Well at very short notice I decided to go to this instead of Slammin' vs HH and got stung on the door for 20 quid each. (Cheers Peter for not gettin' me tickets! :P ). The evening started off well - we got there at about 10.30 and the place was filling up nicely and then around about midnight the sound in the hardcore rooms died for about 20 mins, during the old-skool set, with it coming on and off intermitently - Grrrr - seriously frustrating! I think at 1am - the cheesemeister himself Vibes came on playing full on cheddar which got the (by now) full dancefloor going. However, I got the impression that he thought he was still on the radio show as he was just basically mixing the start and end beats of the records - a problem with with todays vocally choons not allowing any points to mix in the middle of the records!??? Best set of the night should probably go to Stompy - top cheesy choons and great mixing kept the happy vibes going nicely. Ellis Dee up next playing old-skool - not a bad set - but I kept thought it was Rat Pack playing. Speaking of Rat Pack - they were up next playing the same set for the last however many years! My only gripe with the Lab is the amount of old-skool that usually get's played - I like old-skool but it seems that after about 30 mins the dance floor seems to empty, especially when the choons are from the time when hardcore and jungle split and the hardcore room sounds like the jungle room! So for 2 hours we had old-skool. S'ok, I thought, rest up - ready for the last stompin' hour with (after studying the flyer we figured), Brisk. 5am came and up stepped Spinback - What!?!?! Ok - we've had 2 hours of old-skool so surely some hardcore. Nope - more old-skool! Bah! All in all the night started off really well, a good up for it crowd (the fullest I've seen) and was only really spoiled by the 3 hours of old-skool at the end when I actually wanted some serious stompin hardcore. I put it down to it being the tenth birthday - celebrating the past and all that. Anybody who's worried about the lack of attendance at Lab recently - get yerselves onlong now - the place was nice and full enough to get a good atmosphere going! Shouts go out to Carol,Peter,Charmy,Joe,Jamie,THX and Kevin. To the Lab management - how about just half hour sets of old-skool?
