Let's Get Nuts

Chronology

We were going to just move through the year, like these things often do, but on second thoughts: balls to that. Our memory’s knackered and we’re tired, and some FUCKING CUNT IN ANOTHER FLAT is banging the floor like they do. So let’s just group things in vague themes and crack on.

Oh, this’ll be us talking about music, by the way. We should have said that at the beginning.

Making a bloody racket

We love a bloody racket in musical terms, and oh man do we miss going for a boogie to a bit of drum ‘n bass. It’s a great finisher. Back when dubstep was newish, it was fine and all, but a set had to finish with d’nb or it was a snore. Hip hop’s good and all, but in a club it’s a bit samey and mid-tempo unless you ramp up to a bit of d’nb.

Anyway, at the beginning of the year, Emeli Sandé – yes, Emeli Sandé – put out an absolute banger. Breathing Underwater (Matrix & Futurebound remix) is an absolutely euphoric belter. Love it.

And euphoric rackets brings us onto PC Music.

We were already grooving along to Charli XCX’s Vroom Vroom EP. It’s a massive smash of fairly aggressively old/new sounding rave-ups.

It was from there, we think, we learned of your SOPHIE. In what will become a bit of a theme in this ramble, late to the party we discovered the PRODUCT stuff SOPHIE put out in 2015. Most especially we fell deeply, deeply in love with JUST LIKE WE NEVER SAID GOODBYE, which is an absolute beauty of a track. A drumless banger. Listening to it daily. LOVE.

Back to Charlotte, 2017 was the year where she evidently was setting some self challenge of releasing a new track every week or so. Of her fifty-seven collaboration, the Mura Masa one is our fave. Whilst that steel pipe (drum? glockenspiel?) sound is so very now it’ll sound so very old in a year or two, 1 Night is an undeniable tune.

But Number 1 Angel – Charli’s album-in-all-but-artist-description ‘mixtape’ – was a bit of a revelation. In 2016, the people’s queen of x Carly Rae Jepsen won everything with her album-not-an-album Emotion Side B, and in 2017 Charles did the same. This prompted us to launch our catastrophic opening hour gambit for LGNXYZ02, but more of that later.

Number 1 Angel is so great, we’ve conspicuously not listened to her SECOND bloody album-not-an-album Pop 2 – that she casually threw onto the stack at the end of the year, forming a pair of “I call them mixtapes” 2017 bookends – because we’re a bit scared and want to have time to appreciate it / holy fuck it’s got a standard to live up to.

Soz.

Anyway, the first of the two had a very snazzy website put together showing off the producers. A bunch of your PC Music sorts – SOPHIE, A. G. Cook, Danny L Harle...

Huge Danny is another we’d sort of let slip by. He did a song with Jeppo a while back, and we thought it was okay, but we’re NOT INTERESTED in anything Emotion-era that falls outside the Emotion and Side B+ sets (what Lil Yachty advert song? Huh?) and so we paid little more attention.

Anyway, he produced one of the best on N1A, called ILY2, and with a penchant for initialisms this year he released an EP called 1UL. We gave it a listen, and moved on.

But then later in the year, we moved back. And gave it many more listens. The title track (another with that bloody plonky percussion sound) is a great wee thumper.

It takes us a while to catch on sometimes. Soz 2.

Taking a while to catch on

Two big ones we got to late in similar fashion were songs by Tinashe and Dua Lipa.

Again, we listened to the albums when people were wanging on about them, and didn’t give them enough time. That’s one of the drawbacks of streaming. When we were kids, if we took a punt on an album, that fucker was getting listened to. It took us a good while to learn to love Breakbeat Era, but we put the effort in and got there. Now, we’re flighty and don’t give things the time.

But we love a good music video. And these two have absolute belters of music videos.

Company, by your Tinashe, is an incredibly impressive performance video. A single room, a few people, some cheaty edits to cover the joins in a sweatily energetic and near-relentless routine, it’s fucking great. She looks amazing. And the song, it turns out, is absolutely magic. A smooth-as-anything r’n’b thumper, with a very enjoyable bleepy noise thrown in there. From 2016, but for us it’s a 2017 jam.

And your Dua snuck in an all-conquering number 1 hit and vaulted from alt-pop to pop-pop on the back of an all-time great music video for New Rules.

The minor flaws of the slightly wonky head-nod bit and the girl getting accidentally whipped in the face by someone’s hair only make this gem shine brighter. It feels like a home-grown triumph – don’t spoil it for us by telling us it cost $1mil and was directed by someone super-established. The choreography is tremendous, the look is great, but more than anything the core concept is so strong, it’s hard to think of a narrative vid and a song that go together so beautifully. It’s so good. We rewatched it a zillion times.

And from love of the song and video came a love of the song. And going back to a few of her previous singles too. Well done, all involved.

Music videos are important

Maybe in 2018 we’ll get back into making them.

Dua became a big hitter thanks to that incredible music video. And some existing big hitters released some big videos too.

Katy Perry launched what is apparently now trad to call an ‘era’ with an astonishing music video for Chained To The Rhythm. A proper megabudget job, but really, really darkly bleak and upsetting. What with political things as they were and are, it is still genuinely affecting to watch. A big shiny pop video has never been so harrowing. It was a real “oh fuck, she means business” moment, and did the job in creating a massive wave of publicity for her doing ‘woke pop’.

She then followed it with a song making a blunt non-metaphor about fucking. Didn’t do so well.

We quite like Bon Appetit, though, and Swish Swish did a Sound Of The Underground whereby it grew on us a thousand percent thanks to hearing it sounding massive at a disco (Unskinny Bop, natch). Astonishingly bad video, though, providing a peculiar seesaw end to the ‘era’.

And unfortunately clashing with Taylor Swift bringing out her own megabudget megavideo.

Look What You Made Me Do is pleasing if only for the fact that it was another underline that big pop stars are still in the business of spunking big money on big videos. High score for spectacle, with odd grade slipping due to the fact the rush to get it finished evidently left the first half slightly out of sync.

The song’s alright, but Ready For It...? is the real banger. We dig it. Haven’t given the album more than one listen, though. Maybe we’ll come back to it.

Selena Gomez’s Bad Liar was a leftfield anti-pop pop smash that we liked and grew to like more. We’ve not given this video many rewatches because we find it faintly unsettiling in its own way (is she digitally de-aged in it? What’s going on?)

And switching musical directions in the reverse, Lorde came back with a surprise disco banger in Green Light. Again we weren’t sure at first, again it grew on us, again we played it at LGN. Our initial judgement is often pretty shaky.

What isn’t shaky however is our enduring love for Ariana Grande. LGN was in part built on a night round one of our houses, singing along to Spotify, accidentally playing Problem on loop and loving it. Confident outspoken feminist queen of casually shutting down douchebags whilst releasing banger after banger.

This year, the hundredth single off of Dangerous Woman, again an awesome video grew our love for a song. Everyday is a song that more or less passed us by on the album. But seeing her grooving around in her big puffer jacket whilst diverse snogging kicks off around her in the really fun video made it move up onto our faves list. She’s the best.

We’re not going to be able to say anything in this superficial and pointless ramble to do justice to the fucking awful nightmare of what happened in Manchester, so we shan’t try. It’s heartbreaking, and the One Love response had us in tears.

Memory

George Michael died last Christmas, and as with David Bowie and Prince, it shamefully took his death for us to dig back into his music. And in George’s case, fuck we remembered some belters. Freedom ‘90 is an incredible tune, and one we played to triumphantly finished LGN04. His cover of As with Mary J Blige is ace. Multiple Wham! megasmashes which should have been on our playlist all along, apologetically we remembered them.

We also reminded ourselves what an incredible album Music Box is. Can’t remember what inspired us to have a bit of a Mariah Carey dig – perhaps just closing with her as queen of Christmas in the last 2016 LGN, and then rehearsing the lyrics to Hero when we wanted to close with it this year. A very, very strong closer. So good we chose it twice.

And you know who else we rediscovered this year? All Saints, mate. We saw them live (supported by Melanie C and Sophie Ellis-Bextor, thankyouverymuch) and it was everything. They looked incredible, they sounded incredible, they played the old hits and the new hits, they looked like they were having a fun old time of it, it was brilliant. We never saw them way back when, but this was pretty unbeatable. They played Chick Fit, which made us happy as that is an underrated smash. And they made us check out the new album. AGAIN, something we slept on when we first heard it, but One Strike is a top tier groover. Hurrah.

The joy of being part of a pop crowd

The All Saints gig was at Kew Gardens, and we were wary of it being a yummy mummy sitdown picnic fest. Which it was, but with a dancing area right in front of the stage, which meant we could get right in a wee crowd of heroes to boogie around like it was an awesome club gig.

AND SPEAKING OF AWESOME CLUB GIGS. We saw Yelle. For the somethingth time, always great, and this time in Canada.

We were a bit wary early on as the support DJs were kicking out some ace danceable tunes and the crowd was extremely sparse, an the venue inside was very swish and new which can sometimes be a bit of an atmosphere cooler. But when they came on, the crowd packed the dancefloor and it went off. Banger after banger after banger. Yelle chucked out a bunch of singles in 2017, all ace, all massive live, adding to a set of just the best fun jumping around pop joy. Love love love.

We were in Canadia for a hol, but deliberately coincided it with Tegan & Sara doing a hometown Con X show. This wasn’t a rave-up, was in a big modern concert hall, stripped down and partially acoustic-y. But was the joy of being a part of another sort of crowd. A crowd that love Tegan & Sara. T&S spent two albums doing the big pop thing, and it seems like they’ve had enough of it for now.

On stage and in interviews, they’ve spoken of how they wanted to be prominent queer voices in the mainstream, but now want to retreat a bit because the mainstream is gross. They spoke of playing big festival and support slots with the audience not really giving a shit. So here they were, playing a big small show for an audience who really gave a shit. It was wonderful.

Two days later, and well over a day without sleep, we were back in London, in another big modern concert hall, seeing Camille at the Barbican. Camille is someone you really should see live. Her albums are often beautiful, and floaty, and dreamily lovely. Live, she turns it into a big thumping dance performance. We can’t describe it without making it sound several times more shit than it is; it isn’t shit at all. It’s clatteringly, physically brilliant.

New love

In a not dissimilar fashion, Chela’s Bad Habit video is worth a look. It came out this year, and has the handclaps and odd clothing and weird dance moves that aren’t a million miles from Camille’s show. We’d never heard of Chela before, but liked this song and video. And it prompted us to look into what else she’d done.

And holy fuck, she’s incredible. No album, a bunch of scattered singles over a few years, but such tunes. And so captivating to watch. It helps that she’s beautiful, but it extra helps that she’s got fully awesome seemlingly-DIY dance moves. We watched the video to Romanticise a million times. More than New Rules. It’s just her grooving around in a single shot, a few digital paint splashes here and there, but it’s fucking great, and the song is an absolute bop. A megabop.

We were hyper obsessed with Romanticise for weeks, playing it pretty much daily. It’s SO GOOD. And in the past week or so, we’ve gone the same for Handful Of Gold. Go and watch it, again and again. We can only hope Chela decides to pop over to London this year, because we will be there with our shapes ready to be thrown. She’s fucking great.

Four discos

Oh aye. We put on some discos.

In 2016, there were three LGNs. In 2017, there were four.

For LGN04, Saturday 4th February, we moved to sunny Dalston and the Moustache Bar Dalston and had a good old time. The now trad quiet beginning, and hopeless flyering of the empty streets, gave way to a busy crowd by the end. Someone requested Martha and went nuts for it when we played it, which was ace.

LGN05 was just one month later, on Satuday 11th March. We felt bad for the few people who came early doors, and we made a real mistake running out to futilely flyer again rather than start a dancefloor amongst ourselves. But again it came good, chums arrived, and the crowd again filled in at the end and was so happy singing along we did a double finish (there’s little better than having a crowd belting out Hero AND It’s All Coming Back To Me Now one after the other).

And then the Let's Get Nuts crew had a bit of a crisis meeting. It’d become very stressful, three of us organising a disco together, and we were getting a bit narked with each other. We had all sorts of extra-disco things to worry about, and rather than break up as chums, we decided to break up as a disco. Or at least go on hiatus, like your One Directions or your Sleater-Kinneys.

But here at LGN XYZ, we really needed the continuing distraction, and so spun off to do basically the same thing, just with fewer people prepping it and poking at the iPad. Our LGN chums still chums, they thankfully came along to provide incredible and invaluable dancing support.

We approached The Victoria and they gave us a post-gig slot on Friday 19th May. Like absolute idiots, we figured we’d inherit something of a built-in audience – the venue being home to G R R L S and PINK GLOVE, and us following a Two Piece Records gig. We kind of didn’t, and had another harrowingly quiet beginning as people were spread out within the actually-pretty-big pub.

But again – AGAIN – it came good.

Our chums kept us going early doors. A heroic solo-discoer was there throughout and encouraged our riot grrly tendancies. And a trio of Charlotte and Jeppo lovers cheered our alt-pop hearts. By the end, we had people strutting to Shamir and raving it up to N-Trance.

You can read about LGNXYZ01 in a separate post where we blethered on about that, and about LGNXYZ02, which on Friday 10th November brought us back to The Star of Kings, in our follow-up jibber.

And so that was that

2017, in bits of music there.

Run The Jewels probably deserve a mention too, as they keep our ear into a bit of hip-hop, whilst we’ve drifted away from paying much attention otherwise. Kanye’s still on heavy rotation. Lizzo popped out a couple of new bops. And Fiona Apple’s 2012(!) album The Idler Wheel... remains our go-to when we’re not feeling big and poppy and want to feel some feels and sing along with something sadder.

And in fact, let’s finish with something really emotional.

Annie Hardy, from your Giant Drags, put out an album called Rules at the beginning of the year. It packs a fucking whallop. Her partner and baby died the years before, and some of the songs are about that. It’s a record that can really kick the shit out your heart.

Start 2018 as you mean to go on.

This was an odd way to end this long and rambling post, wasn’t it? Ah well, it’s happened now.

Have an unpopular gimmick

The grand problem is getting people in early. Getting people in to stay whilst it’s quiet, so it can fill up.

So for LGN XYZ in October, we decided to try being themey.

It’s a simple matter of record, in the books of all correct people, that Charli XCX’s Number 1 Angel is the best album of 2017. And from a similar not-quite-an-album-but-come-on-it-is-totally-an-album position, Emotion Side B from the sainted Carly Rae Jepsen held that honour for 2016.

“SO LET’S PLAY THEM BOTH,” we thought. “THAT COVERS US FOR THE FIRST HOUR. WE DON’T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT WHAT TO PLAY! WE’RE NOT TRYING TO WORK OUT GOOD NEXT TUNES WHEN THERE’S NOBODY IN, AND - AS AN ADDED BONUS - WE’RE LOCKING A FULL HOUR OF MASSIVE TUNES.”

We also thought this would be a nice wee gimmick. Get us some interest. Catch the attention of people putting together listings and that. It’s kind of ideal – niche, and kind of surprising, but also kind of massive. Right?

Well, nobody gave a tuppenny fuck. Same indifference as ever to our ‘press release’ emails.

A couple people did come along early doors. Thank fuck. But it wasn’t quite the marketing success we’d hoped.

Don’t bother with posters or flyering

We got flyers printed. They looked beautiful. We printed posters, A3 and A4. We took some to The Star of Kings and left ‘em with the bar staff.

And then we were on holiday.

(A pretty ace holiday. We saw Yelle smash a banger-fest of a crowd jumping dancing set in a club venue AND we saw Tegan & Sara do a fully lovely back-to-their-roots fan-focused acousticy celebration of The Con in a big concert hall, amongst other assorted loveliness. It was good. But this post is more about the consequence of not being in London, so let’s get back to that.)

We were away for a few weeks, so we weren’t around to put up posters or leave flyers anywhere.

Well.

Alright.

We could have done just before we went. There was a day before we left, and we popped into Rough Trade and Fopp, but we got cold feet about asking people if we could leave stuff. That whole business makes us pretty very a lot anxious and awko. So we procrastinated and hid from it with a self-justification,

“Oh, there’s time when we’re back.”

When we were back, we both genuinely didn’t end up having much time, and also were hit by ever more anxiety about the whole business.

So we fucked it. Didn’t do it. Felt vaguely relieved whilst also twattish when it was finally actually too late to be worth bothering.

Would it have had any effect? WE DON’T KNOW.

And so

Our two big gambits failed, so we were left with doing the usual online stuff.

We reached some people. But not the mega numbers we were hoping for.

On the night, it was deathly quiet for three hours.

And yet

And yet, like last time, there’s a big old and yet.

It’s like a happy ending. Or something just shy of that. Because after those quiet three hours, things rapidly changed.

A bit before 11, some chums came in to commiserate and have a wee boogie.

Then a few a few other people came in.

And joined us on the dancefloor.

Shortly after 11, loads of people came flooding in.

It got properly busy.

The bar was reopened and double-staffed. The dancefloor was full of people throwing shapes. It was very much like an actual, successful disco.

And it stayed that way until close. 

And so (pt 2)

Not sure where that leaves us.

One of the people who came early doors asked us why it was quiet, how they knew lots of people who’d love this. When’s the next one?

Good question.

Would being regular allow us to build an audience? Or would we still need a lot more friends and/or to spend a violent amount of money to get people in early

Answers on a postcard, please. Because the dream still glimmers.

David Bowie - Rebel Rebel Martha - Chekov's Hangnail Carly Rae Jepsen - Run Away With Me Kim Weston - Take Me In Your Arms (Rock Me A Little While) Christina Aguilera - Ain't No Other Man Sleater-Kinney - Oh! The Spook School - I'll Be Honest Justin Bieber - Sorry Ariana Grande - Into You The Velvelettes - He Was Really Sayin' Something Le Tigre - Hot Topic Lizzo - Worship Giant Drag - My Dick Sux Robyn - Dancing On My Own Prince - Controversy Princess Slayer - Passion Alley Charli XCX - 3AM (Pull Up) [feat. MØ] Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Y-Control Gloria Jones - Tainted Love Chaka Khan - Ain't Nobody Little Mix - Touch Moloko - Forever More Nelly Furtado - Maneater Thunderheist - Jerk It Elastica - Stutter Martha - 1997, Passing in the Hallway The Pointer Sisters - Automatic Alicia Keys - In Common Solomon Burke - Everybody Needs Somebody To Love One Direction - Kiss You Grimes - Kill V. Maim La Roux - Let Me Down Gently Celine Dion - It's All Coming Back To Me Now Carly Rae Jepsen - Run Away With Me Christine and the Queens - Tilted Wham! - Freedom Lykke Li - Get Some Charli XCX - Roll With Me HOLYCHILD - Power Play Justin Timberlake - Mirrors The Spook School - Binary Lady Gaga - Applause Frank Wilson - Do I Love You (Indeed I Do) Carly Rae Jepsen - Boy Problems Shamir - On The Regular Le Tigre - I'm So Excited Britney Spears - Work Bitch Girls Aloud - Sexy! No No No... MIA - Boyz N-Trance - Set You Free Emeli Sandé - Breathing Underwater (Matrix & Futurebound remix) Charli XCX - ILY2 Robyn - Be Mine! Mariah Carey - Hero

8pm-1am Friday 10th November 2017 The Star of Kings, 126 York Way, London. N1 0AX Free all night in the secret basement discotheque. facebook.com/events/146008292651127

Have no friends

An empty room is a bad start.  If you have friends, you can get over that.

Here at LGN XYZ, we’re pretty near friendless.

So without friends, that empty room can stay empty.  Strangers who are tempted in can get scared right out again.  Who wants to be the only people in a disco?

Have no friends of friends

The no-friends issue multiplies.  Every friend you don’t have is a friend you don’t have to recommend their friends.

Here at LGN XYZ, we don’t have that transmission pathway.  Without friends, that’s the chain reaction stopped before it could start.

And so we’re back with that empty room.

Don’t be a part of a ‘scene’

This is probably much the same issue, just with a different tint.  If you’ve got a bunch of chums, you might be diverse and you might not be part of a ‘scene’.  But if you’re part of a ‘scene’, you’ve as a consequence got some friends, right?

Here at LGN XYZ, we wouldn’t know.

We’re not part of the DIY scene.  Or the queer scene.  We’re not in a band.  And we don’t know bands.  We don’t know promoters.  We don’t write for the music press.  We don’t know bloggers or whoever.

We don’t know many people at all.

Two long-since-deleted reviews for This Is Fake DIY ten years ago isn’t really enough.

Don’t have a clear music policy

Club nights, it seems, are broadly identified in one of two ways: by ‘scene’, or by genre.  Or both.

This is entirely on us for being stubbornly hopeful.

Let's Get Nuts was a bit of a genre-mess.  Indiepop and also pop pop and also some northern soul and also some riot grrrly stuff and also whatever else.  It was music that we all liked, between the three of us, in some combination.

It was hard to explain.

We were collectively looking to rip off Scared To Dance and Unskinny Bop and Popstarz and Bad Reputation and We Love Pop and How Does It Feel To Be Loved? and Club Motherfucker.

But those clubs were well-defined and popular.

We settled on “All sorts of pop music for all sorts of people”.  It kind of works as a description, in as much as it’s not inaccurate.  But it’s not very explanatory, and makes it a bit tricky to drop in Fight Like Apes’ version of ‘Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues’.

LGN XYZ, we went for “A fucking racket, with pop music”.  Didn’t really solve the problem.

Don’t spend loads

We actually spent a fair bit on LGN and LGN XYZ.  Usually about £40 on Facebook Ads.  £20-odd on flyers a couple times.  Cardboard cutouts of popstars.  Some kit like headphones and audio splitters.

But Facebook worked out at about £10 per person actually attending.  And the other stuff didn’t really bring people in.  So we didn’t do a big investment in advertising.

And our unpaid marketing attempts weren’t amazing.  We chickened out of properly flyering, or getting posters up places.

We did spend an huge amount of time on Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr, and getting the night on listings sites.  We sent out some press releases and speculative spam emails and posts here and there.

But on it’s own, with all the above issues, this ‘free’ stuff evidently doesn’t bring in hundreds of people.

And yet

And yet LGN and LGN XYZ have not been total disasters.

We did get people in.

They weren’t totally empty.  Each and every one got enjoyably busy by the end of the night.  In some cases, just the last hour.  Or half hour.  But those endings were always fabulous.  Every ending was joyous.

‘Ain’t No Doubt’, ‘It’s All Coming Back To Me Now’, ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’, ‘Freedom ‘90’ and ‘Hero’ – each and every one a triumphant crowd singalong finale.

And more importantly

Each disco had people who seemed to love it.  Maybe just one or two, but each night, someone would speak to us at the end to say thank you.

And that means the world.  Especially the couple people who came on their own.

Because that’s us.  Here at LGN XYZ, that’s us.

We’d go to discos alone.  Many of them.  Because we had to.  And we’d enjoy music being played, music we loved, music that might only be loved by a small number of people, but being in a disco with some of those people, enjoying it separately together...  That’s everything.

Standing, sitting, dancing, at U Bop and Bad Rep and Popstarz, beaming in small portions of joy at DJs playing and crowds dancing to Bis and Sleater-Kinney and Carly Rae Jepsen.  Going to dance and watch dancers at Madame Jojo’s.  Sometimes it could still be lonely, sometimes moreso than not being there, but sometimes it made things feel better.

Discos are important and brilliant and wonderful.  And to feel like we may have helped other people feel like that, if just for a moment...  That’s so good.  Really, that’s so so good.

So: next time

There’ll be a next time.

It’ll be soon.

It might be a disaster.

But here at LGN XYZ, we kind of need to.  We need to make this work.  Because when it works, it’s the best.  It’s the total best.

We hope you’ll come along with us.