I was disapointed at first, but it got better once it started picking up so I made the most of it. I only remember one mistake in your set, but I was a little pissed :D



Yeah, forgot to mention the people, they all seemed cool, had a laugh with Chemicalfan...I think :? I don't know what I said to be honest but I remember laughing a lot :D



Whirly was looking quite sexy in her goth gear, and she was a nice lady. Stash loved to talk about drugs X-D and had quite a resemblance to Dom Jolly.



And respect to chemicalfan for dancing sober, I couldn't do it!



THE BOROUGH!! X-D

well we need to organise on for the brixton gigs...



and dont worry irishfan, ill be there to make sure no one fucks with us!!

sneakerbeater Escribi�:

the night was about meeting the people, which is something ya missed mentioning.

Exactly - and I'm gutted that I wasn't able to come meet you people in the end, especially whirly and stash.



Glad to see you had a good time though. Hopefully meet some of you at a Chems gig some time soon (I'm going to see them in Manchester on 11 March and probably at some of the festivals too).



And I'd like to invite those of you who can get to North Yorkshire to join me at a techno night called R3tox at Club SeVen in Selby, North Yorks. Next ones are 12 February and 12 March. I have a spare room and crash space at my house, so if any of you regulars is up for either of those nights, drop me a pm.

Tyler Escribi�:

Hopefully meet some of you at a Chems gig some time soon (I'm going to see them in Manchester on 11 March and probably at some of the festivals too).

Tyler come to Brixton show 2, you can easily get a ticket on ebay. U know it makes sense.

i have tix for me,my mate and irish fan for the first brixton gig,im trying to get an interview for my mates radio show so we can get into the 2nd one for free,plus i have some phone numbers i can ring....i love ebay! X-D

chemd'up Escribi�:

i have tix for me,my mate and irish fan for the first brixton gig,im trying to get an interview for my mates radio show so we can get into the 2nd one for free,plus i have some phone numbers i can ring....i love ebay! X-D

i thought you and irishfan were going to the 2nd not the first? Whats the likelyhood u go to the second? Who else is going to this show?

no, fri 18th, the first one. it is very likely we'll go to the second

Ok well it would be great to see anyone whos going on 19th

ACIDCHILDREN Escribi�:

Tyler come to Brixton show 2, you can easily get a ticket on ebay. U know it makes sense.

Good call, I ought to look into that. Need to sort out crash space and stuff though.

iguanapunk Escribi�:

I was disapointed at first, but it got better once it started picking up so I made the most of it. I only remember one mistake in your set, but I was a little pissed :D



Yeah, forgot to mention the people, they all seemed cool, had a laugh with Chemicalfan...I think :? I don't know what I said to be honest but I remember laughing a lot :D



Whirly was looking quite sexy in her goth gear, and she was a nice lady. Stash loved to talk about drugs X-D and had quite a resemblance to Dom Jolly.



And respect to chemicalfan for dancing sober, I couldn't do it!



THE BOROUGH!! X-D

X-D

You legend Iguana!!!

:D

:'( Wait.... why wasnt i invited to this? :'(

Allrighty - I just wrote up a nice and proper review, clicked submit, and was automatically logged out. All that work for nothing!!



I'll get to it tomorrow, since I have the day off work.

copy + paste whirlygirl! ;-)

DELETED

ACIDCHILDREN Escribi�:

Ok well it would be great to see anyone whos going on 19th

me and chem'd up will be around brixton that weekend for definite. three gigs in 4 days incredible

whirlygirl Escribi�:

Allrighty - I just wrote up a nice and proper review, clicked submit, and was automatically logged out. All that work for nothing!!



I'll get to it tomorrow, since I have the day off work.

when i write something big on the forum, i will write it in mricrosoft word so i can save my work before i have an accident. it fuckin anoying when you loose a massive post

Well, I'll try this again and be sure to SAVE it before I carelessly click the submit button!!



stash and I got into London later than planned, on Thursday evening - thanks to a 3 hour delay. We were smart and took some heavy duty prescription sleep aids for the flight, so when we arrived, despite being completely dishevelled at least we were awake.



So we get our luggage, then hop on the tube which would pretty much took us to our hotel's doorstep.



The first thing that struck me was the amount of Push the Button posters *everywhere* on the tube. It looks like someone was really doing their promotion job!! stash tried to take pictures of me in front of a few posters, with the goal of taking my mug in front of every one we came across but this proved to be near impossible - plus I felt a little cheesy. It was also to a very exciting time to be a Chems fan - how cool is it to see posters for your favorite band plastered all over one of your favorite cities in the world??



Later that night after checking in the hotel, I went out and broke my 6 year vow to vegetarianism by having fish and chips. It's amazing how almost every pub in London claims to have the best fish and chips in town - kind of like in New York, every other pizza place you walk by is "famous." So we downed a couple of pints and head up to Picadilly so I could try and find out what happened to the old Tower Records. Which was replaced by a very slick looking Virgin records complete with a massive window display for Push The Button. Which stash took a picture of me in front of. I also bought the Galvanize singles - the one that has EBW7, and the other with Rize Up. Surprisingly these singles were less for me to buy them there than they were for me to buy the imports at home, so I jumped at the chance. The only downside was that I didn't want to buy my souvenir copy of Push The Button as planned because it was so flippin expensive!!



OK, fast foward through some touristy things we did on Friday morning and afternoon including seeing with our own eyes psychadelic mushrooms sold every hundred yards on the streets of Camden Town.... It was very surreal to be in London again, if only for a short time. I admit I was getting a little nervous about the Makoosa meetup. Not that I was meeting complete strangers since we've been talking for such a long time - but the prospect of meeting face to face was a little nervewracking. Would you think I was a complete dork? Well, it isn't as if I'm not a dork here, but at least there's the safety net of the computer monitor seperating me from the world outside.



We board a train at Waterloo station and take the quick journey to Woking. Once off the train, we got a scale of the size of the city, which was very tiny. You could walk the whole town by foot in about 10 minutes or less, and it was 5:30 so the sidewalks started to roll up and all the shops closed. Now I was later asked what I thought of Woking - did I like it, did I think it was a dump, stuff like that. After the bad rap Woking got here I was expecting the place to be jam packed with chavs, graffitti everywhere, and normal folk who were totally behind the times like stuck in 1987. But that wasn't the case. Where I'm from, everything is new. The roads are new, the structures are new - so my view of Woking was that it did have a little bit of charm in the sense it is an old town (home of HG Wells), and there was not a chav in sight which was a slight disappointment considering all the talk here, I was looking foward to seeing these fascinating creatures.



We grab some Burger King since the Spuds You Like place was closed, then headed to O'Neils in search of the forumites. We got some pints and I sat there hopelessly chainsmoking while stash and I played "spot the forumite" to pass the time. Could it be that iggy was really a 60 year old man with a poorly groomed mustache? Was chemicalfan really a short Asian woman about 40-ish? You never know with the internet! ;) Well, it's a fun game to play when you're getting tipsy, I suppose.



I wanted to give sneaker a call - so we walked outside to get some fresh air. Then we went back into the pub, and I sat down in the same spot again while stash went up to the counter to get some more pints. I see him talking to three guys and soon they started making their way toward my table - finally I get to meet the infamous iguanapunk!! Just going by what I've read here over the years I was expecting to meet someone a lot more inebriated, so I was glad to see someone who was actually a handome, perfect gentleman - with the dry sense of wit still intact. Iggy's friends were very nice, very very easy to talk to and stash warmed up to them right away. You could see that the 3 of these good friends must have a wild streak when tearing up the streets of Peterborough!



I recognized sneaker right away when he walked up to the table to join us for a drink. Indeed, when he says he dresses sharp, he is right! He was taller than I first thought (going by memories of forum postings) with a boyishly handome face and very easy to talk to - it was like sitting next to an old friend and catching up on the gaps of time lost inbetween seeing each other.



sneaker has to leave to get his gear ready for the night, so the now dubbed Chemical Brothers Woking Posse makes its way across the street to a place called Yates. stash immediately notices the absinthe, then again this was no surprise, I wasn't expecting anything less of his booze sniffing abilities. I was getting a bit more drunk than normal, and stash and one of iggy's friends (I could kick myself for not remembering his name) started flashing Woking Posse gang signs and giggling like the loons they are. Some time passed, so we headed out in search of Vamps.



The night was young still, so there was nobody at the club just yet. Sneaker was still en rounte with his gear, so we headed back to Yates and watched life's rich pageant of meat marketing go by. Gwen Stefani came on the loudsystem, and it was time to make our way back to Vamps. Amazing, bad music knows no national bounds!!



Once we got back to Vamps, sneaker was down in the basement with his djing partner and some friends setting up for Makoosa. The basement was quite tiny, with it's low dark ceiling and dark walls, but it was an intimate setting nontheless and that's always a plus. Because we don't have them much here in southern California, basements are a novelty and a perfect setting for a club. The underground clubs are always the best!



I immediately saw chemicalfan - the hair was a dead giveaway - whose *very* tall frame almost caused his long blonde tressed head to graze the low ceiling of the basement. He is a doll, a bit shy at first but an absolute sweetheart and if Tom Rowlands had a kid brother, chemicalfan would be it on looks alone.



The night was a little slow to start, so we head on back upstairs for some more drinks. More of sneakers' friends showed up and they are lovely, just lovely people. We took to them right away as we sat chatting about this and that while more people started to finally come into the club. Somewhere down the line, a very drunk 40-ish woman and a man sat themselves at our table. The woman, who was completely smashed, was eyeing every man in the place and she kept winking at me. The couple seemed nice enough, but it turns out nobody knew who they were or where they came from and why they were sitting with us. So we made our move to the basement.



sneaker's djing partner was really quite good (as sneaker mentioned here in the past) - he would spin the first half of the night. More and more people started to come to the club and before you knew it, the place was packed with Friday nighters looking for a good night out. iguanapunk was busting out some moves on the dancefloor, chemicalfan seemed into it as well (good thing he didn't try jumping up into the air) and I was really drunk, and stash was holding on the ceiling for dear life at some points during the night.



The second half of the set begins and sneaker is at the decks. He started with a robotic voice that said something along the lines of "you will do as the sneakerbeater says" which imo was a great way to open a set, a great introduction to the man behind the music. He threw in a couple of robotic "push the button's" just for good measure considering the Posse was in effect, yo. By this point everyone in the place was 'avin it as you people across the pond say. It didn't matter that the place was small and intimate and not what some people here were expecting. At the end of the night what matters is the good vibe (even though drunk 40-ish woman was still trying to mack on every man in the place despite having come with a date) and people having a good time, plus some good tunes helps as well. When stash and I go to clubs in Los Angeles (which is very rare these days) it is hard to find a good crowd who are there for the music, not just Los Angeles people there to be seen. Makoosa was what we'd hoped it would be, and then some made by all these great people who turned up for the night. Just a place filled with people supporting their local dj's, people looking for something to do besides go to Yates in Woking on a Friday night.



sneaker played a great set imo - even though he says he fucked up or whatever, we're all our own harshest critics - I didn't notice any inconsitancies or trainwrecks. imo, The dark house definitely fit the setting of the club and you could tell this was a chance for sneaker to play his music loud, and see what makes a crowd tick. He ended with the Posse pleaser EBW7, and it was so good to hear it played at loud decibles!!



2am rolls around and people make their way out of the club. It was time to say goodbye to the forumites and maybe squeeze a hug or two in the process.



I can't thank everyone enough for a great Friday out. You are what you make it, and it was good to see people up for the night. I can't stress enough how great it was to finally meet the faces behind the names I see every day. I also couldn't have thought of a better way to ring in my 33rd birthday - at a club, completely inebriated, not a care in the world. So thanks again- stash and I really, really enjoyed meeting you and enjoyed ourselves tremendously!

Oh, one more thing.



You know that 40-ish woman and the man I told you about? The ones who sat themselves at the table before the woman started hitting on every man and woman in the place?



Guess who stash and I saw boarding our plane to Los Angeles!!!



There was a glimmer of recognition in her eyes, but not a word passed between us. Still a weird coincidence. We couldn't have left London without some sort of strange incident!

man that just makes me even more sorry i wasn't able to make it :(



but hopefuly ill get to meet everyone at brixton, and as im planning to hit up new york for a month and drive to L.A,hopefuly ill get to meet whirls and the stash master!!



btw did you guys get everything yu wanted back through customs? ;-)

Wow, great review Whirly!

You really captured the night, I wonder if that 40 year old woman you were talking about was the one that came up to me and asked for a kiss? I couldn't tell if she was 40 odd, looked older than me (let's put it that way). I only obliged (with a peck, I hasten to add!! :P) coz I didn't know if she was pilled up, and I know what it would have meant to a pillhead. I'm just too kind X-D