8 hours...that’s a long time y’know. You can watch Laurence of Arabia nearly 3 times over, sit through 5 football matches, fly pretty much half way around the world or get a good night’s kip. So to be playing music constantly for that amount of time is no easy task. But that doesn’t quite do this endeavour justice; it’s not just playing music for 8 hours, its building it from entertaining the bar staff filling the fridges before the doors open to smashing it to a full club, bringing it down, taking it up, throwing them sideways. In other words, it requires a shitload of concentration and ultimately you’re trying to make people dance and have fun for 8 hours straight. Easy it ain’t.
So a ‘A Night With Derrick Carter’ was never going to be one of those evenings where a DJ just rocks up around midnight, tears it up for 2 or 3 hours playing their ‘safe bets’ and leaves straight back to the hotel or to another gig and repeats the same selection of records. This was going to be something different.“You would not believe the amount of prep I’ve been doing for this weekend”, Derrick proclaimed to Nemone on Friday afternoon live on her BBC 6 Music radio show, “I’m distilling 30 years of music collecting”. So when Saturday night rolled around. We were excited with anticipation of hearing DC in an intimate little basement venue for such a long set.
Pre-party ales were consumed just a short stroll away from the venue and we arrived around midnight fully refreshed to find some poor soul standing in the freezing cold informing the gathering crowds that due to fire regulations there had been a last minute change of location. Concerned suspicious glances were exchanged between all and a scramble to jump into taxis began, pointing at iPhone Google maps and telling the increasingly irritable cabbie “I think it’s just down here mate...follow those other taxis yeah?”. Down to deepest darkest Whitechapel we went and soon enough the warm throb of a bassline thundering through the cold, damp brickwork of a disused car park confirmed we had arrived at our new location.
Guest list ticked off, two rounds of Jagerbombs down and we headed into the far archway to see what was going on. Bumping through the bodies, we said a quick hello to DC and found a spot right in the middle just as the House Of Trix Mix of Jamie Principle’s ‘Baby Wants To Ride’ teased through the system. Derrick really was airing his inspirations; from Chicago house classics he went through Talking Heads’ ‘Girlfriend Is Better’ which sounded surprisingly contemporary , Derrick’s own re-edit of Dimitri From Paris’ mix of Teddy Pendergrass’ ‘You Can’t Hide From Yourself’ and a respectful DC Re-edit of The Rolling Stones ‘Miss You’ in quick succession. 808 State’s ‘Pacific State’ got a particularly large cheer from the crowd and perfectly seemed to fit the old school ‘back to basics’ warehouse party style nature of the event.
As good as the tunes were, sadly the sound system struggled to keep up this high level of quality. By 1am the local council were in attendance trying to shut the party down, so there were instances where the bar had to shut up shop and the volume had to be turned down quite considerably. As much as DC was working his hardest to keep the party in full swing, if you were more than 10 feet from either of the two speaker stacks, you couldn’t hear a thing. This was becoming more and more of an issue as the night went on and the numbers increased. As the volume was continually being monitored the crowds down the front pushed forward to ensure that they could hear the music. Consequently the sound was absorbed by the swell of people and the chat was becoming easier to hear than the records and shouts from the back to ‘turn it up’ became more and more frequent.
However, despite the audio troubles, Derrick did what Derrick does best; throws down one hell of a party that you can’t help but dance to. A special remake of his own ‘Squaredancing In A Roundhouse’ got the section we were in all doing the air trumpet and The Cure’s ‘Love Cats’ bootleg that came out on the Igloo label a few years back raised smiles all around.
Hats off to the inimitable DC for the music, as usual a diverse funky selection of jaw-dropping records put together with passion and a sly sense of humour – word is he ended on Michael Jackson’s ‘Rock With You’ and Rosie Gaines’ ‘Closer Than Close’. Special mentions to the organisers for in the face of serious adversity, did what was necessary to keeping the party on track.
It was as real as it got on Saturday night. No glitz, no glamour, no VIP room. One large room, two large speakers and a crowd looking to have a good time. You can’t fake the funk.
Words: Simon Dawson
www.theclassicmusiccompany.com
