A Song You Can Dance To (30 Days of Music 2014)

Disco Down – Shed Seven

Rick Witter – Ian Brown crossed with Jermaine Clement

Like Brian from Spaced, “I don’t do clubs.”. Growing up, the only clubs that my friends ever talked about were the big mainstream ones – I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve been ‘clubbing’ in that way. It really just never appealed. And so the indie disco part of my teenage years never happened for me, unless you count discovering bands at home through my much more music-savvy older brother.

Until 2009. Aged 26. There’s a weird feeling when you find something in the world out there where you feel like you belong – I remember walking around Television Centre on a tour as a kid, thinking “you know what, I could work here..“, and sitting in a booth in the cellar of The Albany pub at the top of Great Portland Street, on a cold night in 2009, I finally had that sense of belonging. Like there actually was a place where people went to listen, and dance, to good music.

It was a night called Play/Pause. It was run by fellow BBC folk, and it was friends from work who invited me, on a night where I’d probably otherwise have been doing not much at home. It was brilliant. On the third visit, I plucked up enough courage to ask whether I could have a trial as a DJ there. A year later, another amateur DJ and I are playing to literally a packed house – they weren’t letting anyone else in. One of the best nights ever.

Every so often I get the idea into my head to try and start it up again, but it’s not happened yet.

Anyway, this song, which passed me by upon release, and for years after, is the one that will forever remind me of those nights, the cramped conditions, the wallpaper peeling off the walls, the less than spotless toilets, the dodgy CD players, the rubber stamps on the hand, the water leaks that I’m sure should have caused an electrical fire at one point. The friends I made, and the music we danced to. Not many understood. But there, it was fantastic.

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