My Night at Breakout

The best thing about putting on Breakout is that it's a rare chance to get everyone together. I was well chuffed last Friday that so many of the old Bristol 'crew' turned up, especially Mr Freakes making the trip from London. I heard a rumour from Sam on the previous night that he was considering coming, so I texted him and told him to bring some records (knowing that this would pretty much guarantee his arrival). More on that later.

Bev and I decided to do the warm-up set for Blackout, mainly so we could get the DJing over and done with and concentrate on getting completely hammered. Well, that and making sure the night was running smoothly.



I really enjoyed our set. It was great watching the room filling up as we played, especially seeing so many friends on the dancefloor.





Chew spent a lot of our set doing his best impression of this guy...





So I took the opportunity to pass him my camera and get some close-ups from the floor...









We managed to get most of the room dancing by the time Blackout graced the stage, and I watched the first ten minutes of their set. They were just getting the place rocking and I was filming the huge second drop on 'Massaka' when Bev popped up from nowhere...



"Mate! We've broken even!" was the urgent message that he simply had to shout at me at the top of his voice. Mind you, I was relieved to hear it, and it made me realise that we had to go and sort out paying the venue, and the sound engineer, and set aside the money for Blackout, and then go and buy drinks for all the other DJ's and performers that we had booked.

This process took a good hour of running around, stopping to have two-minute conversations with about 20 different people along the way. It was easy to forget what I was supposed to be doing and I have little doubt that I left a couple of people waiting for drinks that never arrived.

When I was running around like a headless chicken I had walked past 'our lot' a number of times but hadn't been able to sit and chat. I did give my camera to Em though, and it wasn't until the next morning that I discovered the following series of photos...



















By the time I'd finished running around I went to check on the door, where Bev's girlfriend and sister, Rosie and Rosie, had been for some time. It was only fair that I volunteer to take over.

So, I sat on the door for half an hour or so, on my own, watching everyone else enjoying themselves...



Eventually Bevan came to take over and for the first time in the night, I was able to do whatever I wanted to do. It was an odd feeling. I went and sat down with Sam, Ben & Kim and couldn't shake the feeling that I was supposed to be doing something else. There's a strange irony about putting on a club night, that you spend so much time and effort making sure that everyone comes along and has a good night, it becomes very difficult to fully enjoy it yourself.

Having said that, after ten minutes or so of chatting to those guys I started to chill out a bit. I suppose it was past 2:30am and the hard work was all over, so in effect my party started now.

Pretty soon I went and joined Mr Freakes on the dancefloor, and after witnessing him getting whooped in an outrageous 'dance off' with this guy, which reminded me of that scene from American Wedding, I decided it was time to ask him about his records.



Mark had first noticed my text that morning, and warned me that he only had five minutes to chuck some tunes into his car before he left the house. He opened his box of records, and Sam randomly pulled out a 7".

It was Kylie Minogue & Jason Donovan with 'Especially for You'.

A quick flick through the rest of the box revealed a lot of the 80's classic party hits that I remember from his 30th. I have to confess that I was slightly concerned that I might have made a huge error at this point. It's not that I don't love the 80's party tracks, because I do. Well, some of them anyway. I just wasn't sure that this kind of DJing was really what I was looking for at Breakout.

It was undoubtedly the huge amount of alcohol in my system that prompted me to get Mark onto the Decks despite my concerns, combined with the fact that by now it was 3:40am so even if he cleared the floor it wouldn't matter too much. As it turned out, he had a few old-school jungle numbers up his sleeve which went down a treat with the remaining dancers. He even had some people whooping. Thankfully it seems everyone else was pretty hammered too so they probably would have danced to anything. Urm, no offence Mr Freakes, and thanks again.

All in all it was a top top night, marred only slightly by the fact that I didn't really get to chat to everyone very much, and by the time I'd finished running around most of my mates had gone home! Still, many thanks to everyone for coming along. I hope you had a good night and come back for the next one on Friday 15th December. It's gonna be a less hectic affair as it's a residents night, so for the first time we'll be able to go into the night without a huge financial burden. I am hoping therefore that I'll be considerably less stressed and be able to actually chat to some of you.

Breakout is going to continue at the Croft on the third Friday of every month, and we've got some exciting plans in the pipeline for the New Year, including (fingers crossed) a performance from Massive Attack's Daddy G!

Finally, I have a NYE suggestion for anyone who will be in the Bristol area...

Some of you may know Ed, who used to run the Croft when we first did Breakout there a few years ago. He now owns a cider boat, which is just around the corner from the Llandogger and the Old Duke. Joe Brown and Neil Watkins are DJing, and it's fancy dress with a theme. Apparently, you have to go dressed as something or someone that begins with 'A', and for every letter 'A' in your title you will get a free drink. I am expecting to see a lot of Anastasia's, admiral ackbar's, or Ayatollah khomeini's

Advance tickets are a tenner. What do you reckon?

Breakout Kicked Ass!

What a night! It was a roaring success. We managed to pay off our debts and have a little left in the kitty, and we heard nothing from those nasty people at Bristol City Council...

See for yourself at the Breakout Blog, and I'll be posting more of a personal account on here very soon...

The Trials and Tribulations of Promotion

I never wanted to be a promoter. ('I wanted to be a Lumberjack, leaping from tree to tree').

It's a stressful business that involves a lot of time and effort, and even then there's no guarantee that it will pay off. ('Hardest game in the world, promotion. 50 years, man and boy').

I can't stop thinking of dodgy outdated comedy clichés. Obviously I can't take this promotion lark very seriously, even though I've invested money that I can't afford to invest, and it feels like all of my spare time over the last fortnight has been spent either organising the event, or promoting it online (including setting up a blog), or driving around Bristol whacking posters up.

I've moaned about the chore of postering before, but since then the Croft received a letter from the council threatening them with a £5000 fine because three different illegal posters had been retrieved advertising their venue.

We were one of them.

The Croft contacted me and told me that although they were very pleased that we were making an effort with our promotion, they couldn't afford to pay that sort of money, so they have asked us to sign a disclaimer to say that they knew nothing about our illegal postering. A few days later the council chappy actually paid them a visit, and they managed to persuade him that they had nothing to do with the posters. He was happy to drop the fine, but warned that any future recovery of illegal posters would incur a £75 fine per poster.

Bev and I decided that, seeing as we haven't signed their disclaimer yet, and we already had 150 posters printed and ready to put out for Friday's event, we would just carry on and hope that we can sweet-talk our way out of any fine, should it be imposed.





We've also vowed not to bother with illegal postering in the future (much to my relief), and have already compiled a substantial list of legal poster sites, such as pubs, newsagents and fast food outlets.

So, if all goes according to plan, Friday night's event will be rammed full of punters, I'll be able to pay myself back the money I couldn't afford to invest, and we'll hear nothing more from the nasty people at Bristol City Council.

The worst-case scenario, however, simply isn't worth thinking about.

Fireworks and Fog

I believe I have perfectly captured the moment that I last saw any hint of the sun...



Eleven minutes past five, last Thursday afternoon. Since then it's been pretty miserable, to say the least.

Saturday night brought the City's annual fireworks display at the Downs. I doubled up on socks and jackets, and made the journey up the hill to meet Rosie and Josh. Josh will be three in January, so it was probably the first time he's seen fireworks and been old enough to enjoy them.

Traditionally I ruin fireworks displays by spending the entire time trying to take the perfect fireworks photograph with a shockingly inadequate camera, and no tripod (obviously essential). I have learned from experience not to bother trying, especially as it means watching most of the display on a two-inch screen, which surely defeats the whole point of watching fireworks.

So this year, I filmed it instead.

Just so that you could watch the display on a two-inch screen...



I also managed to capture the Grand Finale. Obviously my slightly camp enthusiasm at the end was for Josh's sake, who you can hear going "wooooo" when the camera pans to blackness.



Of course Sunday night was the turn of every family in Bedminster to have their own private display, and every kid to try and find the slack shopkeepers who will sell them rockets, so that they can fire them at each other across the street.

On Monday morning I woke up to this... My normal view across Bedmo obscured by thick fog. Notice the cat sitting on the neighbour's shed, who has no doubt just been for his morning shit in our cat-litter tray of a back garden. I have had a running battle throughout the summer with the neighbour's cats, which I'll no doubt get round to blogging one of these days.

Anyway, I mistakenly thought that it was nothing more than a post-fireworks fog that would clear by noon. I was wrong. It didn't clear all day. In fact it was still around this-morning, when I took these photos on my way into uni...







Yes, obviously my lecture didn't start until 9:47. Late? Me?