendships without chemistry to take them further. I thought they might enjoy it, even though they didn't know each other. It wasn't labelled as a gay night but disco is gay music, why not come along and dance and maybe cop off with a guy, and it means I don't have to go alone? GN loved disco as an exercise in camp pomp, OL loved disco as purist authenticity fetishism. I just loved the music - the compilations with Levan's named grated on to them, the dodgy recordings on Youtube.
The promoters, Melting Pot, are known in Glasgow for being audiophiles, and their nights attracting an older crowd. In our early 20s, we were a good ten years younger than most of the people there. But the thing about people who go clubbing in their 30s and 40s is that they are committed. They haven't settled into a boring heteronormative life of nappy-changing and DFS furniture sales: music is important to them enough to make the effort that clubbing takes when you're older, it's different to being 19 and being able to just head out whenever. These people are serious about their fun, and it shows - some of the most up-for-it crowds I've ever seen are at Melting Pot nights.
Meanwhile, at work I've got new managers who've come in and they're some of the worst human beings I've ever encountered. Not just personality clashes and adverserial aims but vile personal politics and complete social disinterest. We are all miserable for the six months it lasts. My brother is still living with me, but now he's old enough to be responsible for himself and it turns out that for now he's just a lazy, irresponsible, thoughtless shit. I'm trying to look out for him as a friend and a brother and a surrogate parent but all he wants to do is fight me and seemingly make my home life as dismal as possible.
Paradise Garage doesn't start particularly well, if I'm honest. GN and OL are getting on but not comfortably. The DJ plays "Vogue" and "Two Tribes" and while they sound great and people get up to dance, it feels a cheat: maybe Levan would have and did play these but it's not what we came looking for. We go to the bar in the other room, and when we come back it's much better: straight into the 80s Post Disco Proto House anthems, "You're The One For Me" and "I Feel For You" being particularly irresistible as anyone would expect. There's airings for early Levan canon too - "Heartbeat", "Don't Make Me Wait" and "Weekend", plus lots of Salsoul-style opulence I don't recognise.
There's an afterparty at a warehouse and all you need to do is turn up and know the secret word which is only being given out at the club. GN is too tired so OL and I head down ourselves when the club finishes. The warehouse DJ is playing the late 80s/early 90s birth-of-house anthems - "No Way Back", "Good Life", "You Used To Hold Me" etc - it sounds incredible. The crowd is sparse and flagging but at this point I've been drinking for five hours and this music is wonderful so we manage to carry on until about 5am, when a new DJ takes over and, having missed the theme, plays the already-rinsed "Inspector Norse" which we take as a cue to go home.
When people talk about Levan and Paradise Garage they tend to focus on one of two things. They either talk about Paradise Garage as a refuge for opressed people, a haven of escape and liberation, where people who lack social privilege could enjoy themselves without the pressures of discrimination feeling present in the way that ambient racism and homophobia can permeate everyday life. Or, they talk about Levan's technical skills - the way he DJ'd and edited, how he made songs sound better through audio techniques and sound design. But the link between the two only becomes explicit when you're on the dancefloor. That when you're enjoying yourself, relaxed, dancing, under the influence, safe in the company of people like yourself, listening to songs that tell stories and explore feelings broad enough that you can relate to, made of textures that make your skin tingle: that can all feel like bliss. Especially if it's your escape from the drudgery of a life that's turned out more frustrating than expected.
The last song the DJs plays before the club closes is the acapella of "Love Sensation." On another night, it would be an act of audacious kamikaze, but tonight it's a communal celebration. Every voice in the venue is singing along, and most of them don't even sing it as "Ride On Time" but as the original (GN and OL do, which is why I notice). "Love Sensation" is so bound up in the history of dance music that it feels like a core text, so it feels fitting that it's the last song at an event celebrating the joy of dancing and its culture. 300 people are roaring along to it, I'm having a great time, and all the things people say about the history of dance music, of clubbing and its pleasures, they make even more sense now.
what do you think it is that stops you having these experiences? What is it you find boring and annoying and how could that be changed for you?