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?