Dingwalls celebrates 25 years of rock n roll!

I went along to Dingwalls on Sunday for an all day rock n roll party celebrating the 25th anniversary of the club.




Throughout the day and night, various djs (Mouse, Little Carl, Tall Mark and Jerry Chatabox) played jivers, boppers and strollers. Cheeky hep cat quartet, The Caezars, kicked off the live musical entertainment before headliners Big Sandy and his Fly Rite Boys took to the stage.




This Camden-based club is a London institution, and it showed, by the sheer amount of people who tuned out the celebrate at the Dingwalls 25th anniversary rock n roll dance. The place was packed!


The Caezars were bounding with energy - it's brilliant to see such a fun and charismatic British band, who are so young, take to the stage with so many well-established musical greats and wow audiences. I shall look forward to seeing them again at Viva Las Vegas next month!










Who doesn't love Big Sandy and his Fly Rite Boys? Certainly, everyone at Dingwalls on Sunday did, and this was reflected with a lot of audience interaction (and shot taking - did someone mention tequila?) throughout the show. Good to have 'em on UK shores again.








As with The Caezars, Big Sandy will also be playing at Viva Las Vegas!

Bopping & Knocking!

Fun fun fun fun funnnnnnnnnnn! That's what the past month of weekends have been!

Let me delve into the vaults of my memory, back to early October, when we headed to the 23 Club in Brisbane for the Bombshell Bop. The night was organised by Nor-Cal rockabilly ladies, The Bombshells, who are well known for their events celebrating rockabilly and hot-rodding.




I had never been to the 23 Club before, and I really liked the space and vibe of the place. It is big enough to fit quite a crowd, and there is a good dance floor - so of course we spent the whole night dancing our little socks off!




The bands that played were The Rhythm Shakers (from LA), Charlie Roman & The Teenage Werewolves (from SF) and Jailbreak! (from Fresno). They were all great, with fun sets and really danceable music. All of the musicians were also very entertaining with their performances and interacted with the crowd well.








Loads of friends and familiar faces filled the joint to celebrate the birthday of Kim Bombshell which made it extra fun! This was definitely one of my top nights out on this trip so far.


The weekend ended up being jam-packed full of good music and lots of dancing, as the next evening we donned our cowboy boots and headed to The Knockout to see the debut performance of The West Coast Ramblers (featuring Jay, who is also the drummer in The High-Rhythm Hustlers) and headliners Kit & The Branded Men (who I've been wanting to check out for a while now).








Both bands put on great performances - The West Coast Ramblers were so smooth, I never would have guessed it was their first live show, and Christina the lead singer/guitarist in Kit & The Branded Men has a really pretty singing voice and is a kick-ass (and very stylish) front person for the band.








I managed to get in a lot of really fun dances with my sweetheart, and we often had the dance floor to ourselves (which is always good, when the dance floor happens to be quite small). I have finally discovered that my cowboy boots are the best footwear for me to dance in at The Knockout. The floor is so uneven and bumpy, but I was able to spin comfortably and smoothly in the old boots. Yeeeehaaaawww!


Added bonuses to the night, aside from good music, friends and good dances, were; photoboothing (we had to do two takes, as a certain someone's big-ass cowboy hat kept edging me out of the frame in the first set...) trying a sip of Four Loko (I only had a sip as a) it was nasty and b) I felt tispy after one sip - that stuff is dangerous) and getting late-night papusas across the street at El Zocalo afterwards. Yum.

Rockin' to the rhythm of the LBC!

Ok, I am finally ready to write my thoughts on Rhythm Rocker, the rockabilly weekend held in Long Beach, California last month.


Held at the Seaport Marina hotel, this was the first ever Rhythm Rocker, and I was so excited at the prospect of recreating a little Viva Las Vegas vibe at the midway mark until the next one in April 2011. It was a fun weekend, and simultaneously disappointing, because let's face it, it was never going to be Viva.


The hotel was pretty crummy, or at least that's what the general opinion seemed to be amongst everyone there. To me though, it was almost luxurious compared to the weekenders held at Pontin's Holiday Camps across the UK! There was not a plastic bedsheet or electricity meter in sight! Our room was big and comfortable and had a great 'dressing up' area that was well lit, with a big mirror. To counterbalance the wonder of that though, we only had one bedside table, no chest of drawers and no fridge. The rooms were all completely different, with some of our friends having smaller, uglier rooms with precarious mattresses but a full set of furniture and one even had a fireplace! The best, was the mushrooms growing out of the ceiling in the hallway though....




But enough about the decor, let's talk bands. The line-up was pretty damn good, with Big Boy Bloater headlining from the UK on the Friday night, a Sun Records tribute (featuring Big Sandy and Carl Sonny Leyland, amongst others) on the Saturday night and Miss Mary-Anne & the Ragtime Wranglers on Sunday. All three headliners were awesome and really fun to dance to, although my highlight of the whole weekend was seeing The Cleftones on Saturday night. Swoon. Dancing with my loverboy to 'I only have eyes for you' was particularly magical....












Unfortunately, the weather was a bit gloomy for the entire duration of the weekend, with grey skies and not even a hint of sunshine. It wasn't cold, but let's just say the pool party was not well attended, and those that were there were fully clothed!


Now this is where the weekender fell down for me. Due to the gloomy weather hardly anyone went to the main courtyard during the daytimes, despite there being bands, djs and vendors (which on the whole, were a little disappointing) set up out there. This detracted from the weekender feel for me, as it meant that people only really went out to the main ballroom at night, and the daytimes were a bit disconnected. I still had a few dances and chatted to some friends in the courtyard at various points, but there were not really enough people out there at all times to encourage a proper party atmosphere.








On other weekenders I have attended, there are always lots of people milling about and dancing, practically 24 hours a day. Which brings me to my next point - the music cut off at 2am each night, at which point everyone was sent back to their rooms. This is supremely rubbish, as the whole point of travelling somewhere for a whole weekend, is that the music goes on late and you have the option of cramming in as much partying and dancing as you like, with the added bonus of being able to pop back to your room at intervals for a quick nap or an outfit change. Had they not shut down the main room, I am positive the party would have continued into the morning, because it was really fun until they hit the lights and kicked everyone out!
















All in all I had a fun weekend. It was great to go somewhere new, but also have a lot of friends around, with great music and an extremely close proximity to In'n'Out Burger....














As with any new venture, there are things that worked, but also a number of improvements that could be made. Whilst this was not the best weekender I have ever been on, I still enjoyed many aspects of it, and had a lot of fun dancing, meeting new people, joking around with friends and seeing some top quality live music. Would I go back and spend the same amount of money on flights, hotel, ticket etc? Not unless some significant changes are made. I do, however, hope that the weekender continues to be a yearly event and I look forward to seeing it get better and better.