When you reach an
advancing age, the prospect of an almighty night out leaves you feeling as
nauseous as if you’d actually had an almighty night out. If you’ve got young
kids, humdinger evenings are pretty much off the agenda anyway, and if you’re a
writer, like what I am, it’s best to keep your head in some form of working order;
as Bobby Byrd said, “If you don’t work, you can’t eaaaat”!
This doesn’t mean I
shy away from alcohol. Far from it. Nothing cuts through a day’s devilment like
a large glass of red when the kids have climbed the Wooden Hill to Bedfordshire.
Saying that, we live in a flat, so it’s more like Lincolnshire. This year, I’m
a huge fan of Casa Luis Caranena Joven, a Spanish plonk that’s spearheading
Asda’s courageous three-for-£10 range. At £3.33, you’d expect it to be a dog
wine but it glides down the oesophagus on silken wings. The bottle comes in
gold netting, and as we all know, if a bottle of wine has got netting round it,
it tastes better.
I’m not saying I don’t
like big nights out – I like them very much, but on my terms. Occasionally – twice
a year – planets, stars and comets converge in a straight line, meaning that me
and the wife have the opportunity of an almighty night out but with no kids the
next day. We can hide in bed till 3pm and slowly come to terms with how mercifully
ill we feel. And cos you don’t feel like eating much the following day, you
lose 4lbs. Weight Watchers could learn much from this novel approach to
slimming. Big nights out are essential for recalibrating the soul; you have to
get them out of your system.
It’s better to put
your own nights on so you don’t have your bi-annual boozathon ruined by a
dubstep DJ who’s live-streaming mixes through Soundcloud on his HTC One. We
plan these nights well in advance. New Year’s Eve was the last one, and a
resounding hit, even though one of the revellers approached the decks and
poured a full pint of lager directly into one of the CD players. We’ve had a
few sparsely attended get-togethers in the past, but we’ve got high hopes for
this Friday, especially because its location couldn’t be any more central if
we’d tried – New Oxford Street, W1. Even so, if the partygoers don’t spend
£1,000 at the bar, I lose my deposit. So if eight people turn up, they’ll each
have to drink £125 of ale or five bottles of rough champagne.
The exotic mix of dance,
indie, soul, disco, 80s, 90s and modern leftfield pop is supplied by an
in-group of DJ wannabes, masters of the merge rather than mixing, whose ages
range from 37-52. We’re all media slags: writers, sub-editors, designers. None
of us are Skrillex, but we’ve trained ourselves to be able to press play at the
correct time in seriously sozzled states. John Peel-like mistakes naturally occur
but as these events are often private get-togethers, you won’t be fined for
playing “The Liquidator” by Harry J Allstars twice in ten minutes.
When you arrive at a fresh
venue, the equipment will be totally different to any place you’ve DJ’ed
before. Manning the decks is like flying a spaceship, what with all the
flashing lights and shiny readouts. You may as well do that hammered as sober.
At least you’ve got an excuse for a poor performance. I once did a day’s DJ
course to try and grasp the basics but didn’t learn a damn thing other than the
need to count through records in fours and eights. I’d rather just enjoy the
track on its own merits and make the odd cock-up than put myself through a
maths exam. I’ve enough counting to do when I’m totting up my outgoings every
month.
The major problem with
playing to the public is that they approach and ask the most inane questions. I
used to DJ monthly at a soul night in London and lost track of the number of
times I was asked to play Take That. One time, a woman staggered towards me and
said, slurring, “Got any Take That?” I replied, “We’re not running that sort of
operation.” She said, “Right, I’m getting my boyfriend.” You’re then faced with
the prospect of getting your teeth knocked down your throat for not owning any
tracks by British pop’s Walter The Softies – although there’s a clear link
between northern soul and Take That. Ian Levine, a DJ at the Blackpool Mecca in
the Seventies, was co-producer on the ice-cream headache Take That debut LP Take That & Party, from 1992.
Hopefully we’ll remain
free of violence and Take That this Friday. There’s a theme: Factory/Disney.
This reverts back to a text conversation I had with a friend prior to a wedding
– my wedding – last month. “What’s the theme of the afterparty?” he wondered. I
tapped back, “Factory/Disney”. There wasn’t a theme at my wedding – a wedding
is theme enough – although the idea carried on when a female co-organiser
suggested a dress code for our upcoming shindig. At a committee meeting, in a
pub, I suggested – in jest – Factory/Disney, and before I could explain myself,
the motion was carried.
It’s a tough look to
pull off… what do you go as, Mickey (Stephen) Morris? Bez Lightyear? Minnie
Moscrop? I’m going as Bernard Sumner in the narrow hinterland between Ian
Curtis’ death and the birth of New Order – maybe the eve of New Order’s first
gig at the Comanche Student Union in Manchester on Wednesday, 6 February 1981,
with support from Stockholm Monsters and Foreign Press. I’ll probably wear a
Dumbo badge on my navy tie to keep folk happy. It’ll be a big night, even with eight
people in attendance.
I once asked Ian
McCulloch, the singer from Echo & The Bunnymen, what was the wildest night
out he’d ever had. You’ll notice that I namedrop a lot here – I do that in real
life, too. “I nearly died in Cincinatti,” Macca revealed. “Early tour, 1983. We
flew to Cincinatti and it was like, ‘Can we get some of the old doodah?’ I’m
sharing a room with the tour manager – those were the days! Mick disappears to
meet this dude who looked like an elongated Harrison Ford, with red-leather jacket
and diplomatic immunity, from South America. He’s got this briefcase full and
we’re doing, easily, gram lines. Like, swoosh, ahhhhh. Bangin’! It makes you go mad. And it hurts. And the back of your
neck, in one, it’s like, ‘And tonight Matthew, I’m gonna be Stephen Hawking.’
“Seven of these lines
later, still felt a little bit moreish, ha-ha-ha-ha! I was in for a long haul,
here. It was scary and then you realise... aaa-aaahhh-aahhhhhh, I’m swallowing
me own tongue here. I should have done more in the right nostril. It was a bit
lob-sided. So I go back to the hotel and carry on. It’s like, I don’t know how
many grams I did that night, but it was easy ten. I was bongoed. So anyway, I went to me room that night, and the tour
manager wasn’t there. So I’m lying in bed, and I’m like, ‘This is it, the big
woooo.’ So I phone up me mate, and I said, ‘I think I’m gonna dieeee. Could you
bring a wet flannel?’ And he just mopped me brow, me feverish brow, for hours.
And it’s like... it’s fair enough having one or two, but ten! And the following
night, back on it!”
That interview was
well over ten years ago now. In 2012, when I was writing a career retrospective
about the aforementioned Sumner for GQ,
I asked him the same question, and realised that my almighty nights out are piddling
in comparison. “There was a party in America,” Sumner recalled. “I think we did
a festival with De La Soul. Some special friend from Texas turned up with some
special gear, and I remember being so off my face that I was dancing and I was
convinced the devil was on my back, with his arms wrapped around me and his
legs wrapped around me, and if I stopped dancing he was going to devour me. So
I was terrified of stopping dancing. And then when I eventually did, I had the
most horrible night. Of course, I had a gig the next day. That was pretty hard
core. I eventually realised I was being paranoid.”
Alt.pop stars – just
pace yourself! Well, that’s enough reminiscing for one week. My long-term
intention is to make the last paragraph of Morning
Warship a bit like the end of Open
All Hours, where shopkeeper Arkwright, played by Ronnie Barker, looks up
into the Doncaster sky and speaks to God. What a classy production that show
was – I loved it. Best comedy ever? We’ll come to that next week. Fer-fetch me
cloth, G-G-Granville. Cue credits in traditional FTY Skorzhen typeface and
playful brass-band theme.
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