A birthday for any big club is always going to be a special occasion, whether it be your 1st, 10th or 33rd like it was for The Warehouse this past weekend. The club has a special history with the likes of Oasis, Stone Roses and even the worlds biggest club act all performing their hits at the illustrious venue. In a time when the Leeds scene can somewhat look a little saturated or the line ups can seem a little stale, The Warehouse always seem to pull something out of the bag.
This time they brought in one of the biggest players the club circuit has ever seen, in that of Frankie Knuckles. The legendary house producer has nigh on 40 years experience in the industry working with the great Larry Levan back in the Chicago days. The hall of fame star was back in Leeds and this was going to be a show not to be missed.
As I arrived around midnight, the club was already flocking with a very mixed but some what energetic and knowledges audience. The very deep and groovy sounds of Crazy P were playing through the powers that be of the famous Warehouse Funktion ones. The club had actually stopped letting the punters without tickets in so you could tell this was a crowd very much up for the full resume on Saturday. The Leeds five piece, actually minus 4 was a great site with serious motion and warm up for the main event that was about to arrive on the decks. The had a very major disco punch as you would expect if you have listened to their live sets, with a tinges of the more driving house thrown in.
It was a set that would have made great listening on a podcast and a perfect warm up for the main hitter Frankie.
With 2am upon us in no time, Frankie came one to astounding applause.
Like previously mentioned, the club had an audience full of fresh faces and some of that of the clubs older generation, with respect, this made for a perfect rave. with that in mind, Frankie wasted no time in hitting the faster pace BPM than that of Crazy P. Arms were raised at the very heavy hitting base line that flashed onto the clubs main room. With the smoke machine also taking a huge pounding this was certainly an event that will take some beating with future legends coming to the venue in the near future, a certain bench mark was laid out even within the first twenty minutes of him taking to the decks.
His famous tracks in that of ‘Tears’ and ‘The Whistle Song’ concurred the ever so faithful soiree, fans even standing on the stairwell to get a glimpse of the site of Mr Knuckles presence and the booth was immensely crowded with severe flashing of cameras, in what we would expect at the Grammys, all jokes aside, it was a pleasure in my opinion to be invited and especially to hear Tears with my very own ears with an audience that really made their part of this event even more memorable.
Events in Leeds can be easily lost in our memories, especially in the Winter and Spring when we can easily have 5 or 6 major parties on every weekend. This I truly believe will stand the test of time. The management should take great pleasure and certainly getting a standing applause for the bookings here, Crazy P and Frankie Knuckles was a great partnership and married perfectly with each other for the 4 hours i was in the club. If there was any slight disappointment, it was probably that it was slightly over crowded, they were maybe a touch under staffed on the bar and I didn’t get chance to see the back to back set of local artists Foz and Simon Morell, who I heard were on fire in the intimate surroundings of room 2. Please take note however that this was arguably the best event of 2012 so far, and be aware that they have already brought in their second major Warehouse events booking in that of Grandmaster Flash, so this will be another night to jot into the diary for sure.
words Rob Chadwick
images Fiora Lopez
