CALL night comes alive

It is by comparison with a top CALL night that we can now honestly say how disappointing the night was in Lee a month earlier. Blame the relocation, and the location, but not the acts themselves, those of whom on Saturday’s bill at the Cross Kings again put in a great shift as a football manager might patronisingly say. These include the Amigans, Bard Stupid, Matt Dolphin and the Carbon Town Cryer, and of course Radio Revolucion, who this time had a captive audience ready to rock out. These were well augmented by Turkish melancholia from Emre and friends and some jazz-funking by Motiv, and well co-ordinated by the speakers and MCs.

This time I got 60-70 mins in on the decks too, 15 minutes or so amping ahead of RR, and then 50 or so to finish the night off. Due to a day of travel and football and subsequently even more post-booze drowsiness taking me well into the Bank holiday when I returned to work, memories of the platters that shattered are already hazy. But I do remember that the second disc of dance, new wave and hi-speed indie I had compiled as the ‘later’ hoped-for floorfiller generally seemed to stall in the CD deck, so I was reliant on the ‘early’ one of reggae, soul, rock and the like as well as a poor stocking of vinyl. (Preparation had still taken around four hours earlier that day, in so doing shunning the sunshine, but as I have said before this is one of the best aspects for the part-time dj, the refamiliarisation, even if you will always end up taking enough tunes for four or five times worth the set you end up getting; I willingly let myself get carried
away with how this and that will work, potential combination of tunes, etc.)

So there were a couple of Clashes in the form of London Calling (for obvious reasons) and The Magnificent Seven, Burning Spear’s Marcus Garvey, some soul and funk like Bobby Byrd, the Pilooski remx of Beggin’ and Redding’s cover of Satisfaction (an old wedding favourite that one), modern skankers such as the dub version of Roots’ Witness and curios such as the Acid Brass cover of Voodoo Ray (earning my first approving inquiry from the soundman).

Favourites for me were Coki’s Officer and Scruff’s rmx of Bonobo’s Terrapin. Both early-decade tunes but widely divergent in tempo, one a dubstep skanker full of bass, the other a spacey but frenetic percussive shaker using bits of the original’s sitar but not much else. It was good to see them fly in among tunes that people generally knew (and the soundman, again, propped for the Scruff rmx).

Bruce's next awareness-raiser is on 6 June but switches focus to the climate camp crew. Should be another great night.