The Observer, Sunday 12 October 2008
A good nightclub needs its freaks. And this history of clubland eccentrics suggests they're back in droves, says Paul MardlesThere are those for whom nightclubs symbolise nothing more than a drug-fuelled alternative to the last bus home and the chance to canoodle with a goggle-eyed stranger. Phil Jackson, one of the contributors to Club Kids, a history of clubbing and its oddball revellers, from Steve Strange to George Melly, isn't one of them. 'A perfect party represents humanity at its best,' he writes, 'when every single person in the room assumes the role of host and strives to make everyone else welcome. It is at times like these that doubts about the human race can be temporarily put on hold.'
Club Kids, clearly, takes frivolity very, very seriously indeed, whether championing London's first nightclub, the Cave of the Golden Calf, or profiling DJ Matthew !Wowow!, one of the scenesters who give the book its title and whose 'simple dogma is a loving and inspirational approach to a future of creativity, collaboration and simplistic ways of being'.
Still, as heavy-handed as the text sometimes is, the photos of !Wowow! and his flamboyant peers (Molaroid, The-O, K-Tron, Walt Paper) underline clubland's new-found energy and zeal. Few, if any, were around five years ago when I edited dance music monthly Jockey Slut and clubland, starved of hedonistic, photogenic freaks, was deemed less thrilling and subversive than rock.
Little wonder then that, the new breed aside, Club Kids is weighed towards the Seventies and Eighties and some of the lesser-known characters and clubs. These include proto-goth hangout the Batcave and Marc Benecke, a 19-year-old New Yorker, whose job it was to guard the door at Studio 54 and prevent the 'little people' getting in. So dedicated was Benecke to this task that one man, told he had failed to make the grade, crawled through the club's air vent and, sadly, suffocated. For club kids, you suspect, there are few better ways to go.
Little wonder then that, the new breed aside, Club Kids is weighed towards the Seventies and Eighties and some of the lesser-known characters and clubs. These include proto-goth hangout the Batcave and Marc Benecke, a 19-year-old New Yorker, whose job it was to guard the door at Studio 54 and prevent the 'little people' getting in. So dedicated was Benecke to this task that one man, told he had failed to make the grade, crawled through the club's air vent and, sadly, suffocated. For club kids, you suspect, there are few better ways to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment