Right I am now recovered from the weekends excesses so here is my view on how the night went. We all arrived earlier than last time to avoid the 2 hour queue situation and they go and open the doors at 10.15ish. Typical, get there early and they open up late. To security for the customary search but this was no ordenary search. This was a full on frisk of the arse, bollocks, you name it, it got the full on grope. Shame I'm a straight bloke eh:-) Anyway we get inside and sprint through the garage room to hand in our coats and off to the hardcore room where we were expecting to find V'groover playing. Instead it was Brisky playing 1994-95 choons so a bit of a surprise there but a nice gentle intro to what was to come. For some reason he finished at 10.45 and up stepped Vinylgroover. He played a good stomping set with a nice bit of scratching to boot. His set seemed to last for ages because it did! I was then faced with dilema number one. Either risk a Vibes set which has immense cheese potential of head down stairs for the safety of a Jimmy J set which will contain some of my fave all time choons from 1994-95. Downstairs it was. Blinding set as always and Jimmy did well considering he had Caine jumping all over him for rewinds ;-) After that meet up time and I fainted. I woke up to be confronted with the reason for my faint light headedness. Chris E Manic had made it to the meet up with Uplift. Good meet up but not as many photos as usual (one terrible one of me chatting ith Chrissy looking completely gormless). Who's up now?? Seerrrrrrllliippmmmaattttt. Stomp stomp stomp. A good set from Slippers showing why he still gets booked time again for a prime time slot. The hardcore room was heaving at this point. Absolutely rammed and many more people than September. Some good tune chosage and the new style SMD? tune which probably wont get released. A good amount of noise for Slippers and up steps Force and Styles. Now on the flyer it said arena 1 HARDCORE. It did not say arena 1 WEAK ARSE TRANCE. I hung around for one tune then left to check out the techno/trance room. M-Zone was playing a good selection. I then went to the toilets for my worst experience of the night. I was caught eating in the toilets and a big friendly bouncer took a nice pie away from me but left me with half. I dunno, I should have listened to my mum who always told me never to eat on the toilet. I guess the security had hygene high on their list for the night;-) I listen to the last 1/2 hour of Hixxy who was playing some alright stuff, not my cup of tea, but better than F&S and Sy was up next with the man Unknown. Probably my fave set of the night and Sy, Unknown and Storm whipped the hardcore masses into a frenzy. They played the 6 days remix which I hadn't heard before and to be fair wont be buying. Overall a good set. Now came the risky one of the night. Dougal. Would he be playing trance as his dad kept informing us in the queue outside or would he play some hardcore. He played safe in the end, really safe. Safe tune choice, safe mixing, safe everything. Nevermind it could have been worse. Come the end of the night and which arena was the last to close?? Drum and Bass/? No! Garage? No! Techno? No! Old Skool? No! It was the hardcore room of course for the first time in ages. Anyway overall a brilliant night for hardcore and the main arena was packed for most of the night. The dum and bass room was less packed than last time and the sound system wasn't as good as it could have been. The old skool room was definately the loudest and the techno room was also quite banging. Don't ask me about the garage as I avoided it like the plague. Did anyone else notice the poncey toilet near the garage room which had a variety f aftershaves/ poncey type smelly stuff?? No amount of aftershave will stop me humming after a rave so I assume it was there for the garage heads. Best sets of the night go to Sy and Unknown and Jimmy J who always impresses with his classics set. Attitude of the night goes to the bouncers who saw fit to just barge their way through ravers to get from A to B and were very unfriendly on the whole. Surely they can't move the hardcore to arena 2 after Friday night? Wicked vibe and packed solid. Last but not least huge shouts out to: Sam, Kev, Jo, Rich, Jo, Chedda, Maxim, Sash, Peter, Joe, Paul, Charm, Ruth, Billy Base, Todd Walker (nice one Chedda), Chris.E.Manic, Uplift, Caine, Steph, Bridey (fuck knows how to spell it), Time, Smithers (rewind number5), Cakes and everyone else I met but was too smashed to remember their names. See you all at Addicted:-))))))))))) Copywrite Happy Bounce reviews inc. ;-)
