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The Myth of Nightclubz
From BoF Issue 2
It's a Saturday
night. You recline on your couch, jumper dusted with
the scattered remnants of a formally full tube of Pringles. A suspicious stain besmirches your left
trouser leg. Your eyes tire and glaze at
the various television channels shouting nonsense at you. Something itches at the back of your
brain. Flicking stations with ever
increasing velocity, the images coalesce to a single blurred mass,
communicating one ineluctable message.
The itch reveals itself: you're
not in a nightclub, sadsack.
The horror of this realisation is not to be
underestimated. Late 20th century
culture elevated the nightclub to the zenith of all human joy, synonymous with
the sort of Dionysian ecstasy only experienced by naked orgiastic heathens
after a particularly good mushroom harvest.
If you're not 'out' on a Saturday night you are a social pariah, a
gingham swaddled spinster cursing the outside world or a flabby train
enthusiast living with mother's skeleton down in the basement. Or so the
nightclub fascists would have you believe.
If you want to be alive, go to a nightclub the advertising tells us – Witness
the slow motion euphoria where sweat becomes alluring rather than unhygienic,
sliced lemon is tossed to land in some transparent elixir, not down someone's wrinkled
cleavage, mouths agape exulting in the joy of the nightclub.
Exposed to this propaganda a nightclub virgin would
no doubt be hammering on the door of any Gatecrasher establishment eager for a
taste of the best human existence can offer.
Yet a little more research yields a slight contradiction. Our novice clubber, possibly in attempt to
find news of the best nightspot in his area, simply types ‘nightclub’ into the
BBC news site. No doubt many a story of
delight will be reported; ‘Man weeps with joy in nightclub’ or ‘Milk of human
kindness new hit behind bar’ perhaps. Unfortunately,
what greets the eye instead are 139 pages of stabbings, fights, shootings,
assaults, glassings, maimings and general death. A gulf opens between the image and the
reality as a veritable clubbing Gomorrah presents itself:
Police
investigate fight at a nightclub in which man was stabbed; man punched in face
as he queued to get into a nightclub; three
people arrested following a shooting at a nightclub; Man stabbed in brawl
outside club; man suffers a head injury after being hit with a bottle outside a
club…
And so on, and on and on.
Perhaps a passing glance at Booze
Britain or Vomit UK on the cable
TV could show the nightclub in a better light.
However, one can only watch a half clothed drunken woman beating her bloodied
partner with a high heeled shoe so many times before the urge to hang oneself
really kicks in. Exotic variations on common
assault illustrate how the nightclub really brings out the creative impulse in
people. Here at the BoF we can’t decide
whether “Former conflict management trainer jailed for driving Jeep Cherokee
through nightclub doors after being ejected” is appalling or hilarious. We ere on the side of hilarious. However, ‘clubber's nose stitched up after being
bitten in unprovoked attack’ is a little more sobering. Indeed, far from the advertised Nirvana, it
seems the word ‘nightclub’ and the phrase “ear bitten off” fit together a
little too snugly.
How, then, has this disparity developed? Are our pleasant night spots unfairly
maligned by the forces of fusty conservatism?
Or is there an international conspiracy afoot to turn the country’s
youth into a race of ad hoc olfactory surgeons?
Let us at the BoF paint a fair and honest portrait of the British
nightclub scene in an effort to illustrate the truth.
Nightclubs tend to fall into two broad categories: 1) a place people who wear clothes for a
living go to take cocaine or 2) hellholes where common people drink themselves
to the point of death. The two species
can intermingle, but generally you know where you are with this categorisation;
either severely out of pocket at 2 in the morning having paid £20 for one vodka
and coke, or severely out of blood after being glassed on the dance floor. Indeed, it is possible to devise a graph of
the journey from Coke head heaven to bleeding hellhole.
Naming plays an important role in establishing a club’s
place in this entertainment stratum.
Clubs named after signifiers of upper class standing are, paradoxically,
the most awful. Beware a Toffs, a Butlers or a Duke, as they
are invariably the last place you would find a toff, a butler or a duke. Similarly, those nightclubs which dub
themselves Atlantis or Bacchus rarely provide an experience worthy of mythmaking. Then there are those that strive for intrigue
or subversion, like ‘Niche’ or ‘Fusion’.
You go along yet find yourself neither intrigued nor subverted by
another large building that emits a loud noise and sells overpriced booze. Nightclubs also offer frequent support for the
great cause of national illiteracy with a dyslexic zeal for a pluralizing ‘z’
or ‘x’; Chancerz or Trax being notable, hideous examples. It seems that the golden rule of nightclub nomenclature
is to remove the establishment as far as possible from the reality of its
situation with the most inappropriate of titles. It must be the hoped that the glamorous
connotations of an Icon or a Diva will rub off on places that would be more
accurately named ‘Cirrhosis’, ‘Whorz’ or possibly ‘Stabbinz’.
Once the minefield of duplicitous
naming is negotiated and the least despicable nightspot selected, the awfulness
continues with the challenge of actually getting through the doors. The BoF would love to refute the stereotype
of a gorilla in a suit and overcoat nightly indulging in whichever prejudice
tickles his fancy. Sadly, stereotypes
exist for a reason and the brush of the hairy knuckle is inescapable as Kong
must first approve of your footwear and general appearance before letting you
past. (Why establishments called Panama Browns would care what shoes
their clientele sport remains a mystery)
If
confrontation with Egor and chums is successfully avoided the gates to euphoria
are open. However, it becomes clear that
levels of euphoria are divided by gender.
Men have a great dilemma on entering the nightclub. Women can view the art of dance as liberating
or celebratory, and not necessarily a short cut to copping off. Even if it is carried out around the totem of
a handbag. Men, however, are keenly
aware that dancing is something done by gays, and no man must place himself
open to this accusation. Unless he is
gay, then he can have a whale of a time.
Should the male nightclub goer not be of the homophile persuasion two
methods are employed to circumvent the problem.
There is the fail safe of the glum shuffle, attempting to remain as
inconspicuous as possible. This
effectively deflates the ‘you’re a big gay’ jibe from insecure comrades, but
unfortunately does not inspire adoration in the opposite sex. Method two seems much the more popular, which
may just possibly be influenced by vast consumption of alcohol. This involves being as gay as possible to
illustrate how you are clearly not a homosexual. Lots of exaggerated camp manoeuvres and dance
floor grappling with your similarly non-gay friends spell this out. Novices may forget to accompany such
behaviour with a humongous guffaw after any buttock grasping, crotch grabbing
or fellatio miming, just to underline the point that ‘we’re not gay’. Observing such groups of men can be a moving
experience, as the Englishman’s reticence for tactility is broken down and
fraternal ties can really form with some good old fashioned ass squeezing. Any homoerotic tensions can safely be
exercised outside by beating someone senseless.
Non-gay credentials established, the male nightclubber
can then begin the complex, subtle nuances of modern human mating rituals. Such complexities cannot be contained within
the small scope of one essay. But they
can in this nifty flowchart though!
Having negotiated the above intricacies, our
clubbers are free to indulge in an hour or two of suck face, before popping
down the nearest alleyway to consummate the burgeoning romance.
* * *
On his website, professional security consultant Chris E
McGoey states “nightclubs are designed to be hospitable social meeting
places”. The fact that hospitable social
meeting places require the services of a professional security consultant is
somewhat paradoxical in itself, but surely nightclubs are the least hospitable
and most anti-social of places imaginable.
Putting to one side the abundance of violence and vulgarity, hospitable
social meeting places tend not to obliterate the hearing with 80 decibels of
computerised shite. It’s difficult to
socialize when your ears are bleeding, you’ve shouted yourself hoarse and slur
every third word. Perhaps in the not too
distant future, evolution will ensure that it is those not with the biggest
brains, nor even the biggest cocks that will successfully procreate but those
with the biggest lungs (apart from certain nightspots in the north east of
England where lopping out one's cock and swinging it around in time with the music
is positively encouraged).
Hand in
hand with the hospitable and social nightclub goes the disturbing phenomena of
‘vertical drinking’ where clubs, and their bastard offspring, bars, attempt to
cram as many shot guzzling, wallet happy consumers into as small and loud a
space as possible. With one aim of
course, the maximization of profit.
Vertical drinking is surely as ill suited to conviviality as ‘inverted
drinking’ where socialising folk are bound at the ankles and suspended from the
ceiling as they attempt to converse and sup beer. And packing drunk people together in the
entertainment equivalent of a storage container (or quite possibly an actual
storage container) is always a good idea:
Health officials and police are
calling for more tables and chairs in the pubs of Preston, in Lancashire,
to cut down on so-called "vertical drinking”. They said the trend can lead to fights as
people are jostled and drinks are spilled in crowded establishments.
Oh good, just what a nightclub needs, more fighting. Perhaps encouraging people to enjoy a meal at
a nightclub would help this situation.
No doubt the altruistic evening entertainment’s industry only objection
would be for the declining profits of traditional late night cuisine
proprietors. It would take a heart of stone
to see Kahled’s Kurried Kerbabz put out of business, for as the night draws to
a close, the urge to procure a tasty late night snack from out of a trailer
becomes irresistible. Munching hungrily,
you let the melodic hum of a portable generator fade into the distance, attempting
not to fumble the stray dog offal and relish sandwich as you grapple with
similarly encumbered drunkards in an attempt to stuff yourself into a taxi and
get home without troubling the emergency services.
Raving noise pioneers the KLF describe, in 3am Eternal, the epiphanic moment when,
off one’s tits in a field, ‘The doors of perception are open. Things
happen.’ Transported to the urban hell
of 21st century nightclubbing 2am Despair
is more apposite. The point towards the
end of the evening when the doors of Blazuz are closed and things happen. Fighting, mainly. Having failed to impress with jumping,
shouting or poison ingesting capabilities, and witnessing the objects of your
desires departing into the night, you are expelled into the cold winter air,
sweat and desperation evaporating off your under clothed body like a
last-placed racehorse. The despair and
frustration is worked off with either a bleak walk home or the flailing embarrassment
of post club scuffling. Or, as our
friends at the BBC ably document, a good bit of stabbing, shooting and murder.
And thus is the evening complete. Picking his way through this regurgitated,
post pugilistic, post coital detritus, our nightclubbing novice would no doubt
wonder how a once civilized country such as ours has been reduced to this. Years of socio-economic study and costly
research programmes would be able to tease out the complex nuances of shifting
demographics and societal change to reach tentative but well supported conclusions. The BoF sees things differently and blames
Disco.
Pre-disco, nightclubs and dancehalls didn’t pretend to be
reflections of Hollywood or celebrity and embraced the shabbiness of British life. Tables, chairs, sedate eight piece bands
playing the hits of the day as chaste love birds exchanged furtive glances with
each other before discretely going at it in the nearest Anderson shelter. Then on strutted Saturday Night Fever and every evening dancer was sold the myth
that once through the doors they are the star they’ve always imagined
themselves to be. Striking the pose that
says you are the dance floor god and this is your Zion. It
is perhaps little surprise that clubs and drugs go together so well as the club
is an hallucination in itself. It tricks
the brain into thinking it is inside the head and body of young Tony or
Stephanie as an evening out becomes less about dance and more about
exhibition. Importantly, it is youthful
exhibition. Anything youthful is, of
course, stupid, driven by a primal urge to annoy one’s parents. Staying out late, drinking and entering a
dress like a slag contest (male or female) and indulging in promiscuous sex are
guaranteed to add lines to the worrisome parental visage. Sadly, gaining admittance
to the nightclub has become a new rite of passage as fights, drunk and drugged
experiences are the status symbols of the playground as youth attempt to grow a
personality along their emergent breasts or newly distended testicles. Getting into a nightclub racks up the juvenile
kudos points like little else, marginally outscored by loosing your virginity
on the school playing field having your stomach pumped. (Combine all three in one night and you get a
special badge)
What is most unfortunate about this youthful triumph is
that people of 40 plus are now compelled to act like 18 year olds for an
evening out, creating a society that is enthral to an easily exploitable
juvenile mentality. Middle aged women cram
themselves into flimsy pole dancer chic, with hair bleached to a perfect
straw-like consistency and faces mummified by several layers of wrinkle filling
foundation. Men who, twenty or thirty
years ago, would have been content nurturing pigeons or gluing together elaborate
models of HMS Victory are now trussed into Ben Sherman shirts and expensive jeans
that look like rags, middle aged girth resting uncomfortably on the overpriced
denim designed for the virile hips of much younger men; their bellowed laughter
masking a cry of loneliness and despair as the alcohol leeches out of their
pores like tears.
As the music pounds and the lights blaze, the nightclub
compels people, young or old, to act out of character. It smells, it is too loud, too crowded yet
the people have been sold the message ‘this is it’. A cognitive dissonance
develops as the gap between what you feel and what you are told to feel
widens. Against your will you salivate
over Bikini clad staff while the sense of
cosmic humiliation burns, compounded by the absurd sight of seeing someone semi
naked trying to break up a fight. And
this emotional fissure is only healed by increasing the levels of intoxication
and the resultant brawling, or occasionally whooping falsely into the
stultifying air, a werewolf whose transformation is brought about by a deadly
combination of WKD and Eric Prydz rather than shifting lunar phases.
As you
mash yourself into the ever increasing wall of flesh, short sleeved shirts and
stilettos that form an impenetrable barrier between you and half a pint of
carling, it dawns on you that the Nightclub is nothing more that the brand of
alcohol. It is a myth, it is advertising
and as such promotes inadequacy and inferiority in order to boost sales. The toned, honed and beautiful people of the
nightclub poster and TV advert are in reality the sweat soaked, sallow skinned
and pot bellied beasts we long to escape becoming. And above all else it wants our money. Alcohol makes you ill, fat and unhappy, so the
nightclub experience is created to give it the good looking hard sell. Whether
high class chic or piss stained dross, a nightclub exists because of the
variety of intoxicating substances on offer.
Thriving on self loathing you must leave yourself in the cloakroom and
have your pockets rifled through, imbibe various noxious brews and pretend to
be something you are not. Paying a fine
proportion of your wage in the process. Furthermore, the myth extends into the
day. People use the nightclub experience
as a fresh plate of armour for Monday morning, telling all and sundry how well they
have conformed by lying in the gutter covered in vomit; longing for the next night
to be great you pass the weekend test by how well you have poisoned
yourself. The nightclub myth has created
a generation of people who live for the weekend so they can escape the tedium
of their workaday existence, but the weekend falls inexorably short because it
is there simply to sell alcohol. Dissatisfaction
and despair grow in parallel to sales figures.
* * *
The current incarnation of the nightclub appears to have
grown from the sun soaked hedonism of Ibiza, where young Britains took the
opportunity to embrace several millennia of foreign civilization by drinking,
taking drugs and having sex in public. However,
with as much sarcasm as is possible to convey in print, the BoF can proclaim
that any form of popular music that emerges from out of Europe is a guarantee of quality. If the
reputation of the nightclub was not bad enough, it’s implication in national
decline is truly unforgivable. Why did
the British decide to embrace and treat seriously what always used to unite the
nation - the mockery of Europop? This
combination of dreadful continental sounds and English violence was a match
made in somewhere like Redcar and soon people of all ages were flocking to home
grown equivalents. Not being the most
astute tracker of ‘largin’ weekend manuvaz’, the BoF again welcomes the
unsubstantiated expertise of Wikipedia:
Far and away the most important
element of the house drumbeat is the (usually very strong, synthesized, and
heavily equalized) kick drum pounding on every quarter note of the 4/4 bar,
often having a "dropping" effect on the dance floor.
Yes, we’ve all left a concert proclaiming, “Man, that
drumming…” The sound favoured by the modern nightclub is one that has
successfully exorcised all human emotion and melody to produce something that
only someone operating in binary could truly appreciate. The modern nightclub handed performance over
to the machines. Ecstasy, a wonderful
drug that turns a person in to a human metronome, was clearly developed to make
this bearable to human ears. But just
imaging the alternative; instead of festering in call centres and office jobs, the
musicians of this world could be employed to sing and play in nightclubs, reforging
the bond between revelling people and live performance, deflating the maniacal
urge for mass celebrity. But that would
be creative and cost money, so that’s out.
But then there is the phenomenon of cheese or
retro. Like our gaggle of clearly not gay
chaps fondling each other on the dance floor, a night of Cheese suggests a
typically British reaction to the enjoyment of music and dance. Initial sensations of awkwardness and
discomfort are assuaged by pointing at people and laughing at them. When cheese is involved mockery of the music
itself will suffice. This particularly
effective in establishments which possess a balcony where pointing and laughing
at people from above is a sure fire way of fitting in and avoiding personal
expression. The nightclub thrives on
this low level sadistic circle, as uncomfortable people attempt to make
themselves more comfortable by making people feel uncomfortable.
And because all of this takes place in the wee small
hours, it feels even more uncomfortable.
Like any diurnal animal we become edgy as night falls and quick to anger.
However, there is a remarkable lack of drink
and drug fuelled trouble at theatres or salsa nights. Possibly due to the absence of drink and
drugs. And morons. Nyeri District Commissioner Michael Mwangi is
in no doubt about the true nature of the nightclub:
Kenya's authorities have imposed a
curfew in the central town of Nyeri to curb widespread crime in the area. Nyeri District Commissioner Michael
Mwangi says the town has seen a rise in muggings and carjackings, which he
blames on an increase in alcohol consumption and the growth of nightclubs.
And if you can’t believe the Kenyan authorities, who can
you believe? Before heading out for your
next weekly hit of clubbing just think which of the two definitions of the word
is most appropriate for your evening’s entertainments; a gathering of like
minded souls for discussion and banter, or a large stick that stoves in skulls?
Like any rapacious unregulated capitalist machine the
nightclub eats up the competition, leaving no choice of an evening other than
to stay in or feed its coffers. It’s
monopoly on evening activities renders the question “what’s the nightlife
like?” absurd. “Well, there's small
places where people stand and drink or large places where more people stand and
drink.” It is an unpleasant beast that
poses as a release from drudgery whilst herding you into squalid buildings,
taking your money as you pay for the privilege of poisoning yourself and
loosing your hearing.
It's not about dancing, it's not about a communal joy, it's about paying
to drink, fight and cop off. Which might
just be your cup of tea. Personally I'll
leave that to the barbarians and get back to my pringles, couch and
suspiciously stained trousers. People of
Britain– proclaim with the BoF; I have no need:
I have my wit, my love, my shelter – nightclub, be gone! Unless there’s a good indie night on, of
course. Then I’m there…
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