JANUARY 1ST 2010 - a brand new year.

At midnight on New Years Day 2010, I was presiding over the music at my latest club (IT'S TOPS). We dragged a bunch of people into the new decade in precisely the way they should be. In a dark noisy place, with loud music, and a bunch of people who play well with each other, out for fun and not trying too hard. Over the years I have gained a reputation for playing a quirky smorgasbord of sounds based loosely on my slogan of many years 'We play Pop Music'. It was a way of saying to the Indie police "I'm not bothered about being the most Indie DJ in town - you are welcome to it champ!". I LOVE indie music and I play lots of it, I just love a good pop song more. For many years I had a club called POP! which started primarily as an Indie or Brit-Pop style club in the mid-1990's. It was hugely successful, with queues round the block every Saturday night, in summer or through the freezing cold winters kids would line-up for like two hours to get in. This always confused me, but made me want to give them the best night ever when they did get in. But when the lager lout crowd started getting a bit belligerent, acting like they were a Milwall FC away game, demanding in their fake English accents for me to play 'PLAY SOME FOOKING OASISSSSS', I started to shy away from a strictly indie/alternative format. Partially to discourage those chaps from coming. They weren't actually dancers. They mainly wanted to stand round in a circle and sing Wonderwall while spilling beer on each other. I love a lot of different types of music, you can find me at gigs by Jarvis Cocker, Kiss, The Buzzcocks, Kylie, Nick Cave, The Residents but the constant for me is a good pop song. By 'pop' music I don't mean 'Chart Music', although it is often music that makes the chart. I am talking about the glory of the pop song. A collection of beats, sounds, melodies, counter melodies, catchy chorus and chord sequences that lift your heart and strike a big fat happy power chord in my heart, brain and feet. Abba made perfect pop. So did the Ramones. Enter Sandman by Metallica is a perfect pop song. Oasis have many pop songs of note (although i always preferred Blur or Pulp). Tom Jones, Dead Kennedys, Kylie, Madonna, Bloc party, Dandy Warhols, The Cure, Franz Ferdinand, Kasabian, The Clash, Beach Boys, Beatles, Outkast, Lily Allen, Lady GaGa, Pet Shop Boys, The Wondermints, TaTu, Dylan, Beyonce, all of them are pop singers no matter what sub-genre they get put in or put themselves in. So to me it's just good pop music. Variety is the spice (girls) of life in my book. It was the Spice Girls that was the breaking point for some of the Lager Lads at Pop! 'WHARRA YOU PLAYING THIS POP SHIIIIIITTTTTEEEEEE FOR? It's an indie club!' Spat one young chap.
"Well," I cleverly countered, "the club is called POP! and the slogan is WE PLAY POP MUSIC, and the Spice Girls is about as POP as you can get". Somehow my fantastically astute observation were lost on him, as he puffed up his giant parka and flounced off into the night. The venue received a letter of complaint about how I was destroying a good club and they should 'POP! SHOULD STOP PLAYING POP SHITE AND GET BACK TO BEING A PROPER INDIE CLUB' and that they should 'STOP HIM IMMEDIATELY'. It was a very bitter and hostile letter (which I still have somewhere) , attacked me and my club but they were too gutless to sign it. Where is the strength of your convictions fella? I learnt a long time ago you can't keep everybody happy. Especially if you play a wide variety of styles in the one night. The Indie kid will think you're playing too much retro and the retro kids will complain about too much indie. So it's a constant juggle to keep most of the people happy for most of the time. What did happen was that we weeded out the narrow minded ones and ended up with a fantastic (and sizable) bunch of regulars who liked lots of different stuff. Also when I played the Spice Girls, the cool 'indie' kids could dance to it 'ironically', in a way they couldn't do in another venue.

I refuse to be pinned down to what somebody else thinks I should or shouldn't play. Where would be the fun in that? The answer is there is none. None fun. So for those nights like : POP!, BANG!, CRANK! and now IT'S TOPS! the format takes a little getting used to, unless you are familiar with my shenanigans. But mostly people work out pretty quickly that a club with no pop prejudice is actually a good thing. The first couple of It's Tops have gone really well and I am loving watching people go crazy when I play something they are not expecting.

Traditionally at New Years people make resolutions and get reflective about what has happened in the last year. For me I am always to busy getting ready for the biggest night of the year (those NYE tapes take days to make), working on the night and sleeping most of the first of January, so I'll cover that stuff in a few days.

So I started the new year and the new decade the way i have for many years, in a dark noisy place with a bunch of great people going mental to great pop music.

Roll on 2010 - it's going to be great.