The Idler

THE KIDS WENT CRAZY

The Idler’s Christmas party, starring Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction, was a riot. Matthew De Abaitua reports. Webcasts, courtesy of Red Leader Industries, can be found at the foot of the page

The first few Idler parties, back in the early Nineties, were modest salon-based affairs, befitting the genteel, modest enterprise of the magazine. But by the mid-Nineties, The Idler had hooked up with a ragbag collection of squatters and miniature gangsters who ran a venue in the guts of Clerkenwell, an underground Land-of-Do-as-You-Please. Bi-monthly bacchanals ensued. I don’t remember much about them. Just the odd moment in time.

I recall the roulette table. The room turned sandpit. The secret poker games. Carrying a harp up two flights of stairs. Watching an ad-hoc enema performed on an addled ex-marine. Carrying a wailing scotsman the length of the dancefloor. Howard Marks showing up to do a reading and forgetting both his reading glasses, and his book. The utter bemusement of David Schwimmer in a baseball cap. “What the fuck are you doing here?” I could go on, but I’ll save it for the grandchildren. The problem with this Land-of-Do-As-You-Please was that it was too small. We could never get everyone in.

So we decided to strike out for new pastures. The 333 club in Shoreditch was hired. Twice the capacity. Lovely. As is the way with the Idler, things progressed with an unforced elegance, serendipity once again achieving what sweat and toil can only dream of.

The 333 is a rough-arse venue – we needed a rough-arse band. Didn’t longtime contributor Mark Manning used to be in a band? Zodiac Mindwarp and The Love Reaction? They’ll do. What, they don’t have a bass player? Do we know anyone who can play bass? What about Alex from Blur? He’ll do. Didn’t Adam and Joe sell out that party we did at the Clerkenwell Literary Festival? Joe was busy, Adam said he’d do it. Play it as Ken Korda. Then John Cooper Clarke was in, the TS Eliot of the North and former aide of the Honey Monster . The Idler address book took on a life of its own. Like minds gather to shelter between its covers.

We just let them get on with it. The week before, it all got out of hand. Every ligger in London on our case. Sold out. A guest list like the Domesday Book. Half an hour before it started, a rain-lashed queue of goths snaked around the club. It was all going off, and quite by accident, which is the only way to throw a party.

So was it any good? I can’t remember. I persuaded some Idler readers to writhe before a gaint projection of a snail. A deranged French disco queen distributed gold top hats. The great and the good looked rather scared. VIP-lounge habituees were turfed out and forced to heave at the bar with the rest of us proles. They looked scared, exposed, but as this was the culture they all preyed on, they had to stay the distance.

Zodiac Mindwarp himself? I had no idea Mark had it in him. I’ve always been blas?� about alter-egos, but after seeing Mark Manning transformed and in the grip of this idea of the Zed doppleganger, I’ll never doubt their power again. Rock is catharsis. You think angry kids have got something to get out of their system? Mere whining compared to the demonic gales that blow out of the soul of a man on his uppers. Even the strippers were impressed. Alex James couldn’t stop grinning. A mosh pit appeared where previously there had been only respectable members of the community. We got it out of our system.

The Idler came out of its shell.