From: barticle@hotmail.comDELETETHISBIT (Bart)
Newsgroups: uk.music.rave
Subject: multi-munt memories [part 1, trancentral et al.]
Date: 30 Sep 1997 10:18:51 GMT
Organization: Accelerator Sound System


right, i guess i oughta make a start on this now (monday afternoon). goodness 
knows how long it'll take to write though, it could be another big 'un.

my news-server seems to have overlooked all of the weekend's posts, but i 
happened to catch browns' review while i was at smiley pete's on saturday. 
methinx that posting could be the start of a bit of friendly competition - 
like everyone will start writing reviews as soon as they get back from 
clubbing in attempt to out-wibble each other. :) heck, folks may even start 
taking a laptop, modem and mobile phone with them to post mid-munt!

this probably won't be as lucid, evocative, or... well.. brief as brownie's 
report but here goes:

the memories begin en route to dalston, walking past one of the local taverns. 
a sign in the window advertised something that made me _really_ glad that i 
was going out raving. it offered something that was quite the antithesis of 
the 'new wave of acid techno' that i was looking fwd to. the note boasted "a 
new selection of karaoke discs". *cringe* still, at least it brought a smile 
to me face. :) i guess some folk do actually enjoy that kinda thing.

so then i arrived at roseberys for trancentral where the Munt proper 
commenced. there were a few dozen people waiting outside and from the look of 
them they were mostly yer happy hardcore crew (see desc later). the way i 
figured it was that trancentral was downstairs and the "private party" was 
upstairs so this lot must have come for the Dream FM thingy that marcus 
mentioned, the one that had been listed in Time Out, and it must have been 
cancelled due to an overbooking cock-up. hence they were all sitting around 
sulking or summat.

a quick exchange with the bouncers cleared matters up though. it transpired 
that the upstairs thing _was_ the dream event. soon after that the doors to 
the (up)stairs opened and the masses formed an orderly queue. that left about, 
literally, four of us waiting for trancentral! 

an interesting thing happened to me while i was waiting.

one of the bouncers approached me and asked, "do you like sweeties?"!

now, years of public information films during my formative years taught me to 
exercise caution when strange men offer sweeties or invite you to view their 
puppies etc. so i didn't respond for a second or two. was he gonna try to sell 
me stuff or search me or what? 

it all turned out to be a lot less illicit though. he gave me a couple of 
tubes of sweets, real sweets. someone had given them to him or something and 
he didn't want them so he gave them to me. one of them was a pack of 
Refreshers! sorted. :)

after a little while the nice lady bouncer came over to me and asked if there 
was some special reason why we were still sat outside. "er, cos you haven't 
told us we can go in yet?" duh! so i finally got in some time before 11 i 
think, but they took a while to set up.

the big room downstairs looks pretty empty. well, the place had just opened, 
but it stayed looking pretty sparse for quite a while. even after midnight 
there were only a few dozen peeps there (i figured maybe cos the relocation 
wasn't too well publicised). the decor was fairly good though - a fair few 
hangings, some fluoro samsara-esque stalls, face-painters and a scaffold rig 
at the far end with some decent twirly lights on. not long after i sat down i 
was joined by browns plus co-munter which was groovy.

right from the start and throughout the night the music was pretty hard, 
fastish, pounding techno. fairly active, not too flat on the most part. much 
of it with mad acid lines. the crowd was pretty upfor it too, without going 
mental.

as browns said, some bloke (this was mark - the mark you know, james) told us 
that they were letting ppl into the party upstairs for only a quid! we showed 
great restraint, stayed downstairs for a coupla hours or so, but in the end we 
couldn't help ourselves. the music downstairs had gotten a little repetitive 
maybe (repetitive beats, don'tcha know?) and they'd suffered a few brief power 
cut-outs (methinx that roseberry's power supply couldn't keep up with the 
immersion public address apparatus). so we ventured outside, back in the other 
door, parted with a single munting token each and headed upstairs.

we were met by some decent drum & bass and got back to the serious business of 
getting down to the tunes. there was a fair bit of space up there, i'd say 
that the dancefloor was 2/3 full, and there was a bit of a mixed crowd. i 
think the ppl there reflected the various musical styles that were being 
played up there. there were a few serious happy hardcorers - gloves, hats 
glowy tops etc - but there were also quite a few ppl dressed in shirts and 
that - possibly a more moody D&B crowd. it wasn't particularly plurry but the 
tunes were good.

the jungle set gave way to an old skool rave set. cheezy as fuck and a whole 
lotta fun. many cheezy grins were exchanged betwixt meself and the brown one. 
:) i found that i recognised about half of the tunes played (i won't name any 
here lest i get accused of being spotty again!) but i've only got _one_ old 
skool mix-cd... the way i see it is that the old skool crew really like their 
anthems and love hearing the same stuff every night (well, i'm the same way 
with trance). hence the deejays cater to their crowd's tastes. oh there were 
MC's upstairs all the time too. 

i learnt a fair few things from the MCs. firstly one of them cleared up 
something that has been puzzling folk for many a month. he refered to the 
venue as the Labyrinth so it was clear that roseberrys and the labyrinth are, 
in fact, the same place, rather than just being very very close to each other.

secondly we experienced a couple of peculiar things that seem to be quite 
intrinsic to the D&B/HH scene. quite often the mc demanded "noise" (as in 
"make some..."), that seemed to happen about twice every song. then there was 
the concept of the "rewind" (as in "who wants a...?") - that happens every few 
tunes when an exceptionally popular one is played. if the "rewind" request 
receives enough "noise" then the deejays stops the record, backspining a bit, 
and plays the song again from the start. a couple of novel phenomena but you 
sorta get used to them. just as well, really. this was all serving as a bit of 
an insight into the Labyrinthine world to which i was due to return the 
following night.

oh yeah, thirdly one of the mc's announced that dream fm was going to be 
returning to the airwaves sometime soon, but under a new alias. i think it was 
gonna be called 'reality fm' (as in "the dream becomes reality", you see?).

after the old skool set came true happy hardcore. *beam* much faster, bouncier 
stuff. it was great. :) but i reluctantly dragged myself away after a few 
tunes thinking that there'd be plenty of time for that kinda thing on saturday 
night. browns and i headed back down to trancentral. at the door ppl were 
_still_ arriving - this was like, i dunno, 3-going-on-4 a.m. by now and the 
dancefloor was pretty full. 

so we finished off the night down there with more aving it acid techno, 
although still quite hard and dark i think. not really much in the way of big 
SUF or routemaster etc choons. and things came to a close some time after 5am. 
overall opinion of the night: the venture upstairs was for me the highlight of 
the night and much fun. it certainly gave the night a whole lot of variety too 
(and for only 6 squid in total!). downstairs was pretty good, i can get off 
dancing to hard technoey stuff but it's not as good as bouncey uplifting 
trance. main criticism of the downstairs is that the (unisex) toilets were a 
bit dodgy - only one sink and three cubicles with dodgy doors. i think 
roseberry's is a lot nicer when you have the whole place to explore and easy 
access to the toilets upstairs. the garden was open though, although i didnae 
go out there. [oh - rereading - i'm not implying that the garden is a toilet 
substitute!]

afterwards we headed swiftly and with style southbound in the brownsmobile to 
liaise with fellow munters at the samsara afterparty. notably the 
canermeister, mike boy and smiley pete. i think i caught a brief glimpse of 
green ponytail too. no sign of that ever-elusive scot though! (have you traded 
your virginal look for a set of urban camo or summat, scottos? :)

i spent the first half of the aftermathy upstairs and in the peace gardens 
over the road. i guess it's worth mentioning the new arrangement for entry at 
the fridge bar now. for a start it costs three quid, rather than two, but 
that's fairy nuff for a further 5 hours munting. also they now stamp your hand 
to show that you've payed. however, the important bit is that they now have a 
capacity restiction. once a certain number of ppl have gone in no others are 
allowed entry. not until someone leaves anyways, one in one out. even if you 
have your hand stamped! this seems a little harsh and it can leave you waiting 
outside the bar for a while, even if you've already paid to get in. however, i 
do actually think that it's a good idea cos the past two weeks when they've 
been operating this system it _has_ been a lot less crowded downstairs.

i went back into the bar at around 8am (and by that time there wasn't a queue 
anymore anyways) in order to catch all of janx's set (08:30 - 11:00). i won't 
go into too much detail here cos i know that rob was really looking fwd to it 
but had to leave early and missed it. in short then, it was ace. i guess it 
was like hard/acid trance/techno, lotsa top tunes. anyways, it was really 
rather pleasant :) and there was actually room to flail and bounce about a bit 
for a change.

hmmm. i think i'll pause here in case i start crashing people's newsreaders. 
i'll return with the second and final instalmunt later on. that's the bit 
that was the truly excellent and revelatory bit. (yes, sorry marcus, you'll 
have to wait even longer to hear about the hardcore happiness experience! :)

at least this stops me choonspotting anyways.

pluriness,
          barticle
-- 
Bart, Ipswich, UK. barticle@hotmail.com or barticle@cyberspace.org
"...merely a series of sensory impulses which you now realise have
no real definite connection with outside reality."  Dark Star 1973