Theo Parrish, Theo Parrish, come to Theo Parrish.... these are the repeated words of a friend of mine which until last Saturday I failed to act upon. I see now that there was always a T H E O shaped void in my life. His music swam through the neurons of my brain like ice cold milkshake through a straw, sending uncontrollable signals to the muscles of my body: wiggle, bop, glide, tap, click, shake.
Theo Parish’s monthly residency, along with other progressive nights like Nonsense and FWD>> at the much loved Plastic People may soon come to an end if the police get their way. On the 11th of February 2010 an application requesting a review of Plastic People’s premises licence was put forward by the Police to Hackney Council citing a failure on the part of the management to prevent public nuisance and crime and disorder. Before March 11th, ‘interested parties’ such as local businesses and residents are entitled to submit representations against the licence review or its possible outcomes: revoking the licence, suspending the licence for at most three months or to modify the conditions of the licence. After this, Hackney Council will hold a sub-committee hearing with all ‘interested parties’ to review the licence during which the submitted representations will be considered.
Personally, I’ve never heard such claptrap in all my life, especially when down the road the beer bellies of clubs like 333 regurgitate far worse onto the streets of Shoreditch. There are a lot of good things to say about Plastic People.... there’s the feeling of fellowship, the intimate size, the darkness that allows you to appreciate the music (which never fails to educate, delight and surprise) and forget about who’s watching. Then there is the sound system. You’ll hear this a lot: “Plastic People has one of the best sound systems in Britain”. I regularly attend nights at Plastic and I can honestly say that I have never witness or personally experienced any 'trouble' out of the ordinary. Just pure good times fuelled by great music and a like-minded crowd. Hopefully, the incredible resistance, spearheaded by the “Friends of Plastic People committee” and the rapidly growing campaign group “Keep Plastic People Alive” will help to prevent this from happening. One of the aims of the committee, which met with Plastic People management on the 25th February to encourage them to work together with the police and council to find a 'mutually satisfactory resolution to the problem', is to generate support. If you love Plastic People too, please join the group and sign the petition:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=312688015977
If you haven’t been to Plastic People, still join and sign so you can in the future.
Plastic People has been an important vessel for several genres of music, most notably Dubstep, and is definitely one of the best things about Shoreditch. I’m not going to pretend to be a music expert so read this by my Theo Parrish loving friend and this from a blog I found for a bit more on the role of Plastic in driving underground dance music forward and the heavy-weights that have occupied the red light lit Dj booth:
http://www.orsii.com/help-us-keep-plastic-people-ali
All I can say is that attending nights at Plastic over the past year has been like fertilizer for my love of dance music – it has grown so much and I thank Plastic People for that.
Here are some of my 'rush to the middle of the dance floor' tracks from one of my favourite nights at Plastic:
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