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Michael Alexander St. John

Blue Jam Series 2 Episode 2 - Clubs

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MICHAEL ALEXANDER ST. JOHN: Clubs? This weekend? All right.

Clubs, take two. Clubs, take two. Clubs, take two.

Okay, beatflies, some truly hexagonal dope on this weekend at the bopsheds and flash tunnels. Right? Oh, no, that's ridiculous. Right.

Loads of noise breaking out over Yorkshire, mainly due to DJ Amil Rightmate, featuring some nice trad garage at the Salty Gob in Leeds. He uses guns, by the way, and there's no floor in the club at all.

Bit of a clash in Hull, with the Fabattoir and the Bauble right next door to each other. At the Fab, it's the Comical Beggars with two nervous guitarists doing strum and pace, while the Baub have DJ Guts featuring the classic sounds of the seventh of January, 1998. I'll always remember going absolutely bald to that brilliant Sister Wendy remix of "My Fly Had Puppies" by Borebarigmus.

But back to now. It's Seven Foot Tall night at the Fussy Bender in Cardiff. So, that'll just be those three geezers again, and that one lady if she turns up, each paying two hundred pounds on the door, and each, I have to say, ignoring the other three, and acting like they owned the place, and it was their home, and they were watching television on a Wednesday.

Ooh! Ooh, agh. Ooh, sorry, I'm still getting flashbacks from New Year, when I saw Keith Flint being rushed to hospital after claiming he could eat sodium. What a classic flourish!

Saturday at the Vag in Glasgow, an all-nighter with DJ Boiled Mouse. Ah, yes. Making that creepy wisp of a noise, and expecting people to dance? Come on! By half ten he's always in a tizz, claiming no-one understands him, and by midnight he's usually being fished out of a nearby canal, after another failed attempt to snuff his very naff little candle. So if you do go to that, leave the bollock to drown.

Hey, Portishead. When you play live, how about some strip-hop? Boozy girl naked. Very pleasant.

At the Tube of Toothpaste in Reading, it's another fat lip all-nighter. Huge discounts if you let the bouncers lamp you on the way in. With DJ Lemsip and Catatonia's Cerys ironing beans in the background. Nicely understated, that. Like a bomb made out of jazz and feathers. Last time I was there, I spent quite a lot of time in the knob out room.

And finally, at the Loaded Knife in Brixton (entrance is free if you turn up with a haircut) DJ Microclimate churns out tons of littlebeat. They've got a couple of old sea lions there, to test your drugs on, but make sure you know what an off-colour sea lion looks like. And I'm told at six a.m. there's a break in the music that lasts until June the fifteenth, when the show will reconvene for a further five minutes.

Right? Oh, no, that's ridiculous. Right. I'm off to the Jumping Up and Down in Camden, where it's Ed Sturton night to the beat of some steaming glass and midriff. Ooh, oily, oh, boily! Will I be some fresh jazz kill by three!

Night night, chowheads!

The script and audio clip are probably copyrighted by the BBC. If you have any objection to this fragment of a BBC radio broadcast, please send me an email.

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