Hung Up @ Beyond

On Sunday I went out with Patrick and Peter to Beyond. This day club is located in Vauxhall, a once industrial area that is now home to the MI6 headquarters, and many a gay club and bar that is rivalling in size the traditional village in the West End.


One of the last tracks of the day was the SDP Extended Dub remix of Madonna's new single, Hung Up. It's a great track, with a minimum of vocals on the remix. You have to listen very hard to hear Madonna's voice, as it is drowned out by the heavy sampling of ABBA's Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight).

In the November issue of Attitude, Madonna is quoted as saying, "I'm not in the mood for a ballad. I can't be bothered. I wanna dance!". We all know that's PR code for, "my last album tanked, and I have to do a Kylie-esque return to my pop roots to sell some discs". But not a minute too soon, I reckon. The track is released this Friday.

You can also check out more pictures of Beyond in my Beyond photo set.

Fiction and Salvation

Our regular favourite nightclub is Fiction, a Friday night party at The Cross nightclub. It's located just north of Kings Cross station, under the arches, near the goods yard. The location and decor is best described as casbah-meets-bomb-shelter. Check out my Fiction photo set for more photos.

My favourite London night out is at Salvation, a once-a-month party held at the Café de Paris on Coventry Street between Leicester Square and Piccadilly. Unfortunately I only have some grainy photos at the moment, in my Salvation photo set.

This is the party that I described as like walking on to a Falcon film set. The venue is something out-of-this-world. Built eighty years ago, it was the London nightspot for a very long time, favoured at variuos times by Princess Margaret, the Duchess of Kent, Jerry Hall, Mick Jagger, Boy George etc etc. Now it's used for functions and regular special events. Located two stories below ground level, it was the only London nightspot allowed to remain open during World War II. The owner claimed that the five stories of masonry above the club would protect the partygoers from a direct hit. That proved false when the building suffered a direct hit, with the bomb landing on the Cafe de Paris dance floor!