So, I popped out last night for a drink and a dance. A friend of mine very obligingly offered to put me up, and after some lubrication at his place off we went. A couple of pre-club pints were had at a bar next to the Soul Tree, and in we went.
It was a mistake to enter the club around the blind side because had we walked around to it the only other way, we wouldn't have spent about half an hour in the main room wondering what the hell was going on. I didn't realise that the party was on the ground floor, the main dance floor being on the first. Arriving just before midnight I thought that maybe the dreadful over-produced, in-your-face pap that was filling the club was just a concession to passing trade and yoof, and that once we passed the witching hour the real music would suddenly materialise. This is an indication of how pissed I was. It was only when checking on my phone that I realised my mistake, so we descended to the basement, which was in fact the ground floor.
At least fifty confirmed guests on Facebook wasn't even half that when we arrived, and the number remained constant. The party had an air of taking place in a large front room. The music was fine but there was no atmosphere. This shouldn't in any way negatively reflect on Lee, the Peek-Aa-Boo resident, whose night it was. He had Patrizio Cavaliere, who was the subject of the first interview on 'Machines Are Funky' a while back when he was Patrick, and Miles Sagnia. Now it's not everyday that you get an artist signed to Aesthetic Audio playing in Cambridge, and there are enough people in the town who like his style but did the Cambridge deep house fraternity represent?
Unfortunately not. I can't say I'm really surprised either. Lee did say he hadn't been able to promote it very much and if there's one thing that's needed in a cliquey city like Cambridge, it's promotion. Having said that, if all the people who said they were definitely turning up on Facebook, and just a relative few of those who said they might, actually did, then the night would have been a roaring success. Maybe these invites only really work when there's an implicit proposal to trash the venue.
In any case, I reacquainted myself with Patrick, who gave me some news on the progress of his label, Also Ran Music, and met Miles, who was an extremely nice guy. We chatted for a while, he very nicely bought me a drink, and I arranged to get in touch with him in the near future to do an interview for this here blog. Look out for that hopefully within the next few weeks.
So the desired crowd didn't turn up, and as said before, I'd have been surprised. The Facebook turnout was never going to be and even with promotion it's always a tall order to fill a club in Cambridge city centre on a Saturday night with anyone who likes anything but, as The Soul Tree say themselves, "Big Room Party Tunes." I'm sure those playing at The Fez would disagree, and maybe what is played there couldn't possibly match what we had to put up with for the first thirty minutes, but it's still a long way from what we came to hear.
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