Grabbing onto memories

A long time ago, what seems like many lifetimes ago there was a club in Rhyl. It was the only place that didn't play the usual chart tunes and bland antiseptic dance music. The carpets were sticky and the beer was quite frankly horrible but the people and the music made it fabulous. It was friendly in a town where friendly didn't count for anything.

The legends around the doorman were that he'd been one of Ali's sparring partners when he come over to the UK for one fight or another. He was certainly old enough but he was built solid and had a shock of white hair, mustaches and a pipe firmly and continuously clamped between his teeth. He very rarely said anything but it was always worth listening when he did. It always amused me this dichotomy of this gentleman in full black tie and dinner jacket surround by scruffy grunge kids moping around the dance floor.

What The Bistro, for that was its name, represented to me was something more than a club, it was the environment where I thought I fitted. Everyone in there was a misfit of one sort or another so I felt right at home. I'd been to dance clubs before but I rapidly found I had nothing in common with most of the people in there, who were there to get drunk, get dancing and get laid or any combination of those three. I've always been a bit strange but that didn't sound like a good time to me and if I was going to have to listen to obscenely loud music I felt it should at least be something I'd like to hear at home.

The bistro played rock grunge, indie, alternative basically anything that you wouldn't hear at a regular club, I remember they had to ban 'smell like teen spirit' because the moshing ** was making the chandelier below swing precariously.

(** moshing:- jumping up and down and into each other with careless abandon trying not to fall over. Surprisingly fun. murder on the ankles though!)

In a way every indie club I went to after that was a echo of The Bistro be it London, Liverpool or Atlanta, that smell of sticky carpets and indie kids always gave me a certain thrill.

And it closed sometime after I left for parts unknown and there was no where for any of us to be anymore.

Theres a reunion planned and I'm in two mind whether to go or not. One part of me wants to drink foul lager and bounce around like a fool for an evening like I used to. The other half of me wants to let the memories stay as they are. We'll have to see when the night comes if I'm still a teenager at heart or pessimistic old sod.