LATE LICENCE

As yet life without indoor snouts hasn't proved too taxing. I haven't been caught licking the carpets of boozers and venues to get a fluffy nicotine hit so far. Despite the heavens' crooked attempts to kill all smokers in the South Yorkshirean Republic via drowning, the dedicated masses have been outside venues puffing away defiantly in the rain. Pubs are now half-empty and smell of guff, clam, dab, and Lynx Africa. It's lovely, make no mistake.

Night-time frolicking has been high on the agenda, due to the pressing need to overcome the misery of the biblical torrents by getting royally bollocksed. If I can't get my plutonium coloured chest all bronze and buff with some skin roasting sessions in the park then I'm gonna devote myself to the pursuit of a proper paunch. Interspersed in this hectic schedule of binge drinking there have been a glut of goings on and hi-NRG evenings well worthy of the nocturnal battle cry, 'My sweet bitch.' Those bass-loving mentalists C90 threw an international soundclash right at the close of June in the dimly lit guts of the Ethio Cubana Restaurant.

Ragga, dancehall, dub step and baille funk all collided in the small dance floor where people jived recklessly, dwarfed by two towering speaker stacks. The bar staff threw spirits about with gay abandon, the decks roared in the kitchen, the MC jabbered from one of the booths in the darkness and the air was thick with the fug of high grade whacky baccy. Rio De Janeiro's DJ Maga Bo proved himself to be a terrifyingly huge bloke and a hot DJ to boot as he dropped bomb after bomb of baille funk goodness. As we did one, DubBoy and Heatwave were battling it out over who had the tastiest in upfront reggae and party ragga. People were falling over each other on the floor while the seriously stonked caught zs in the surrounding booths. Excellent electronic chaos.

If you like your evenings to go on a little later and possibly a little larger in the messy stakes then you need to throw your cap into Kabal's nocturnal ring. Bashed out a week after C90 at the EC restaurant this naughty do utilised both floors of the building and promised food til dawn for the hungry raver. Downstairs the dapper pair of Max Power obsessives Toddla T and Pipes set the temperature to 'scalding' by boiling up a truly riotous vibe powered mainly by massive amounts of bass. The big bomb proved to be the Herve rerub of the latest Roisin Murphy 12 inch. It comes in a bright orange sleeve, possesses some extremely wonky sub bass wooferness, beats jacked up to the max and several extra rave feathers in it's rude cap.

It's totally disgusting. Upstairs the more dad friendly disco of Dan J and Danny Mager set rumps a-pounding. Kabal is moving to another secret city centre location for a shindig to celebrate the release of Toddla T's debut solo single at the beginning of September. Keep your ears to the ground people.

Our Rough Disko crew were allowed out this month and drunk and disorderly was the watch word. We spun a whole host of diskettes and swallowed as much warm Carling as possible at the latest No Uniform evening down at the Harley, a pub more famous for its gin than warm cooking lager we were drinking that night. The sign outside saying 'Music and gin' is a foolproof marketing ploy. Darlings of the Splitscreen did their harmonised rockatronic jerk while we proved that if people are fucked enough they will dance to absolutely anything.

Elsewhere we caught the back end of the 7 by 7 all-dayer down at Dulo. We'd been drinking real ale for most of the day so memories are thin on the ground but it was going off in the tent at the back. Drum and bass and all sorts of house business was the soundtrack to a lot of drunk folk stumbling around (myself included). Having just been savaged by an intense overdose of high quality kebabage I rolled round for a bit before scooping my senses off the floor to go and perform a series of high kicks in the road outside the boozer.

Earlier in the day we'd attended a festival thrown by the Green Party. Various bearded warriors of the Green crew tried to bribe people to join up in exchange for a free pint of hemp. Surely bribery is against the green, ethical ethos? A local transvestite did his singing bit, scaring small children in the process and a lady won a green badge for services to greendom. She'd never caught a bus, been to Glastonbury, never eaten any meat, never flown, sleeps on a bed of flowers and emits chick-pea scented carbon neutral guff. Hats off to her. No, seriously, I'm determined to leave every electrical appliance I own on standby, overfill my kettle and burn plastic in the street just to ensure her efforts have been in vain.

Jim Ottewill

Jimsandman@hotmail.com