i-want-more

What goes up must come down

In the early part of this century, I had a favourite club night or two. The most favourite of these was Impotent Fury. This was primarily held at the 333 club, with a late transfer to the (inferior) 93 Feet East.

I first heard about Impotent Fury from Olaf, a friend of a friend. When I first met him he was wearing a Bros T-shirt: a kindred spirit, you could say. Being Scottish and having lived in Edinburgh, Olaf had frequented a precursor of IF called Misery. This was a high concept club par excellence. The big idea was that your evening was made miserable for you. Terrible music would be played. Students paid double the admission fee. The theme even ran through to the cloakroom, where you’d pay your money and your belongings would be thrown onto the floor. The DJ at this club was a Londoner called Fred Deakin. Olaf mentioned that Fred was back in London and had set up IF, and it might be just the thing for me, as a fellow lover of kitsch and the esoteric.

Impotent Fury was a reaction against the club nights where you ended up dancing to the same thing all night. The idea was simple. Every half an hour, The Wheel of Destiny would be spun by a glamorous lady from North of the Border, Saucy Sal, to determine the musical genre/artiste that you heard for the following half an hour. This was ideal because Fred's taste was pretty catholic, so it made for a refreshing night out. You’d find yourself groaning when the wheel landed on Country & Western, then inexplicably doci-do-ing to Ruby, don’t take your love to town within seconds. P-Funk, Madonna, Heavy Metal, Two Tone, Stevie Wonder, Drum ‘n’ Bass (with live toasting), Goth, Children’s TV themes…loads of stuff was covered.

When a break was needed from dancing, you could wander downstairs. There would usually be karaoke, which was run by a pissed and belligerent Scottish man. The first time I encountered him he was dressed as Mr Blobby and was duetting with a drunk girl on Ebony and Ivory. I sang twice, both times at 93 Feet East (I Want Candy by myself, and a disastrous duet on Islands in the Stream with toocool), which I think was the night we saw Fred himself singing Total Eclipse of the Heart, his face painted like Spiderman.

There were other diversions. ‘The Joy of Fax’, which usually involved faxing obscene, badly-drawn pictures to Wallpaper magazine, or the Deputy Prime Minister. There was always a rail full of musty second hand clothes to bedeck yourself with. Other props, such as blow up guitars, would be thrown to the punters (always fun for the Rock half-hour). New Romantic Face Painting – which, as you can imagine, started off well, but ended badly by the time the people applying the face paint were drunk.

Fred had a day job – as a graphic designer. The flyers, badges and animated visuals for the club were created by him and his colleagues at his design agency Airside. He would flash an animated logo up that said Lemon Jelly from time to time. It wasn’t until Lemon Jelly started getting featured as incidental music on Spaced (and seemingly every ad on TV) that I made the connection.

When the band stuff took off for Fred, Impotent Fury nights petered out. We would await their announcement in Time Out with anticipation, but they came round much less often. As I hinted previously, the move to 93 Feet East didn’t really work for me. We had a couple of pretty duff nights there, if I’m honest (despite a gorgeous chap making eyes at us, see here). Toocool recently recalled the last one we went to, where rapper Gold Chains played (he was rubbish), and an associate of hers lost her credit card (which she’d been keeping in her knickers, for some reason). We left feeling disappointed and Esther left feeling poor.

Some great Impotent Fury memories

Fred giving grief to two drunk/drugged up guys who tried to fix the wheel by holding it, during the last half hour of one particular night. They wanted Masters at Work. As punishment, he gave them the theme to Fireman Sam.

Dancing to Never Let Her Slip Away by Andrew Gold – played during an AOR half hour. A most unlikely thing to happen in Shoreditch.

Wigging out to an ecstatic 12" version of hi-NRG classic High Energy by Evelyn Thomas. This song, along with Electronic's Get the Message, never fail to take me back to this time.

Going to IF with a huge pack of friends in the autumn of 2000. This was also the night of the Mitsubishi/Maxell ad incident. If you’ve never heard this anecdote, ask me. I have some photos of that evening somewhere which I’ll post as soon as I can locate them.

The Scottish guy who ran the karaoke, dressed as a vicar and drunk as a lord, wailing Rock n Roll Suicide at the close of the night.

Walking into the club at about half ten as some punters were coming out, saying 'this place is shit'. The first genre of the night was 90s Pop and Fred was playing S Club Party. Oh dear...


I gathered recently when I was looking to link to a page on the web about the club (any page!) that Fred had done a one-off night back in February, sans wheel (it’s broken, apparently). I was sort of gutted that I missed this. Never mind.

posted by deafdisco @ 6:48 pm