Some london nitelife shots this week from my b’n’w MYLDNites series, all taken in a variety of clubs around the city. Different music, different crowds, different vibes wherever you go. Musical tribes tend to segregate into their own worlds and stick fiercely to their chosen genres and fellow folk who are all into the same tunes and vibe. We congregate with our own and feel that we are doing it as it should be and other versions of the same thing don’t quite do it as well. And yet, everyone thinks that so we can’t all be right…
I like to move between worlds and see how everyone is doing it, not just one corner. The more scenes you see the more you realise they are much more similar than they would believe. What they all have in common are the 3 ds: drinking, dancing & drugs, the holy trinity of nitelife which exist in some combination in every place you go to. We tend to want to hang out in crowds who like the same tunes because that makes us feel we are not only right to like this version of music but that we belong. When you cannot connect with the sounds you are surrounded by, you feel like an outsider and that immediately alienates you from those around you.
Life is tribal in almost every way and nothing more than music. I have just got back from Glastonbury and this festival which has every single strain of music represented shows this better than anything. Strangely the experience for everyone is largely the same but we tend to fixate on the differences even though the similarities outweigh them. I might delve into this more next week when I post up shots from Glasto as it is a great example of how what should unite us still managed to divide us.
Every shot this week was taken on a night out last week. As the Cameo track Word Up goes, “Wave your hands in the air, like you don’t care”.  Larry Blackman was singing this in the 80s and this declaration suited those times and in some ways that is exactly what has been happening ever since but things feel a little bit different now. I do care and I am concerned but I’m still waving my hands in the air. In all honesty being out and having fun these days seems somewhat at odds with what is currently going on, both in this country right now and globally for what the future holds for us. There really doesn’t feel like there is anything much to celebrate but still we carry on, pretending as if there was. We ‘party on’ to escape the horror because it feels there is nothing else to be done.  But it is starting to feel like a very surreal and conflicting experience, the euphroria of a night out squarely at odds with the current anxiety of the day to day.
The ‘real world’ never made a lot of sense to me but squeezing as much fun as you could out of life and living a hedonistic existence always did. Mainly because its when you get to experience people at their happiest and most interactive. It maybe stimulant induced but it doesn’t take away the fact that on nights out you find people come towards each other rather than edge away and (mostly) bring out the best in each other, guard down, prejudices locked away, revealing open souls who want to join as a connected collective, if only for one night.
And what unites people every single time is music. On a lot of the nights out last week I have shown you photographic snipets of, I was not really feeling in the mood when I first went out but invariably I would  hear a track and it would lift my spirits, it would bring me back from the pit of despair, it would inject me with life and positivity. One of those tracks was “From Disco to Disco” by whirlpool productions (link) which 2manydjs played at the party I was at on Monday and I was sitting there, feeling pretty wrecked and flat and wondering what the fuck I was doing there and this song came on and in moments I was up on my feet dancing, without a care in the world, uplifted and happy.
I saw the Young Fathers on Tuesday just gone at Brixton Academy and having lived through the week of nights I have shown you in these pictures I was fairly dead on the inside and heavily flatlining. Within ten minutes of their gig, I was reinvigorated and energised, raised from the dead and brought back to life. A pretty impressive achievement which they delivered on and some. Young Fathers are so explosive live, they have such commitment and passion and always give nothing but there all, you cannot help but be swept up by their tide of enthusiasm. Their energy was enough to revive mine. They destroyed my apathy, annihilated my depressed mood. And all just through the power of their music.
Music makes me feel that there is a way forward, its just not the path we are currently on. But the fact that it exists and the effect that it has gives me hope for the human race. And if we could just get the c****s out of the way we would probably be fine.
The problem is that while a lot of my generation saw what the world was really about and said ‘fuck it’, I don’t buy that bullshit, I don’t want to be a part of it, I’m going to go out and have a ton of fun instead, which was fine, but while we were doing that, other members of our gen have been steadily dismantling our society, accumulating all the wealth and power for themselves and we have let them. Our absence and failure to engage left a vacuum that they were able to exploit. Maybe it would have happened anyway, but can’t help feel disappointment that we did nothing to stop them as everything that has gone wrong has happened on our watch. And now its all pretty heavily fucked and it feels that there is literally nothing left to do except to get fucked and watch as the world burns. So guess its business as usual then…as Jim Morrison so wisely once said: “I don’t know what’s going to happen man, but I want to get my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.” Amen Jim. Actually thinking  about it, it didn’t really turn out too great for Jim so mebbe not the best person to listen to…we need a postive role model to lead the way….any suggestions?
This week’s shots have all been taken on the night tube. I waited many many years for it to come into effect and am now very happy it is here as it was promised for so long and seemed like it would never actually happen. The first ever night it was on I was so excited to use it I stayed up all night at a friend’s party just so I could get it back. Unfortunately I slightly over-egged it and didn’t get on a tube until 8am which I realised wasn’t actually the night tube, it was the day tube starting again. I’d missed it by being too late which is a joke because the great thing about the night tube is that you are never late. It is always on. That is the beauty of it. No more rushing for the last train and having to cut your night short by several hours just so you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg on a minicab.
And then uber came in and it was cheap and fast and then suddenly the night tube didn’t seem so important. And with the decrease in nightlife venues in central london it felt like the night tube might have arrived too little too late. And for the first few months it came into action I barely used it. I then got a regular weekend night job which meant that I started using the central line every Saturday night around 3am from east to west london. And so these shots that you have seen this week are all from that weekly late night/early morning journey.
There are only 5 things that really happen on the night tube..people are either passed out, eating mcdonald’s, being drunkedly loud, snogging or…and this is the weirdest one of all…talking to one another. And I mean stranger to stranger. The one thing that would never happen on the daytime tube in a million years is actually a regular occurrence on the night tube. People interact. Yes, undoubtedly fuelled by alcohol but still, its a wonderful thing.
I try to take at least one shot on every journey and have been doing so now for over a year and will show you more over time. Although it is quite tense and I actually feel quite apprehensive taking shots as everyone is drunk and you are in very close quarters so if you get caught taking someone’s picture there is nowhere to go if they have a problem with it. Fortunately with my stealth like ninjaness I have been able to get away with it thus far which is a relief.
The shot you see above you was shot around last xmas. We watched from the next carriage as this girl, in her Santa hat and micro black dress, proceeded to give a guy who was a total stranger to her, a lap dance in front of everyone. I have been travelling the underground all my life and I can safely say I have never seen that before. And I’m pretty sure neither had he. He followed basic lap dance rules which stipulate you can look but you can’t touch. I actually thought he dealt with it pretty well considering it can’t have been what he was expecting on his journey home.
And I guess that is the beauty of the night tube. If the daytime version is personified by its repetitive regularity, its nocturnal counterpart is defined by its unpredictability…
