Baby Wants to Ride. Music is the Key. Move Your Body. Pump Up the Volume. Energy Flash. Red Alert. I Feel Love. For What You Dream Of. Higher State of Consciousness.
The seminal songs from my life as a clubber tell a story of febrile expectancy, self-expression, euphoria, community and transcendence. A story of bouncing from work to pub to club, and of venues worth queuing to get into. Of late nights and after-parties and gigantic greasy brunches intended to slow down my brain and the corybantic jiggling of my Sunday morning feet.
But opportunities to feel the love have been dwindling for 15 years, especially in London. Crime did for some venues, Crossrail for others. Property developers and greedy councils have ensured that no large space can become anything except luxury flats. Austerity, high rents and wage stagnation have cut into clubbers’ budgets, and dating apps have chipped away at the desire for spontaneous mingling.
Meanwhile ravers born any time before 1990 have been seduced by other causes, above all the lurid new pornography of food. A few, it’s true, have embraced the techno-paganism of Burning Man, but most prefer to get their kicks by botching Ottolenghi recipes. I’m no exception, spending too many of my weekends with a loose confederacy of Centrist Dads who used to love getting lit up like Christmas trees yet now want to lounge in their gardens eating Tunworth and honking pinot noir.
The trouble is, cheese tastes good, and we live in a postlapsarian world where a credible dance music mag can declare that the world’s best DJ is David Guetta. Go to any club that doesn’t cater for a tiny musical niche and you risk a painful encounter with stadium-size slabs of boilerplate EDM. A‘sexy in heels’. And for what? The chance to share a table crammed with semi-professional footballers – glugging champagne at a minimum of £300 a bottle, with occasional interruptions from drama grads dressed as goblins.
The current club landscape’s maxed-out bombast is an insult to dance music’s potent and politically significant past. At the unlicensed parties of the 1980s, the mood was one of idealism and irreverence. They were an alternative to the barrenness of the period’s ubiquitous synthpop and an attempt to recreate on a grand scale the escapist wonderland of Ibiza. But they were also reactions to Thatcherism, an antidote to her hatchet-faced authoritarianism.
In the 90s, after the underground rave scene collapsed, a new licensed club culture emerged and prospered. It wasn’t long before the major players became too glitzy and commercial. But it was still easy to find smaller venues with an eclectic music policy and an inclusive vibe – unpretentious spots where you could chew basslines from sundown till breakfast.
Now it’s a challenge to nose out a place that stays open past 4 am. If you do, it’s in some crepuscular neighbourhood barely served by public transport. This is especially true in London, where clubs once played a crucial role in revitalising clapped-out neighbourhoods such as Hoxton and Dalston, but are now the victims of the very regeneration they launched. What we’re left with is ill-boding WhatsApps: ‘Get off the tube at Canning Town and it’s a twenty-minute walk’
