London's best novelty nights
The klaxon sounds and all of a sudden there’s a frenzied dash among the clothes lines. Someone offers you a battered baseball cap, you swap it for the bow tie you’re currently wearing as a garter. If you’re drunk enough you pull your top off and swap it for their string vest. It might sound seedy, but we assure you it’s all in good taste. Swaparama Razzmatazz (held monthly at Favela Chic) sees ridiculously good time boogying to not-too-cheesy pop while bargaining with strangers over novelty clothing. Hell, it's so much fun that even the pricey drinks couldn’t bring us down.
That’s the power of the gimmick. Whatever you think about 'themed' club nights, it can’t be denied that they’re monumental ice breakers. That said, there’s a gimmick and then there’s a sticky-floored hall of thirty-five year old stags and hens busting out of school shirts that probably didn’t fit them when they actually were at school, let alone now that they’ve hung up their hockey boots (and their hopes and dreams) in exchange for the sedate drudgery of desk-bound jobs in the city.
So if School Disco (Saturday nights at Forum) can get it so nauseatingly wrong, and Swaparama can get it so sparklingly right, is there a secret to a good gimmick? With our lab coats, textbooks and shampoo advertisements at the ready, let’s have a look at a few more to see if we can establish some kind of half-baked hypothesis – the kind of socially-reflective claptrap for which Trisha would give us a 'whoop!-whoop!'
The capital’s been inundated with 'burlesque' nights (like those at Lost Society in Clapham) for well over a year now. The only rules seem to be that at some point in the evening an overweight girl with tofu-white skin will do some slightly awkward posing/dancing/stripping/wobbling with a series of bizarre props (presumably to distract your attention from the crimson pinch marks left by her corset). If London’s so desperate for retro novelty, it’s no wonder that Viva Cake – 'the rock and roll tea-dance with a twist' (monthly at Bethnal Green Working Men’s club) is so popular. Eating cupcakes and cucumber sandwiches at half past four in the afternoon feels more decadent than a black cab ride; at least, it does when you know that in seven hours time the cakes will all be underfoot and you’ll be spilling cider down your best frock as you swing dance with an indie kid.
The best thing about Viva Cake is probably that people have licence to dress up however they like; it’s a jump-lead conversation starter (one for the clipboards – theme number one). But you don’t need to dress up to throw a novelty night. Punk Rock Karaoke was once one the crowning glory of London’s novelty scene. It wasn’t exactly punk and not strictly karaoke, but the chance to be the lead singer of a live rock band was enough to dilate the sweat patches of a hundred would-be Cockers every fortnight. People loved it because it gave them minor celebrity for two and a half minutes and the band was loud enough to cover up the worst of the singing.
On a completely different tack, Craft Night (Monday nights at Notting Hill Arts Club) gives you the chance to regress to your Blue Peter days and stick bits of cardboard crap together with PVA glue, chuck in a couple of beads for good measure and call it a ventricular defibrillator. Combine that with a live bands and DJs soundtrack and you’re in novelty club-night central. You can wax ridiculous on the symbolic meaning of your playschool creations or join in the paint-flicking, let-me-hold-that-while-you-glue-it flirtation of group projects. The overriding theme? Interactivity.
London, being vast as it is, is home to dozens of themed nights. To whizz through a few more: there’s Feeling Gloomy (Saturdays at the Islington Academy) where they only play sad or angry songs, air-guitar en masse and find a soul-mate in self-indulgence; Hillbilly Hop (at Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes), where you can kick your heels up, yee-haw and chew on hay for thirteen hours straight (the fewer the teeth the better the spittin’); Roller Disco (at Canvas) speaks for itself: surrender yourself to gravity’s whim and the terrifying pace of impromptu group locomotives while a few pirouetting fools take it that bit too seriously.
So where’s the science bit? Probably halfway down Jennifer Aniston’s throat along with the bottle of L’Oreal Elvive that didn’t, in fact, contain nutra-ectoplasm embryo-fluid. It’s pretty obvious what makes a good club-night gimmick. Okay there’s the novelty factor and the primal joy of being part of a clan. It’s fun to cut the chat-up and just talk nonsense to strangers too while you revel in the illusion of self-importance that doing something interactive gives you. But really, the best gimmick is just a sound excuse to play childish games while getting tipsier than a toddler in mummy’s medicine cabinet. Freud, eat your heart out – Itchy loves to regress.
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