Never mind the bollocks: Why bigger often doesn’t work in UK clubs

If anyone thought the UK’s musical summer couldn’t get any bigger than last year then they were right. 2012’s supposed dry season is nearly done, and behind it lies a string of event carcasses, not to mention a stinking pile of spurious statements and ideas now proved impossible.

With festival tickets often well over £100, before transport, accommodation and ‘refreshments’ have been taken into account, it goes without saying nobody likes a cancellation. Least of all when, mid-recession, most people are lucky to afford more than one weekender. Suffice to say then, there’s a lot riding on them happening, for everyone involved.

But by May this year 12 sizeable outdoor bashes had already decided not to go ahead as planned, with the list now considerably larger. Within this many won’t be missed, yet there were also plenty of major mishaps.

The Big Chill led the trend, opting out way back in January, with Knebworth and Sonisphere following suit as the months rolled by. The Jubilee, London 2012, and some pretty intolerable weather all caused huge issues. However, there’s a bigger hitch here, which shows a complete lack of realism on the part of some promoters; if there are hundreds of events all looking pretty similar, someone, somewhere, is going to have to call time.

Perhaps next year they will learn, and we’ll have a more manageable number vying for our hard earned money. But that’s not what’s important right now. Because the impact of this poor judgement and unfounded self-belief goes well beyond delusions of competing in a saturated market, and is not exclusive to festivals alone, though it was best exemplified in July when BLOC closed early after serious problems with almost everything, despite shifting almost all tickets. The promoters went bust and, within six weeks of opening, so too did the venue, London Pleasure Gardens. None of which is good news.

Of course there are more widespread repercussions from the closure of the much-hyped LPG. Staff are, apparently, still waiting for wages that may never turn up, many of whom were taken on from the local area, Newham, under an agreement between the site and local council. Needless to say, they won’t be receiving the professional training that should have been part of their three-year contracts, according to many reports. The severity of that situation trumps a ruined party and the loss of a once great weekender.

But Plain & Simple being a music site it’s vital to keep things focused. And, from this perspective, the entire scenario surrounding the ill-fated gathering got us asking a whole range of questions. Well, actually just one very important one; how many times in the last year have we attended a major event that truly, honestly, and respectfully delivered what it originally proposed?

This problem certainly isn’t an epidemic. There’s still fun to be had and tickets worth buying, even for larger parties. Yet more and more organisations seem concerned with web design and imagery above all other aspects. Staggered line up announcements for what’s really just a club night bring things closer to traditional marketing machines, listings are filled with hyperbole about experimental spaces, and suddenly everyone needs a staggering light show.

We’ve even seen free t-shirts advertised if you buy in advance. It’s no wonder club nights and labels now refer to themselves as brands that need to be built. Somewhere along the line then something changed, and we’re no longer talking about music. Maybe it was the digital onslaught, removing the carpet from underneath this still young industry. Certainly the decline of large-scale weekly British clubs is central to the situation.

If most dance events over 1,000 people are now only held once in a while, there’s far less chance customers will have the chance to return, because those responsible for the occasion might not be coming back. But great spaces take time to develop and perfect, meaning this often simply isn’t possible. Not that anyone’s accusing the powers that be of purposefully forsaking our comfort, or suggesting people stop trying to promote parties in interesting locations. They just need to think about what’s actually feasible.

Frequently though it’s a case of being blinded by the potential of where things can go. Bigger, better, faster than ever before, it’s weird they don’t seem to realise that this might not necessarily be what we’re looking for. And this appetite for size seems insatiable, which is ironic, because the country lacks reliable, regular nights for one major reason. Quite simply, there just isn’t the market there anymore.

After the millennium many broadsheets mused over a death of dance music. This will probably, and hopefully never happen- once something is conceived, artistically, it’s pretty difficult to remove it altogether. But still, thinking of the scene 15 years ago gives a very different picture- clearly there has been a ‘hardcore decline’.

Countless venues across the country held Friday and Saturday weeklies, and regularly sold out. Save for a couple of instances, this isn’t the case any more, with some of the UK’s less prominent towns now completely void of credible activity. The beats business may be wealthier than ever before- take a look at our story about the most valuable artists on the scene. Production, arguably, has never been better. But the people willing to venture outside on a cold October Friday to hear tunes in a dirty dive are less common.

The result means more spectacle, more shock and awe, more reasons to attend besides the soundtrack. Disappointingly though, it also seems to often mean not getting what we paid for- BLOC being a prime example, but only because it’s the most extreme. After the crew’s previous ventures we certainly couldn’t accuse them of anything other than one huge mistake, but still the disaster is this entire argument encapsulated.

It will be incredible, the location is so special, we’ve got more names on the lineup than you can remember and enormous screens for high tech visuals. What could possibly go wrong, other than woeful oversights on volume limitations, seating, set times, and layout? Priorities appear to be altered, and the result means frequent mutterings about unsuitable spaces, poor programming, and inaudible sound that are far from illogical intoxicated ramblings, or few and far between.

Nobody wants to see a load of DJs play 60 minutes each, few enjoy standing for six hours because there’s nowhere to rest their legs, and we all want to hear it, whilst anyone who prefers spending half a headline set making their way from the toilet to the bar, and back to wherever they left their friends is clearly joking. In the wake of a problematic season for music of all kinds perhaps its time someone started questioning why overall, people are buying less tickets to more events, and what could be done to reverse the trend. Which isn’t saying don’t experiment, just to reiterate the importance of delivering on promises.


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