Earlier in the summer literally every media outlet was spouting the same piece of research claiming that 'the club' is dead. It's dead they crowed, it's so dead, these naysayers did a little dance atop its supposed corpse, before taking a spade to its bonce and burying it underneath a mound of words, hyperbole, newspaper columns and half chewed up garies.
Indeed,
according to reports, half of the UK nightclubs have shut in the last ten years which is a pretty shocking stat (if true and it's not a slow summer's news day). But if this just refers to the Oceana's of these Isles then that's probably a good thing. And while the media love talking about the death of things, there's never much fanfare when somewhere opens and breathes life into something. There are clubs reopening, changing and gaining new identities all the time (Phonox in Brixton, the Moth Club in Hackney are just two in London in the past few weeks). Plus festivals have never been more oversubscribed - you can't move for places to dance in the summer months. Even if things are slightly on the wane in conventional venue land it doesn't mean people are stopping moving. And if they are being more selective, this usually means those clubs who aren't in it for the right reasons fade, leaving those who fucking mean it to stay and fight. Sometime things are at their best and most warm blooded when they're struggling to stay alive. Or is this wishful thinking? Maybe, but it's interesting to chew over.
Above is a picture of a talk we went to with journo Dave Haslam and Andrew Weatherall about this very subject back in early August. They covered many of the topics above but really the biggest revelation of the evening was how bizarre looking the latter is without his facial hair. Eek.
