MUSIC WHILE SOBER
We Run The Night
Music from the club that is perfect for your creative space — no narcotics required
Allow me to offer you some anodynes for the night.
En route to dinner yesterday evening Spotify gave me an alert. Everything But The Girl (EBTG) has released a new track “Nothing Left To Lose”. Plugged my headphones and had a listen. Seconds in, it kicked me back to my old clubbing days of entertaining remixes, one-hit wonders, rarities, and B-sides.
When you’re into dance clubs but not into the recreational drugs that accompany the scene, the music becomes everything. Neither was I into alcohol at the time. Being lucid and cogent to the sights and sounds around me, I recall the unsexy times seeing folks vomit, curled, flat, and seated outstretched outside the clubs and on pavements.
I had had to deal with friends, cousins and bosses wasted, finding them sitting on some random dude’s lap (Hani, that’s you at Piccadilly). Friends getting into scuffles over practically nothing worthy of fighting - once, over a car that honked while I crossed the road (right, Keith “Keepoo” Foo?). A friend slipped and cut her lips on the sidewalk and kept saying, “What’s my name?” (that’s you, Anita).
The part I‘m amused most when smashed to their senses, is when they’re hugging and professing, “I love you, bro, you’re my best buddy in the world” and watching friends like one named Lin who drank enough courage on her first attempt and warbled Oasis’ “Wonderwall” to her crush, not realizing I had recorded everything for bribery purposes. That’s what friends are for, sang Dionne Warwick.
And then there were the cry babies, the snivelers, and grumblers, the ones who couldn’t stop whining about their pointless relationship/life/job on a firecracker Friday night (so fucking you, Daniel).
“Cover the face, bash the base”
“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”
“When lights go black, you don’t turn back”
“With beer goggles, everyone’s a perfect 10”
Everything to them was a blur, and many stupid things were said to be forgotten. Everything to me was a thumping beast. If anyone tells you you need to be smashed to have a good time, tell them to fuck off. That ain’t true. On alcohol, you miss out so much on the priceless detail.
I may regret not hitting Ibiza at 32 which was a goal at the time (I’ll make up for it somehow), but never do I regret not drinking during those sweaty, humid nights of runny mascaras and smoky-eyes-turned-badger-eyes. I wore a badge of honor crawling home at 7 am reeking all the smells in the world and needing a good, long, hot shower.
But how you want to drive and ride the music is up to you. I like being present to appreciate the music and when I’m not dancing and pulsing to the demon, I was living it speeding on the highways.
While my friends needed their nicotine fix or were rolling and smoking their blunts, I’d get into my car and blast the speakers. Music was my drug. It gave me all the high and stimulant I needed to get to the next project, next relationship, next idea, next chapter of whatever we call it in life.
Triggered by the EBTG alert, here are some of the best tracks I’d bring with me to the afterlife as I caper and gambol through Eden, or whatever the fuck it is out there when we’re dead. I’d like to think it’s a massive no-smoking and drug-free club with Freddie Mercury hosting with fancy-dressed dwarves (the way he liked them). Always. Let’s keep them powder-free, Mercury.
The following may not be in chronological order, but who’s checking, right?
Seconds into this track I can’t help but bring out EBTG’s classic “Missing” Todd Terry Remix from my playlist. Missing makes a perfect cruising jam as you drive towards a sunset, echoes of work start to dissipate from your head, and the weekend horns of nothingness emerge from the crown. Never dull, never out of style.
There was a time when everyone I knew was singing to Sarah McLachlan’s “Sweet Surrender”, “Adia” and “Building A Mystery”. Granted, all fantastic tracks (her six albums from Touch to Surfacing underscoring Fumbling Towards Ecstasy are as precious as first edition comic books) albeit played to death.
Delerium took McLachlan’s Silence and morphed it into a hypnotic trance. It didn’t end there. Tiesto and Buuren have each spun their own remixes but this — with Delerium’s touch of Gregorian chant — remains my favorite when eyeliner’s on fleek and the night at the club has just started.
Of course, what’s a night out without Pitbull calling out “Miss Worldwide” Havana Brown with an iconic clubbing anthem “We Run The Night”. A track that is perhaps one of the best generic party bangers of all time. Even today, if they play this at the supermarket, I’d be banging along the aisles riding my trolley. The best mood-lifter that does not come in pill form. To quote Pitbull: “From Miami, Morocco, Australia, and worldwide!” Thank you Miss Brown for showing us how to run the night(s).
Tom Jones’ “Sex Bomb” Peppermint Disco Radio Edit is another get-up-and-dance caller even if you’ve been burned to a crisp from a long week at the office. Its disco vibe makes it not too soft, not too hard, and not too acid. A chill, sexy come-hither, Sex Bomb is the Red Bull drink you thought you didn’t need but glad you took in small sips rather than gulped. Leave it to an old dapper like Jones to flirt with you using such lyrics and get away with it:
“Spy on me baby use satellite
Infrared to see me move through the night
Aim gonna fire shoot me right
I’m gonna like the way you fight
Now you found the secret code I use
To wash away my lonely blues
So I can’t deny or lie cause you’re
The only one to make me fly
You know what you’re
Sex bomb Sex bomb you’re a Sex bomb
Make me explode although you know
The route to go to sex me slow
And yes, I must react to claims of those
Who say that you are not all that.
Sexbomb Sexbomb you’re a Sexbomb
You can give it to me, when I need to come along
Sexbomb sexbomb you’re my sexbomb
And baby you can turn me on”
Hitting the apex of the night has to be “Clandestina” Cocaina Remix by FILV, Edmofo, and Emma Peters. A track that raises your femininity to its maximum level and chances are you’ve already caught the attention of a good-looking hunk or two … only to ignore them and get back to dancing (because that’s what you came for).
Clandestina is a close call with Madonna’s “Celebration” a remix that teases her 90’s pop version. I’m not a fan of the bubblegum version. This remix puts the original track into a high-powered super suit like Iron Man that keeps you shuffling and shooting lasers into the night at 2.30 am.
Out of the clubbing scene and into my late forties does not stop me from enjoying my brew of bass. Your ears will never stray from a good hypnotic piece of potential. That’s what I discovered through “Trench” by Fetish. A 2022 release from the album Banga, it’s dark and lustrous, smooth and sensual, a naked narcotic trance into the belly of the beast, Trench is currently on heavy rotation in my creative space. A track perfect for any insurrection, a piece I describe as a three-minute wicked sex.
Easing the night or, as my instructor would say cooling down, after hours of dancing would be one of my all-time favorites by The XX from 2009 called “Intro”. Instrumental and starting off with drumming of the human heartbeat, Intro is as chill as your lover should be on a holiday by the beach or sobered at the end of the night of clubbing.
It’s the perfect track to listen to as you lie down like dried salted fish baking under the Southeast Asian sun without a care in the world except to ask your lover, what shall we eat for dinner? After all good music is one thing, good food is another. The rest, well, I leave it to you and yours.
Now over to you Scott-Ryan Abt, my fellow music fiend, on what he plays while kicking up a storm in his kitchen/workspace, in his sexy little piece.
