Dj Trev’s guide to pubs to fall out of, clubs to fall into, and other places in which to fall out with your mates over girls, music, or girls tastes in music.
THURSDAY 26th September
I went into The Mitre pub last week in Knaresborough and noticed they’ve got a huge range of beers in for “Oktoberfest”, which is something I remember The Old Bell doing last year. As they are part of the same Market Town taverns group of – frankly brilliant – pubs I suspect both they and The Swan on The Stray will will have them in, and if you fancy trying something different to the usual beers ( already a pretty impressive range) and bearing in mind that Oktoberfest actually ends in the first weekend in October…(Makes sense… You know how the Germans are for making up their own rules) you really should make time to get into one. Beware however as some of these beers are crazystrong and drinking them is a bit like getting punched in the brain by the God of Fun, so I accept no responsibility for anyone waking up in Aberdeen/in a dress/dead.
Revolution has Disco Dave’s new night at Revolution continuing this week, get this: he sent me some info about it! It’s called Voddology and has 2 for 1 cocktails all night plus some other Vodka related drinks offers. He reckons he’s playing NuDisco, electronic 80‘s and house music, which sounds all right doesn’t it? I love it when people send me details of the stuff they are doing as it’s much easier to write than when I just have to make stuff up. Not that I ever just make stuff up.
Sean McGrath is the world’s strongest man, and tonight holds the weekly pub quiz at Christies with one hand, whilst with the other he will be tearing up Phone Directories, pulling trains, and doing chin ups with concrete boots on. Sean does send me details of his nights, but also encourages me to use my “artistic input” to make them more shareable on facebook, though obviously this is something I would never do just to get a few more likes and shares. Did I ever tell you about the time I saw him wrestle 6 crocodiles? Next week maybe.
The Rat Spankers (remember to insert the usual name related rodent/discipline/unnecessarily eyebrow raised “ooh-matron” type joke here) are the resident band this week at The Blues Bar. There is also live music up the road at The Alexandra, who have REM covers band REMUK. It’s not perhaps the most imaginative name for an REM covers band you’ve ever heard and it sort of sounds like it’s pronounced Re-muck, but I can’t really think of a better name myself – “Kenneth’s frequency” is too vague, “Men on the Moon” is just confusing, and given that “REM” relates to sleeping, “Wet Dreams” sounds like something I’m not even sure if The Editor at Harrogate-news will let me slip in. Although he generally likes it when I slip it in. Weak innuendo that is. Obviously.
There are a couple of R’n’B nights on tonight, the top floor at Rehab has Dj Tex, who’s a very talented Dj, he plays the night Flex which has got cheap drinks on and stuff. Viper Room’s long running night Y.O.L.O. Is also at the R’n’B end of things, I’m not actually sure who plays it these days, but both nights are still very popular with the kids.
Where I DJ, I go for a slightly older crowd, such as tonight, Thursdays downstairs at Rehab, mainly because I am old myself and my leathery skin and faint aroma of the bathroom goes better with 10 year old pop punk and 70‘s and 80‘s rock than it does with bombaclaat bassline mash up twerk riddims. I’m not quite at the age where I think that all that modern Hop-Hippity music is just people talking, indeed I really rather like some of the more hardcore Gangsta rappers, for example, that William Smith seems like a real hip cat and a lovely young man and I often play his “joints”. Innit bled.
FRIDAY 27th September
The Blues Bar welcomes the Stuart Jones band this Friday, and frankly, in a column that I am finding increasingly difficult to make amusing, calling your band The Stuart Jones Band is just not helpful. Next week if we could have The Bald Breakers or The Brig Bests that would be just dandy.
There’s a bunch of regular club nights on Fridays: Rehab’s has electro and dance at “Electro Circus”, Viper Rooms hosts cocktail night Lavish and Moko Lounge has the Frat house Party. All of this is very well and good, but again, quite difficult to talk about every week and make sound more interesting than I made it sound last week. COME ON PEOPLE can’t something interesting happen that I can talk about, like a drugs raid or something??
Zoso bar has been holding some different nights recently, they continue in that form tonight with “Vibe” which is from two of the people behind the now sadly defunct Harrogatealternativeraido and Rife Radio. On the tin it says its about Techno, Minimal House and Baleric Beats, its a nice little bar that is certainly trying out some very underground stuff so should be worth dropping by if you like your beats.
Grape & Graze are holding a regular Friday acoustic night, last time I checked their Facebook they were still looking for one more act, so you can search for them online and get in touch if you fancy playing it. I often find it annoying when on posters and stuff people say, for example, “ find us on facebook search Dj Trev” as I’m like, don’t tell me what to do… But seeing as this is nowt to do with me I think I can suggest you search for them online without you thinking that I’m a lazy selfserving gizzard lizzard. More than you currently do at any rate.
SATURDAY 28th September
I’ve got a recommendation for Saturday and in what is admittedly, not exactly a break from tradition when it comes to my recommendations for Saturdays, it’s an underground dance night. “Fire” used to run monthly nights round town at various venues, the main venue they used to rock was Bar-Med, we’re going back a while here but the nights really were the stuff of legend, and since it’s one of the main kingpin’s birthdays, they are holding a celebration down at Zoso. There’s loads of Dj’s playing, for me most notably is Dj Dharma who is a quality dance DJ who doesn’t play round here as often as he should. The night is free to get in I’d totally recommend leaving the more beaten path and checking it out.
At The Harlow Inn and the other end of the entertainment spectrum is something much more “pub” as Tim Paul heads there for his monthly Quizzalot pub quiz. He does them all over the place so they should be worth checking out.
Bilton Working Men’s Club has got a beer festival on this Saturday but I don’t know a great deal about it. But then, what do you need to know? It’s a festival. Of beer. If that doesn’t interest you, we should stop being friends.
All the usual suspects are present and correct for Saturday: The Blues Bar presents Harrrogate living legend Jed Thomas and his band. Moko Lounge runs it’s night “Risque” every week, this week they welcome guest Dj Dale Castell, for a night of mainly house music. Revolution has soul & R’n’B in the front bar with Dj Tex and in the main room Disco Dave plays upfront dance and chart. Your Dj Pieman is on the top floor at Rehab playing rock and Downstairs it’s dance, both floors being free entry all night. Vipers has Dj Jay Collins playing house and chart music upstairs, whilst in the lounge there’s Angel Lee playing guilty pleasures and feel good music and is free entry before 11pm.
Finally in things I know about every week Sean “Fromage fresh” McGrath has his mega cheesy disco at Christies bar on Saturdays. I’m not sure what kind of cheese it is, but being a fan of cheesy comestibles this will be a nice night out. I wonder if Sean has though of getting his Cheesy Disco sponsored by an actual Cheese Shop? There’s that one at the top of Commercial Street isn’t there? You know, the one where you go in and it smells so good that you buy like, 7 different kinds of cheese, sure you’ll eat them, and then after a month of having a smelly fridge you end up just making an unnecessarily expensive quiche. Hmm, now I want to go and buy some cheese. So before I do that, I will once again reiterate my suggestion that Sean gets his Cheesy Disco night sponsored by the cheese shop. It’s well thought out cutting edge promotional ideas like that that have kept me at the forefront of entertainment these last 27 years, and to that end you can watch ME Dj in my monthly residency as I’m playing at The Den this week. Once a month… Good grief, why don’t I just call it a day? And ANYWAY, I’m not even sure I’m on. I THINK I am, I’ve not heard from them for a while, which in a professional sense isn’t that unusual however normally manageress Jen “jenerally” sends me about 6 or 7 photo’s of her dressed up as Alice in Wonderland every week and they have dried up, the upside of which has been that I’ve had a lot of time on my hands instead of hair.
SUNDAY 29th September
There is LOADS on this Sunday, plenty of live music, pub quizzes and club nights so if you stay in on Sunday you smell.
Bottom of the Bottle is on this Sunday. Seeing as it’s my night I may as well go into detail over what this is, particularly given that this week I’m finding it particularly hard to wax lyrical about all the R’n’B nights there are in town…
Bottom of the Bottle is a heavy metal, punk & hard rock night, this month it’s the Back to School party which means people put on their old school uniforms and misbehave. The night starts off at 8.30pm with Test Transmission playing Grungey rock, Dark Days of December playing thrash metal, Modern Day Dukes doing power pop/rock and Set Sails playing melodic hard rock. All of these bands have girls in, but the fact that it’s also the school uniform night is entirely coincidental, as is the fact that all the Spa town roller Derby girls will be their with their fun stalls and running party games inbetween. This is NOT just an excuse for me to see athletic and talented women in school uniform, as that would just be weird. Anyway, entry is free all night plus there are drinks offers on, and it runs until about 3am.
The other clubbing option is Viper room’s “Peek-a-boo” which is an R’n’B night.
As well as Bottom of the Bottle, if you want to see some live music that’s not quite as heavy the Blues has a full day’s programme, with Too Well Worn in the afternoon, Ocilantern at tea time followed by Serious Sam Barret at night time.
Also live, and lighter still than that, is an acoustic night, somewhat unusually, at Banyan. Maybe they do live stuff all the time but I’ve never heard about it, however this week they have Liam Grey on. He doesn’t play very often and has played Harrogate for a long time, he’s a great lad and does a pretty wide range of tunes, all good sing-a-long stuff and this will be great for a Sunday evening. To be fair, if Bottom of the Bottle wasn’t on, I’d recommend this unreservedly, however, I really need some money so come to my night. I suppose you could do both… ACTUALLY, yes, that’s it, DEFINITELY do both, as then Liam might come down with you and he owes me a pint… Well, he doesn’t really, but I’ve discovered that whilst writing all this is a bit of a drag, occasionally people will buy you a pint. It’s happened twice now in 6 months, so I must be due.
There’s a couple of Pub Quizzes on, the Fat Badger at The Bottom of Cold Bath Road have one, plus out on The Stray The Empress has a pub quiz every Sunday too. I didn’t know about this but was in there for a cheeky one the other day and it looks like they’ve been doing it for a while. Their Carvery on a Sunday is really good too.
Finally every week The Alexandra has the Sunday Soundcheck which is an acoustic night. I don’t know who’s playing there though as they usually announce the bands about 3 minutes after I submit this. Grrr.
Cut n’ Paste MONDAYS Every Week:
Your Dj Pieman holds his The Alexandra Pub Quiz with the remaining roll-over cash jack pot this week of £390 to be won. That’s still quite a lot of money even given that a big amount was won last week. As it goes, I do know who won over £300 at last weeks quiz, but he ticked the “no publicity box” as he doesn’t want to be inundated by letters from people that go like “I used to earn a living playing other people’s records in Clubs, but now I’m reduced to writing weekly gig listings hoping that people will find it in their heart to buy me the entire series of Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes films that are available in a box set from HMV at the reasonable price of £15 for all 14 films, Jamie.”.
The night then continues with several options: Rehab is closed on Mondays so they invite you round the corner and down the road to Zoso where Dj’s Max plus guests play an anything goes set. I say “plus guests” because last week instead of resident Jake, your Dj Pieman did it, and I think Jake is still on Holiday with Elaina. The utter utter lucky get. Pete Oliver holds an open mic session at The Blues Bar and finally “Mokioki”, is at Moko Lounge, a club night with bonus Karaoki thrown in for good measure.
TUESDAY 1st SHOCKtober
Bloomin’ flip, it’s October already….
As it’s the first Tuesday of the month my recommendation is going to The Fat Badger as they have their Beer Club there, this month featuring Timothy Taylor’s brewery. You get canapé type nibble boards followed by a main course and a dessert, all paired up with a pint of hand pulled specifically chosen to compliment it, then I think you get a fourth pint afterwards, but by that time things are getting hazy… Nevertheless, even if after all that beer you think you are invincible and try to invade wales, it’s still a very good value good fun night, I think this month there are comedians on, but even if not, beer, food, for something like £20? Ok, I’m there.
The Tap n’ Spile has it’s folk nigh, also live music-wise The Blues has Courtney Yasmineh playing, whilst club wise Moko Lounge has two rooms open on Tuesday, in the main room it’s upfront dance and electro, whilst in the VIP Room Jaye Selway presents her Rock Box, playing rock anthems. Revolution’s Tuesday house night “Back to Rev’s” is down at The Wintergardens and up Union Street at Zoso it’s Electro Jam, the weekly open decks sesh. Anyone can turn up and dj ANYTHNG… Seriously, I would LOVE it, I WOULD LOVE IT, if someone turned up and played a solid set of Rihanna… Because you never heard that girl in clubs, and she makes some really catchy songs with good beats IF ONLY someone would give her some exposure I think she could really make it.
WEDNESDAYS 2nd October
Wednesdays are always :
Dj Pieman at Rehab
Paul Middleton’s Angst band swearing through the night at The Blues Bar.
SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION
I promised I’d do a new show on mixcloud.com/djtrevuk and do you know what? I actually DID! It’s almost good too! And totally not just a waste of my time. Just ask any of the TEN and counting people who’ve listened to it!
(Actually it’s 9 because I listened to it to remember the track listing, and I don’t count as a real person)
Further works in the field of me wasting my life include my blog at facebook.com/djtrevuk which achieves even less audience penetration than I did before I became a Dj. And if you thought that lane gag was crude and unnecessary then please don’t listen to my shows or read my blog as they are vulgar, offensive and poorly spelt/mixed/recorded/presented/everything.
Thanks for reading, drink responsibly and don’t be loose with your affections.
Trev x x x
