The DJ Take-Over @ Relish, Bank Holiday 24th August 2008
Review - Sweet P
My friends and I arrived at Relish expecting a follow-up of the last bank holiday session which we all really enjoyed. As we walked in, about midnight, the dance floor was empty and the place was lacking any kind of atmosphere – everybody was just standing around the sides looking very uninspired. So in true ‘let’s TRY and get this party started’ style, we bought our drinks and hit the dance-floor.
This night was advertised as a DJ Takeover and the DJs on rotation were Man-Q, Bizzi B and Patrick Booth. We presumed that with a DJ Takeover theme to the night that there would be somebody to hype each DJ as they hit the decks, the DJ would play their bestest dance tracks, the crowd would go wild and there would be some kinda competition/knockout.
Although the DJs were introduced, there wasn’t any structure to the competition and they were basically left to play in their own sweet way. It’s obvious that they have all got good tunes to play as we heard some great old skool classics such as ‘Touch Me’ - Fonda Rae, ‘Genie’ – BB&Q Band, ‘Gotta Get You Home’ – Eugene Wilde, and the excellent ‘Make It Last’ by Keith Sweat, but the event was badly organised and unstructured and the tracks didn’t follow on from each other; for example, fast track – crowd would dance, followed by a slow track – dance floor cleared... We even tried to liven the place up with formation-ness which lasted the whole of one tune...
You would have expected the crowd to be whipped into a frenzy, but there was no discernable competition and no vibe, and even when the Reggae came on, my friends sat down!! They always dance to Reggae!!!! There seemed to be a glimmer of light when Carroll Thompson’s ‘Simply In Love’ came on, but just as we were singing along and getting into it...some other obscure tune came on. Generally speaking, the music was all over the place and we were disappointed with what we thought was going to be a guaranteed Bank Holiday Banker!!!!
Soul Control Verdict:
All in all it just wasn’t ‘apnin’!! The lack of continuity in the flow of tunes combined with the lack of atmosphere made for a disjointed, disappointing and uneventful affair that the crowd didn’t ‘Relish’!!!! Let’s hope that the next event can restore the punters’ confidence as Relish is a great venue which has, in the past, delivered some great Soul nights.
Soul Control Rating:
