m1lan´s blOg

In 1986 there were around 20 clubs in London you could choose from to spend your Saturday night in. None of them played house music and most shut by 3 a.m. Now, Time Out (a clubguide in London) lists over 50 clubs on Saturday, most still open at dawn. Clubbing (also referred to as ’kluphopping’) has become a mass leisure pursuit and it deeply affects everyday life in Britain. It involves the music industry, the fashion industry, media, advertising; it has become a colossal consumer blow-out. There is no stereotyped image of a clubber; they can be fairly well-off people, students, unemployed, working people who need to be in the office at 9 on Monday morning, teenagers, people from all classes of society. Music and the opportunity to have a good time dancing and interacting brings them together. Football does not attract everyone, neither does clubbing, but it offers a getaway from ordinary life. What started underground has become Britain’s new mainstream. "It is hard to remember what nightlife was like before house music swept through the British consciousness, transforming all around it" (quote from Matthew Colin). People who have been in the scene since the beginning look back with longing and even grief; it used to be just normal people raving to loud music in a dirty old warehouse, now at its worst it can be ‘elegant kluphopping in a posh club, wearing the latest trendy outfit, looking cool and bored to death because the right people are not there, and where even music does not play any role’. Britain and most of all London are the trendsetters in many aspects, and their influence is visible in popular culture all over the world. Clubbing has become an answer well worth considering to the question of how to spend a Saturday night.