CLUBBING
Ruth Collins celebrates News Years Eve at Alexandra Palace
West Hampstead to All Pally shouldn't take longer than a mere 1 hr. You'd think. In my woefully near-to-virginal London experience, you simply get on the tube, sit tight, possibly contemplate the wonders of the British capital for a bit, and are miraculously transported to the dream stop of your choice all in less than ten minutes. The case is tragically not so. At 12.45pm I am still sat on the God-Forsaken f**cking tube, seven stops away from what looked set to be one of the most luxurious, stylish nights out I'd had in years. Ever even. My dreams of the doe-eyed Stone Roser Ian Brown, and the delectable Primal Scream seeing me glamorously into the early hours of 2001, all in a PALACE, loomed dashed to smithereens. Suddenly, it became that somewhere, dithering about in that tube-propelled, fifteen-minute wilderness between two years, urgently hinged my entire happiness, well-being, and life's good-fortune. I leaped out of the tube and got a cab. No New Year, it seems, can ever bloody well run smoothly. I blame this entirely on my dimwitted boy companion for the night. Clearly. The cab driver was sympathetic to our cause, but unfortunately not of the maniac-gangster temperament necessary to lawlessly ignore all road convention, and deliver us to celebrate the strike of midnight on time. So alas, when thousands of lucky, lucky revelers indulged to the dulcet tones of the Prodigy's Liam Howlett in the interiors of Alexandra Palace, I, feeling like an extremely sober, just-missed-the-ball Cinderella, watched the neon-green numbers on our cabbie's digital clock treacherously shift into the double-zero zone of the New Year. And nearly cried. The cabbie, meanwhile, whistled Old Lang Sine. Arriving at a New Year party on the stroke of midnight, however, is vastly underrated. Especially at Alexandra Palace. Where as capital cities all over the globe apparently enjoyed far-more spectacular celebrations than Britain's past-it London, those perched upon the planes surrounding Ally Pally at midnight were treated to thousands of firework-displays showering colour and sulphur-dioxide over the City's horizon, as far as the eye could see. Fantastic. As for INSIDE the palace … Well, celebrating New Year with thousands of revelers you don't know from Adam, I'm just not convinced is a brilliant idea. Especially when pretty much all of said revelers appear to be outfitted in unconvincing Ian Brown, Liam Gallagher or Tim Burgess apparels. Hmmm. I felt an out-cast, poorly equipped with no extra eyebrow material or Mod wig in my hand-bag to blend in. Being a VIP press-person, however, I held out for the play-pen-like guest area to make me feel more at home, and, on first impressions, was ecstatic at seeing a bottle of champers propped up on our VIP bar. 'OOOO, free champagne - how lovely' I coo, greedily appropriating said bottle. '£30, to you, mate' someone barks, one half of a stoney-eyed couple not only far richer than I, but evidently extremely ungenerous with their bubbly. Not a problem, I'll settle for Red-Stripe, methinks. At a mere £3 a can. £3? Fine! Bloody fine! New Year's in a club wouldn't be the same, after all, without burning large quantities of cash as part of the celebration. Lead me to the bonfire, baby. Alexandra Palace itself is impressive, though, it has to be said. Mincing about galleries, wide staircases, balconies and the like, my God I felt a queen. The room that bit the bullet though, was more of a giant hall, heat radiating from the shiny, paneled floor, walls grandly flanked with charming water features and, to my utmost delight, the most luxurious, high-grade foliage, ever: palm trees. Rich, tropical, green. And all in London. As for the music, well, I missed my own personal God, Ian Brown, while naively planning my ill- fated route across London at around 9.30pm. However, one reveler assured me in stilted, dictaphone-wary sentances, that the sculpted-cheek-bone God was still indeed, 'a legend alive'.
Despite poor acoustics, Primal Scream were fantastic, chiming away 'Kill All Hippies' with top, screamin' finesse, and encoring with the wonderful 'Higher Than The Sun'. Unfortunately, crazy dub-meister Adrian Sherwood (Onusound) had severe problems filtering their mellow, bombastic noises through waves and waves of distortion. Although the concept of playing the most extraordinary dub extremely loudly to the inner-regions of a grand palace is, of course, paramount to decadence itself, in actuality, there were disproportionately few of us f**cked enough to burst our ear-drums to stomach-churning bass. And enjoy it. So, the grand hall emptied. It was at this point, sat on the dirty palace floor as if partaking in a picnic with by-now-gurning, dimwitted boy companion, that I met Wolfie from Germany.
Now, something truly fantastic that I now sincerely believe should be made compulsory for all five-star-superclubs is a fairground ride. Something of which Ally Pally had many. A snip at £2.50 a go. Wicked.
Funfairs in clubs. Amazing. And the DJs that shone like a galaxy, at the time sounding so delectably stimulating they were almost post-modern - daaaling, were those proponents of very sexy, french-sounding, mixed-up electro beats, Layo and Bushwacka. Shame about the house interludes. New Year's in a palace. Hot, sweaty, and very very sexy.
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