The Southport Weekender is a bit like going raving in a Wetherspoons. And I mean that in a good way!
The weekender, which has just celebrated its 50th edition, is a mainstay on the circuit for the club culture cognoscenti. Having started life in Berwick-upon-Tweed in 1987 as a revival of the old soul weekender scene (with a bit of acid house thrown in for good measure) Southport has always been the party of choice for those who grew up around the second Summer of Love.
In fact, it’s easy to imagine that many of the groups who descended on Butlins in Minehead last weekend first met on the dancefloor at Shoom a quarter of a century ago, wigging out to Voodoo Ray.
In many ways, the crowd is what makes this such a special weekend. Rarely, if ever, have I felt more welcome as a debutant at an event. The average age of the ravers – by my non-scientific estimate, at least 10 years older than your typical festival goers – certainly helped. It felt as if, not only was everyone there for the music; most people really knew the music too.
Forget your new-age wooded glades and your low-fat fair trade soya bean burritos. The catering on offer was the stuff of motorway service stations – a Burger King, a Pizza Hut and a chicken restaurant that was Nando’s in all but name. Southport is not a weekend for anyone who wants their festivals to be organic, multimedia experiences, or who likes to settle down to a talk on the evils of gloablised consumerism. This one is strictly for those who know their 303s from their 808s – and who don’t stop dancing ‘til Costcutters opens in the morning…
Spread over five main arenas in the strange tented village that is Butlins - with the added bonus of the Inn on The Green on the edge of the site providing the only chance for some outdoor boogying – there was always a pretty high chance of finding something to your tastes. In fact, more often than not, there were hard decisions to be made in the face of some cruel scheduling clashes.
Friday night kicked off in the Connoisseur’s Corner arena with a touch of acid jazz nostalgia courtesy of the Brand New Heavies. If that was a gentle way to ease your way into the weekend, the RPMs were soon ratcheted up.
As the clock ticked past midnight, things started going a bit Balearic in The SuncéBeat Dome with Kenny Dope’s disco-tinged house set. Indeed, so good was the doyen of New York house that we entirely missed both Paul ‘Trouble’ Anderson and Norman Jay back in the Connoisseur’s Corner. Doh.
The headline act for Friday was surely Carl Cox in the appropriately named Powerhouse arena, boasting the kind of sound system and light show that conjured foggy memories of the golden era of the super club.
Cox laid down a set which could only be described as anthemic. The climax surely being when he dropped the Frankie Knuckles produced ‘The Pressure’ – an arms-in-the-air moment if there ever was one.
Frankie’s legacy was everywhere to be seen at Southport last weekend, with barely a single DJ there not spinning one of his tunes in tribute. And the Godfather of House would surely have approved of the eclecticism on show; proof that the house music revolution has, over 25 years, spawned a beautiful smorgasbord of musical styles.
Saturday dawned bright and early (3pm) with one of the highlights of the whole weekend. DJ EZ’s old-skool UK garage set in The Funkbase was packed to the rafters with ageing B-boys, briefly transported back to late ‘90s London. Cutting in hit after hit after hit, EZ not only gave the most technically jaw-dropping performance I saw at Southport, but he created an atmosphere that made it hard to imagine most of his disciples (your humble correspondent included) had been soundly asleep about 90 minutes earlier!
The afternoon continued with a more sedate, though equally impressive, headline performance from Chaka Khan, backed by British soul survivors Incognito.
Saturday night kicked off with a live set from US jazz-funk collective Snarky Puppy. My greatest regret was missing a performance that my friend – a professional trumpet player who should know about these things – described as “the best live band I’ve seen this year”. Gar.
No worries. Back in The Funkbase, self-styled ‘White Man in Hammersmith Palais’ Dave Rodigan kept everyone bouncing with an iconic reggae set that joined the dots between dub, lover’s rock and jungle. All played out while the man himself – balding, bespectacled, in his 60s – bounced about at the front of the stage like a 15-year-old on speed.
Then came the weekend’s biggest dilemma. Kenny Dope playing an eclectic set in Connoisseur’s Corner vs a Carl Cox funk set vs hip hop legend Jazzy Jeff. I, possibly foolishly, tried dipping my toe into all three and – save for some sound quality issues with Kenny Dope – none disappointed.
The night was rounded off in style by Joey Negro, doing what he does best in a laid-back disco-house style.
By Sunday, a number of the arenas had closed and a few of the stalwarts had begun drifting back to normal life (presumably as they’d only paid their babysitters for 48 hours). But that didn’t stop many of my friends enjoying a live gospel choir accompanying Tony Humphries in The Powerhouse, followed by the mind-bending eight-deck spectacle known as the Basement Boys. All pretty impressive according to reports.
I, on the other hand, spent a blissful afternoon dancing like a Bez in the sunshine outside the Inn on the Green as Steve Wren and Schooly played back-to-back-to-back club classics. It was like Ibiza, if Ibiza had been built on the site of a Premier Inn… but none the worse for it.
At the height of the party, two grizzled-looking men in their 40s ran out of the bar to find their mates, embracing them and jumping around like teenage girls because the DJ had just dropped Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes’ ‘The Love I Lost’. And that incongruous image, better than any, captures the magic of Southport.
I’ll be going again. And if you can’t wait til next year, you can party under the Adriatic stars this summer as the organisers host the SunceBeat festival in Croatia in July. If you haven’t made holiday plans yet, you could do a whole lot worse…
Published on 27 May 2014 by Gavhollander
