An Ode To Tonic

Or The Existentialism Surrounding The Great British Night Out
 

It is no longer Friday night but Saturday morning and technically my night still hasn’t begun. Our plan was to go to ‘Fever & Boutique’, a new club based off the successful ‘Moo Moos’ chain- the nearest one being a £4 train journey away in Fleet. The Facebook description was soberly post-ironic, promising retro chic and chart hits. I hate retro chic and chart hits, so obviously I wanted to go.

Due to the predictability of the human race, every non-married person in Basingstoke also wanted to get in. We all queued desperately for entry that would cost us £3.  It was like being at Thorpe Park. But at the end of it I would not get to ride on Europe’s fastest rollercoaster, I would be at ‘Fever & Boutique’. I begin to loathe myself more so than I already do, I complain to my friends who in return complain to me. We all begin to feel fulfilled through our complaining, this is the Great British Night Out.

A fork is put in the road and an ultimatum is made by someone probably too drunk to remember why he or she said it “ten more minutes, if we aren’t in then we’ll go Tonic”. We wait three and a half minutes and leave the stationary queue of every non-married person in Basingstoke to walk around 100 metres to ‘Tonic’. We are cold and losing our buzz from the pre-drink at Spoons, anything indoors is looking like a positive.

‘Tonic’ used to be the only nightclub in Basingstoke. Therefore there was no actual need for ‘Tonic’ to do anything more than just exist. It has two levels, the ground floor is mainly just a bar with some soft seating and upstairs is the dance floor with another two bars. Rene Descartes believed that “I think therefore I am”, the philosophy lives on as “I sell Jagerbombs for £3 therefore I am”. The design has no flaws; it works almost as a Socialist testament to functionality. The group I am with begin to grow anxious and some threaten to go to Reading to experiment with something more salubrious. They stay.

Like the cathartic trend of ‘indieamnesty’, ‘Tonic’ stinks of the early 2000s. A projection screen hangs at one end of the dance floor with drinks offers produced on Powerpoint with a penchant for garish word art. The DJ I can only assume was the father of someone I went to junior school with. Dance music is an ever evolving genre and as EDM falls into a neatly dug grave, teenagers are reverting back to Garage, House and Drum and Bass. On the playlist tonight was what I can hear Gregg James play at midday on Radio One. ‘Tonic’ is not a good place for listening or dancing to music.

“I don’t know why I’m even complaining, I love Tonic” come out of someone’s mouth I was standing next to. I didn’t love ‘Tonic’, nor did I love it in the way that I love Frozen as an 18-year-old male. There was no ironic passion, but how could I complain either? I had made a series of ugly decisions that got me to this point of dancing to Sean Paul. Was this me being masochistic? Did I actually want to have a bad time? Or was this ‘Tonic’s plan? Make everyone have a bad time, to make everyon realise what really matters is the people who surround you daily.

Perhaps that euphoric feeling that The Great British Night Out aims to capture doesn’t come from your friend from Media’s trip to ‘Sketch’, or the Snaphat story of a wide eyed girl at a wavy garms rave. Maybe The Great British Night Out is standing on the dance floor listening to Sean Paul and wanting to die.

Searching For Frank

The art of the long awaited ‘next album’

It has been a long time since Frank Ocean released his seminal ‘Channel orange’, an album that rocketed the R&B singer to fame, bagging him two Grammys and a loyal fan base desperate for new material. A few tracks have been released over the four years in which the singer has gone AWOL with little more than a raised eyebrow. With news from Ocean’s producer that the album could arrive within just a few weeks, I try to work out whether people still care when you’ve been gone for what seems like a lifetime.

 Jamie T fell off the face of the earth by 2010. The promising young indie/rap outfit seemed to be only getting better and better. Jamie T provided a voice to a new generation of teenagers that had grown up with The Libertines and Eminem, a British voice. The promise floated away with radio silence, people waited hesitantly for a third album then shrugged their shoulders and began to look for something new. Jamie returned in 2014 with ‘Carry On The Grudge’ with an NME cover, a few festival appearances and 12 pretty good songs. His last post was at his last public appearance at Reading Festival. By that point most of his fans had already shrugged and wandered away to find something new.

Although King Krule wasn’t gone for long, the lack of public appearances post ‘6 Feet Beneath The Moon’ completed his ‘coolest kid on the earth’ image. Perhaps it was his Peckham roots or the ginger’s love for rap but out of seemingly nowhere a generation of street culture kids began to listen to Krule, mixing the bluesy maximalist beats with skateboarding and streetwear. The album became a classic for those within the cities and the indie kids from the suburbs. For the indie kids, Mac DeMarco filled the hole that King Krule left with Canadian goof. The street culture that grew with King Krule either left to powder their noses or waited for the song maker to release something new. The album came in 2015, but not under the guise of King Krule- instead the Peckham local stuck with his birth name Archy Marshall for ‘A New Place 2 Drown’ and put down the guitar and picked up the sampler. The album was a low key beauty lost in the hype of Christmas and 2016. Marshall is performing mainly under the name ‘Edgar The Breathtaker’ with contemporaries such as Jamie Isaacs. Perhaps his silence is a hatred of publicity- or a desire to remain truly in the peripheral.

Last known image of Ocean, if found please return to the recording studio

Perhaps Dr Dre is the living, breathing proof that everyone stops caring when you delay an album for too long. Detox was the album that never became, a few previews such as the Eminem featuring ‘I Need A Doctor’ were released but the infamous finale to the G-Funk trilogy never came. Dre concentrated on the business affairs of music, making the headphone a sought after commodity. Dre released his first full length LP to coincide with his 2016 biopic ‘Straight Outta Compton’. The excitement existed until the think pieces came rolling in, unsurprisingly slating Dre for his sexist lyrics. An apology was released, people shrugged and got back to work. Dr Dre is a rap dinosaur, a reminder of the good old days, but also an unsightly reminder of what the old days were like for women.

The world doesn’t look promising for Frank Ocean, every act that has resurfaced from the wilderness in the past few years have been wrought with problems and lack of success. The only beacon of hope comes from an artist who left on top of the world, only to return an even bigger star. Adele’s comeback has been meteoric, ‘25’ has sold more than any artist in history and her 150 date world tour is completely sold out. There isn’t a singer bigger than Adele, she vanished and came back just like Frank Ocean could. However, Adele didn’t play with our expectations. We knew that she was off spending cash and having children in her downtime. Every other month we are told that ‘Channel orange’ 2.0 could be hitting shelves, yet search ‘frank ocean’ on twitter and you’ll see heartbroken teens waiting impatiently. Frank Ocean may excellent, but his constant game playing and stalling is making people bored.