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List club guide
ogmo itself up. Right back to the days of Misery, the
irreverent and kitsch club movement has had a place in the capital, but has never caught on in Glasgow.
What really screws Edinburgh, though, are the licensing laws. With city centre bars regularly getting a lam license and the opportunity for another two hour extension if they’ve got a DJ — all with no admission charge — clubs are fighting what could end up a losing battle.
Glasgow has a bit of advantage over Edinburgh in that there are just more people out and about. With approximately three million folk in the city and its surrounding areas, Glasgow also has more universities and colleges feeding in thousands of fresh young things every year. There are more club venues and no one would argue that the pre-club bars aren’t amongst the best in the country. When the London Big Issue ran a survey two years ago to find the city with the best youth culture, Glasgow came out tops.
In a world where lots of money spent usually means lowest common denominator
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entertainment, Glasgow stands apart with clubs that look fantastic and which are cited by DJs from all over the world as their favourite places to play. Investment in the city’s club culture has been massive and the trend is set to continue. The Arches, already one of the finest dance venues in the country, is busily investing lottery millions in the building to make it even better, and we’re getting another new club in the shape of Life opening before the end of the month.
Glasgow is about style — and dancing in a dirty club with a bad sound system and nowhere to sit down when you want a break just ain’t got no style. The culture of dance music is more defined here, with a long history of local 015 turning producers and banging out tunes for local labels like Soma, Glasgow Underground, Limbo and Solemusic. These internationally acclaimed labels are run by people you’ll meet out and about in the city, people who are accessible to every wannabe Daft Punk banging away on a sampler in their bedroom. The curfew might have hindered things for a couple of years, but after the city fathers realised there weren’t going to be killing sprees or mass orgies in the streets if they let people go dancing after midnight, things settled down a bit. Only the most disorganised clubber is going to complain about having to get into a club before the current curfew of 2am.
So where the hell are we? The mix of clubs in Edinburgh and Glasgow is unique and, as a whole, what we have on offer is on a par with anywhere else in the country. Not only do we have a thriving club scene, we really have a club culture of which Scotland can be justifiably proud. As long as we keep going out and our money is reinvested back into the venues, we can leave the knitting to the side for now.
Rory Weller