Clubbing Guide...

[JimbobJoylove]

Name the clubs you visit and rate them:

I won't rate the music, as different tastes etc...

The End, Holborn, London - Breakbeat/Electro House - 4/5

Has a great dancefloor, its like two long caverns, with the DJ booth smack bang in the middle - fantastic. No lights/lasers, but at the ned of each 'cavern' there is literally a wall of speakers that you can stand directly infornt of - perfect for those a.m. rushes... Second room also had music, a bit more funkier and vocal, but was somewhere to sit down and chat - it was a decent little room. Good crowd as well, with bar pirces very very cheap for a london club: £2.50 for a bottle of Kronenberg

Turnmills, Farringdon, London - Electro House/Trance - 4/5

So many little rooms with at least 3 or 4 djs at the same time - great variety. The crowd mood is excellent, everyone up for a party, with a great chill-out area/room that screens old cartoons on the back wall, free massages, and a little bar. Drinks are expensive: £7 for a vodka/coke and a seperate coke. The choice of music/mood is brilliant, the main dance floor has great lights/lasers but is far too small. That's the only thing that let's the place down...

Fabric, Farringdon, London - Breaks/D'n'B - 3.5/5

By far the best soundsystem and probably the best two dancefloors of the clubs I've visited with great lasers - beware, can get packed though. The whole place is dark though - no chill out room at all - but has a few little places to sit down. The sofa area inbetween the two dancefloors is very comfortable but fills up quickly, drinks are fairly expensive as well: £4 for a bottle of Magners

Edited March 17, 2007 by JimbobJoylove

[Lowerdeck]

There's this place I went to once, I think it's called Shampoo. Anyway, it's on 7th St. N in Philadelphia. It's built in some abandoned warehouse. Bottom floor plays reggae shit. Top floor is hip hop, R&B dance, and reggaeton. Fairly good sized floor upstairs. Drink specials I don't know, since I was 20 when I was there. Lot of thugs... loads of em. After all, it is Philly. 3/5

I'd give places closer to home, but um... anyone really care about pissant city western Connecticut? Or live anywhere near here?

Edited March 17, 2007 by Lowerdeck

[9 to 5]

Jillys Rockworld, Manchester - Fucking fantastic place. Looks a shithole and run down inside, but then that adds to the feel of the place and besides what rock fans want a nice, bright clean club to look at? $ rooms, ranging from indie stuff, hard rock and punk. The people there are both weird and wonderful, I will never forget the guy who is a real clone of Spike of Buffy fame, I swear he is. Drinks are good too, bottles of beer tend to be £1.25 or so and shots are £2.50 for a double I do believe. Add in pool tables (beer soaked to fuck which makes for interesting games) and old school arcade machines to the deal too. All in all, I wish I could live there.

Plus, I have a bunch of free tickets for a visit soon which includes free booze I am told.

5/5

Edited March 17, 2007 by 9 to 5

[Guest John of Nebraska]

The best kind of clubbing involves baby seals.

[JimbobJoylove]

Jillys Rockworld, Manchester - Fucking fantastic place. Looks a shithole and run down inside, but then that adds to the feel of the place and besides what rock fans want a nice, bright clean club to look at? $ rooms, ranging from indie stuff, hard rock and punk. The people there are both weird and wonderful, I will never forget the guy who is a real clone of Spike of Buffy fame, I swear he is. Drinks are good too, bottles of beer tend to be £1.25 or so and shots are £2.50 for a double I do believe. Add in pool tables (beer soaked to fuck which makes for interesting games) and old school arcade machines to the deal too. All in all, I wish I could live there.

Plus, I have a bunch of free tickets for a visit soon which includes free booze I am told.

5/5

[9 to 5]

5th avenue was like a softer Jillys and more trendy, but you could get fosters bottles for 80p last time I went. In colnclusion, yes you do. >_>

[Skummy]

I have nothing but love for Jillys, it really is one of the better clubs out there, I make a point of visiting whenever I can (which isn't often at all). Fucking brilliant place.

As for my locals, they pale in comparison, but here we go...

Live Lounge - Used to be the best club in Jersey, bar none, now it's still up there, but slipping faster and faster. It used to be the case that everyone there knew each other, it had a brilliant atmosphere, and it was THE "alternative" venue, you'd get a black metal band playing one week, followed by a few psychobilly bands the next, to an acoustic night the next day, and it was just brilliant. No one took it seriously, it was just a great party-time venue. Sadly, though, most of the old regulars have moved away from Jersey in the last couple of years, leaving a disparate group behind, so the club had to start catering to wider audiences, meaning that we get shite DJs playing shite music every week, and an increasing amount of Arctic Monkeys soundalike bands. And even if they don't, the sound guy is so dire that he tends to make any band sound like Jet anyway. He just levels for a standard four-piece band, regardless of what's actually going on. My band's got accordion and violin, but you can't hear them at all once we're on stage there, he pretty much ignores it. All that aside, though, it's still one of the better places to go just for a great time, and not to get hassled for dressing differently or any of that shite that you might get elsewhere...and even if a lot of the music is getting worse, it's still better than the chart dance repetition you'll get everywhere else.

Chambers - This is my mid-week nightclub, as Live Lounge isn't open. It's a bit of a shithole, another that got stung by rebranding and bringing in a new audience, so it's not as much of a dive as it used to be. It's got fantastic decor, though, it's been a hotel and some kind of legal chambers in the past, and Karl Marx actually stayed there when he visited Jersey, which is an interesting fact. It looks nice, the music isn't too invasive, and they get semi-decent live bands on, although usually covers acts. And it's free to get in, and relatively cheap drinks, so it's a good go-to venue when you've got nowt else to do.

The Cosmopolitan - Jersey's only gay bar. Ha. I think the best description I ever heard of it was as "a parody of a gay bar". It's really ridiculously tackily decorated, with pink animal print carpeting, mock Ancient Greek pillars on the ground floor, just full-on campness, with a drag floor show at the start of the night. Bizarrely, you aren't allowed to kiss anyone inside the club, regardless of gender, so as not to "cause offence". Gets a bit much sometimes, but it's a good laugh for the occasional night out.

I'm working with a couple of friends of mine on a new nightclub that'll be starting up in a few weeks, thanks to a friend of mine who did electronics work for an existing club, and came to a deal with the owners that his payment would be to use the two upper floors of that club, which are barely used, to create his own venue. It'll be called "Sir Henry's", after an old Irish club, and basically we're going to play what the other places don't, we're having EMB/Industrial nights, a bit of Rockabilly, a lot of live music, even some live drama or comedy stuff if possible. It's pretty ambitious, but if it works, it should be tremendous.

[IAceI]

Damn I need to get to Manchester or Liverpool.

[9 to 5]

I have nothing but love for Jillys, it really is one of the better clubs out there, I make a point of visiting whenever I can (which isn't often at all). Fucking brilliant place.

Free ticket for the 6th of Apri I have going spare.

[Skummy]

Entirely hijacking the thread, does anyone know of any decent "alternative" clubs in Edinburgh?

[IAceI]

Working or helping run a club would be awesome, you have to play some totally weird music like Of Montreal or Modest Mouse though, that'll get some crazy dancing going.

I'd love to do something like that, especially when it came to selected the music

[Skummy]

Yeah, I'm going to be one of the regular DJs, and I'm really looking forward to playing, because there's so much weird music out there that you'd NEVER hear in a club, but which is really easy to dance to. I'm basically going to play whatever I'm listening to at the time, with the only deciding factor being whether or not I reckon you could dance to it at all. I'm really pushing the other guys involved to try and promote it just as being different, and promote nights by theme rather than by what music we'll be playing, because if we fill the posters with "Industrial, EBM, post-punk, electro, psychobilly, goth" yadda yadda, barely anyone will turn up, but if we just promote it as generically alternative, people will, and they'll enjoy themselves.

But, yeah, headfuck DJing is the order of the day. I'm going to end every night with something like SunnO))), it'll get people out of the doors pretty quickly, I'm sure >_>

Oh, and I intend to play "You Suffer" by Napalm Death four or five times a night.

[IAceI]

Of course, you gotta create a friendly theme as well - but from what I know it's generally pretty cool in most clubs, but there aren't many here in Carlisle, and the one I go to with friends is dance music, which I can easily get into it and dance around to, but last two times I've been there's been some sort of fight so meh. Of course if you go up stairs to Legends they play Trivium and it's pretty quiet and nice and cool so I generally go there if i get too hot from all the dancing and the people too close to me.

But you need to keep a good mix of known music there as well, if you kinda mention bands X and Y will be played, and then play similar music it'll expose that. Live shows are awesome too. Fuck, if it goes through and I ever come to Jersey (...yeah) i'm coming

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Atomic Jam

Hard techno + intelligent dance music + electronica =

No dress code.

Loses a mark for generally extortionate drinks.

4/5

[IAceI]

Oh yeah skummy, at your club you have to ban fat people. Impossible to move around them.

[Scott McFly]

Entirely hijacking the thread, does anyone know of any decent "alternative" clubs in Edinburgh?

[gunnar hendershow]

There's this place I went to once, I think it's called Shampoo. Anyway, it's on 7th St. N in Philadelphia. It's built in some abandoned warehouse. Bottom floor plays reggae shit. Top floor is hip hop, R&B dance, and reggaeton. Fairly good sized floor upstairs. Drink specials I don't know, since I was 20 when I was there. Lot of thugs... loads of em. After all, it is Philly. 3/5

That's Shampoo. A couple of my friends frequent that place a lot.

Sonar

Baltimore, MD

I only go here to see Drum & Bass and Hip Hop, which they play a ton of. Every Wednesday night is a D&B show in fact. When I'm in town I'm always here. It's pretty cool temperature-wise and the sound system is bumping. A good number of rooms as well, and it's never too crowded except in the main room.