A
Background to
This dissertation
will be a study of a night club in
Figure 1.1 –
Map of the
South West of
The most recent boost to
This massive influx of
students, with more yet still to come when the
new medical centre on the university campus fully opens later this
year, has
meant that the leisure industry in
“
(Bill Hackett, cited in
Robinson,
2000:76).
However, the decline of
numbers in the Royal Navy has meant that this is
no longer the case, “today there are more students here than
servicemen, and
the University has overtaken the Navy as the biggest employer in the
town”
(Simpson, 2002). Most of the bottom end
of
“In the early nineties Union
Street became very much the hub of the Westcountry
rave scene, two clubs in particular led the way – the Dance Academy and
the
Warehouse” (Robinson, 2000). I personally
remember queuing for two hours to get into Warehouse, and speaking to
people
who had travelled from as far as
“People were coming from as
far down as
Land’s End as far up as Exeter, they were running buses from Exeter,
Torquay,
St Austell, three or four buses from each major town every time and of
course
this got into the major magazines, so people from further a field,
Birmingham
and London would come down to sample the nightlife” (Darren Cox cited
in
Robinson, 2000:96).
The Dance Academy is still a
relatively popular venue hosting the
monthly drum ‘n’ bass night “Legends of the Dark Black”, which draws in
large
crowds of mainly students as the club does not have a particularly good
name
for itself amongst the locals, due to the unfriendly attitude of the
owner and
the door staff. The Warehouse, where I
first experienced the joys of clubbing, sadly closed in 1997 and was
transformed
into what is now Millennium, a club that offers commercial music, all
you can
drink for £10 and a rather dubious clientele comprised of
extremely drunken
young people. It is, unfortunately, the
place to go for many of the
There are still a small
number of clubs and pubs on
The Bus Stop (the location
for this study) is neither situated in the
city centre or in particularly close proximity to the university
(although
within walking distance of both). I will
investigate whether the club’s location has any bearing on its
popularity later
on.
·
·
The Bus Stop
Figure 1.2 - Map to show the location of The Bus Stop
in
(Source: multimap.com, 2003) Scale 1:5,000.
A
Background to Club Culture
This section will give a
background to nightclub culture as a youth
subculture. It will first be necessary
to look at the work of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies
(C.C.C.S.) which first developed the concept of youth subcultures and
then move
on to how and why club culture developed and became what it is today,
in the
Hall et al (1976) wanted to
examine why and how youth groups were
formed. Youth only really came into
existence after the second world war when, with the advances in
industrialization
and technology, it was no longer necessary for people to go straight
into a
working life at an early age and there was much more leisure time
available. There was no longer the
immediate jump from childhood to adulthood, but there was a transitory
period
in between when a child became an adult, they may have been continuing
their
studies or just enjoying life. This
period of life between childhood and adulthood became known as youth,
“’Youth’
appeared as an emergent category in post-war
There is never just one
culture, society is always split into different
groups and there is always a dominant group.
At the time when members of the C.C.C.S. were
investigating youth
cultures they believed that these different groups are always a result
of
different classes within society, “in modern societies, the most
fundamental
groups are the social classes” (Hall et al 1976:13) and the creation of
youth
subcultures was a response to the breaking down of class barriers at
the
time. Phil Cohen (1972) argued that,
“when working-class communities are undergoing change and displacement
– when
the ‘parent culture’ is no longer cohesive – youth (and the focus here
is
always on working-class youth) responds by becoming subcultural. Subcultures thus become a means of expressing
and, for Cohen, also ‘resolving’ the crisis of class” (Gelder
1997:84-85). This is no longer applicable
in today’s
society as class is no longer such an influential factor in societal
groupings,
but I will examine this further later on.
Hall et al (1976) identify
five specific social changes that caused the
creation of youth cultures. The first
was the increasing affluence of youth, “the increased importance of the
market
and consumption, and the growth of ‘Youth-oriented’ leisure industries”
(18), a
specific market appeared purely to cater for the youth, supplying, for
example,
youth clothing and youth leisure opportunities as the youth were
experiencing
rising levels of disposable income.
Secondly, the spread of culture due to increased
communications led to,
“the arrival of mass communications, mass
entertainment, mass art and mass
culture” (18). The most influential of
all was the arrival of commercial television.
This enabled the youth greater access to youth culture and
“the means of
‘imitation’ and ‘manipulation’ on a national scale” (19).
Thirdly, were the destructive effects of the
war, it was felt that the breakdown in family life, caused by absent
fathers,
led to increased levels of youth delinquency.
Fourthly, there were changes in education.
“This interpretation pin-pointed two developments
above all – ‘secondary
education for all’ in age-specific schools, and the massive extension
of higher
education” (20). As mentioned earlier,
the fact that people no longer had to go immediately to work at an
early age
meant that another life stage, between childhood and adulthood, was
created,
“subcultural youth may also replace a lost sense of working-class
‘community’
with subcultural ‘territory’ – a shift which is symptomatic of the
relocation
of youthful expression to the field of leisure rather than work”
(Gelder
1997:85). Finally, there was a massive
style explosion, a huge varying range of different ways to dress and
different
music to listen to led to the creation of a number of different
cultures (or subcultures) within the main youth
culture.
For so long as people have
had leisure time there have been nightclubs
in which to socialise and listen to music.
However, the origins of the nightclub that would be
recognisable to us
today, with the DJ mixing vinyl records together for the clubbers to
dance to,
was in the gay disco scene of the late 1960s, early 1970s New York,
with a man
named Francis Grasso as the first modern DJ (Brewster and Broughton
1999). Disco was the start of the
nightclub scene
and soon discos were springing up all over the world,
“After the disco sound proved
to be so
irresistible, so universal and so effective,
disco swept through the wider world like a new kind of fast food. It enjoyed a brief but near-total dominance
of the global music machine, it made billions and it brought
nightclubbing
resolutely into the mainstream. In the
process, it also changed much about the music business and the
profession of
the DJ”.
(Brewster and Broughton
1999:182-183)
Disco clubs were fun and
funky, colourful and sparkly. They were
the epitome of the gay scene,
flamboyant clientele danced to funked-up party tunes and developed into
the
house music clubs around today.
In the mid to late 1970s
hip-hop and break dancing were born in the
Bronx of New York,
“The Bronx DJs … wanted to
throw a better
party than their rival up the block. In
fact, they were creating an entirely new and revolutionary genre of
music and
sowing the seeds for several more… hip-hop is now a whole culture
(indeed,
‘hip-hop’ is not now strictly synonymous with ‘rap music’; instead the
term
refers specifically to the cultural trinity of rap music, graffiti and
break
dancing)”. (Brewster and Broughton
1999:224)
The hip-hop parties started
out on the streets and moved into derelict
housing blocks, paving the way for the dark, dingy hip-hop clubs of
today. Hip-hop has always been a ‘street’
thing with
a macho attitude, “The rise of graffiti and break dancing offered less
dangerous ways to express your male competitiveness” (Brewster and
Broughton
1999:239). Break dancing ‘battles’ and
graffiti ‘fights’ are still common place today within the hip-hop
culture,
“it’s weapons are sprayed words … this fight is between two graffiti
artists
and takes place on the wall (Macdonald 2001:1).
Disco died and next came
house.
The style of music took its name from the club in which it
originated,
“the word ‘house’ came from the Warehouse [in
“A ‘house record’ could be
one belonging
to a particular club. It could be a song
which simply ‘rocked the house’. A
‘house party’ was more intimate and friendly than a club, and of course
‘house’
conjured up the idea of family, of belonging to something special. If you were a part of it, house was your
home”.
(Brewster and Broughton
1999:318)
Club culture, as we know it,
was still yet to arrive in the UK, however,
in 1985 house travelled from Chicago to London, “no one in Chicago had
expected
their music to have an impact outside of the city, but it was in the UK
that
this music would rise it’s greatest heights” (Brewster and Broughton
1999:338)
and ‘Acid House’ was born.
Acid House gave rise to rave culture, which
was probably the biggest subcultural explosion in
“This section applies to a
gathering on land in the open air of 100 or more persons (whether or
not
trespassers) at which amplified music is played during the night (with
or
without intermissions) and is such as, by reason of its loudness and
duration
and the time at which it is played, is likely to cause serious distress
to the
inhabitants of the locality; and for this purpose:
(a) such a gathering
continues during intermissions in the music and, where the gathering
extends
over several days, throughout the period during which amplified music
is played
at night (with or without intermissions); and
(b) "music"
includes
sounds wholly or predominantly characterized by the emission of a
succession of
repetitive beats.
A constable in uniform who
reasonably suspects that a person is
committing an offence under this section may arrest him without a
warrant.”
(The British Government,
1994).
The act was
passed in 1994 and “although other youth movements had inspired new
legislation, never before, over years of post-war moral panics about
the
activities of Teddy Boys, Mods, Hippies and Punks, had a government
considered
young people’s music so subversive as to prohibit it” (Collin 1998:223).
The music was
forced back into clubs and the
Clubs are so
important to youth cultures of today, which club you go to defines who
you
are. A club will have its own style of
music, dress, clientele and décor with certain stereo-types
attached to these
factors to define those who frequent the clubs.
The club space in turn is influenced by all of these
factors to make it
what it is. Each club is different, they
may play the same styles of music but even at the most basic, the venue
will be
different, clubs are now housed in all sorts of buildings from old
cinemas to
purpose built clubs and this in itself will differentiate one club from
another. Each club will have its own
specific clientele, groups of young people will nearly always have one
favourite club, especially in smaller towns or cities where there is
only a few
clubs to choose from, with maybe only one club playing their favourite
style of
music and all of this will differ depending on which town or city you
are in,
as Thornton notes, “although club culture is a global phenomenon, it is
at the
same time firmly rooted in the local.
Dance records and club clothes may be easily imported and
national, but
dance crowds tend to be municipal, regional and national” (1995:3). Some clubs are seen as ‘cool’ others not so
cool and some as dives, but again this will differ depending on who you
are
speaking to. The same as certain clubs
are given labels as to how cool they are, or not as the case may be, so
will
those who frequent them.
I wanted to
investigate these issues further, what is it that makes a space a club
space? Does the club define those who
frequent it or do the clientele define the club? How
much effect does the décor of a club have
on its coolness rating? Why do people
frequent particular clubs? What is more
important, the social or the music? I
intend to answer all of these questions in this study and hopefully
understand
further the importance of club culture to today’s youth.