Tonight sees the final installment of my club night, Black Tape. I will miss it.
In October 2006, my friend Becky and I started Black Tape at Ego, because we were a little bored and wanted to put on a fun, eclectic club night without the pretension or clickiness so prevalent in Edinburgh clubs at the time. We also wanted to give other people a chance to pick some tunes, and have some fun playing them to people. We also hoped it would make the music more eclectic, and bring more people down to see their friends DJ.
And it worked. Kinda. It was fun, people came, loads of people wanted to DJ. The quality was not great at times, but it was always loads of fun, and the people who did come loved it.
Shortly after the first few nights, Andrew came on board to run things with me. It worked really well. He’s a friendly, personable chap and a good friend, which is good when you’re a grumpy bastard like me. But Ego was really badly run, so we moved to Henry’s. It turns out that’s badly run too. But it was a Friday night and it got more out of control there, which is always good. Attendance was up and down but we had some amazing nights. Most notably, putting on Broken Records early(ish) on in their history, the Hostage night that was packed, sweaty and amazing, and of course Monotonix.
Monotonix was a band I chanced upon at SXSW 08 and knew we had to try and book them. The thought of them destroying a packed room at Henry’s was so fucking exciting. And somehow we got them to say yes. It was pretty quiet early on, and we were nervous that it was going to stay that way. Suddenly about 12.30 lots of people started arriving. By 1am the place was packed, someone was playing old skool rock classics, and everyone was drunk and anxious for the band to come on. Finally about 1.20am we let them go on. Everyone was crowded round them (they play on the floor not the stage) and from the first shredded note out of Yonatan’s guitar, the place fucking errupted. The place was covered in beer, sweat, trash, paper towels and god knows what else within minutes. Ami at one point turned to me, grinned and took my full beer and threw it over everyone. The more smartly dressed punters who I had been a little owrried about previously, were right in the thick of it gettting dirty and soaked. The band slowly ended up moving round the room while playing. The staff were looking twitchy. Then suddenly Ami was leading the way outside. Drums were picked up and carried out, still being played. Almost 100 people ended up outside dancing around to the drumming on the street. I’ve never seen so many people have such unabandoned fun. 6 police were on the scene within minutes.
Putting on that gig is one of the best things I’ve ever done.
Shortly thereafter, we moved to the newly opened Sneaky Pete’s. We’ve had some really good nights there, and put on some fucking amazing bands (Chapman Family, The Invisible, Everything Everything and Jesus H. Foxx to name a few).
But it’s time to stop. I don’t have enough time to devote to organising like I used to, and Andrew’s probably sick of me anyway. The club’s busy but not as busy as it could be. I’m also getting really fucking old.
So tonight will be our last one. No doubt I’ll get drunk and hug some people. We’ll hand out sweets and cake and play some amazing and some stupid tunes. We’ll place Tiny Dancer at the end. It’s going to be fun and horribly uncool. You should come.
Black Tape playlist on Spotify
