monday tuesday wednesday..

BEMBE!

Although we hit up Quad again on wednesday night, I don't have so much to say about it. The dj was not as good, the crowd was more fun - more fabulous clothing (especially on the men) - my favorite was a cat with a black fedora at a fierce angle, bling earrings, a long button-down shirt/tunic thing in black with white swooshes on it, black trousers and shiny shoes. Maybe more dancehall and less commercial hip-hop, a few classics thrown in there, and upstairs in the voodoo lounge was all dancehall from the 90s, pretty much.

Anyway the big night was the Thursday night party at Weekends club. Wayne having finally arrived (a day late, thank you connecting flights and logan airport silliness), he's ready to hit the town again, as he did his first night at Quad's Wednesday nights. Tonight promises to be a bit more down-home.

Got there around 12:30am – already really crowded, although folks have assured me nobody goes out till midnight. The road is well full of people, cars, drum chicken (roasting in yellow metal drums split for coals and meat to rest inside), those roast-nut-sellers with their rusty tin stove-carts ricketing along on wheels, whistling constantly, a slightly threatening sound like kettles about to run dry or explode.

As we jump out of the taxi and wander up through the people, clustering, chatting, watching and selling, we note 3 separate entrances – one for Entertainers, one for Ladies, one for Men - $300. I don't mind not paying, I tell you! We separate, head through our lines (I don't get searched either), and then we are in. When Wayne's Jamaican friend (Dami D, catch him on the Boston Jerk album, or soon come on myspace) shows up he steps through the Entertainers line and nobody stops him.

Anyway, on arrival, there's a big open space, dirt floor, –open except for the hundreds of people- in front of us as we come in with a wall of speakers at the back. To the left is a brightly lit table with a vendor selling cigarettes and candy, and a tall rasta in his 30s, standing around smoking. Women in groups of two and three and men in ones and twos circulate or dance, although the dancing is pretty subdued. Heading left, the actual dancefloor is through a second entrance – the whole place is open to the sky with a dirt floor, except for the big stage at the back which has a bit of roof. Along to the left on the way to the entrance to the dancefloor, a long corridor leads back to the bar, which is made of wood and some trees overhang, and it's all on a raised platform which partly overlooks the dancefloor (though from the back so you can't see the front of the stage).

We head in to the dancefloor and have to turn sideways to get through the crowd. One we stand, I look around, although so many people shoulder past us I get a steady stream of people going by. Many many men in polo shirts, often brightly striped with horizontal stripes. There is a Japanese kid in front of us on the dancefloor for a while, also in a polo shirt. A particular look among some of the ladies, many of those who have it turn out to the dancehall queens onstage later, they rock huge amounts of hair, straightened or a wig, blond or black, piled into a massive almost-beehive on the head, and thick eyeshadow and lipstick. From the neck up they resemble the ladies in 1960s girl groups, especially when the lipstick is pale. From the neck down.. well there's plenty batty-riders going on, and plenty low-cut tops, bustiers or even bras. Not so Supremes-looking really. Not all the ladies are so elaborately dressed, although everything, pretty much all over the body, is tight. If I haven't mentioned it before, I'll just get out there that a really high percentage of Jamaican women appear to have unbelievable figures (or a variety of amazing figures), I must say, and the standard here is to dress to accentuate it all pretty unrelentingly. It's rather dizzying.

Wayne's friend Dami shows up (red polo shirt with oversize polo horse+rider on the chest), we struggle through the dancefloor to find him and head back to the bar. There are a few chairs up against the bar, and as we head over one comes empty and I perch in it for a while. The music is more hardcore dancehall than anywhere we've been so far. Later someone calls it an uptown crowd but downtown music. The vibe feels more soundclash-y to me, not that there's a competition going on, but more that it's about the dj performance, and the performance consist mostly of playing new tunes and chatting on the mic (not so much crafting a dynamic set). The mic chat is often totally filthy, and appears to drop a lot of names, talking a lot of mess about various people, some of whom I know and some I don't. I find out later this is Tony "Mentally Ill" Matterhorn. Called Matterhorn because of the cigarettes he constantly smokes ("man light one cigarette from another"), and called mentally ill because he's pushed the limits of acceptable discourse on the mic, apparently. Naming names, and using curses like 'suck your mother' that used to be fighting words and are now filtering (according to some of our friends) into more common usage. One thing I find irritating is the way he cuts out the music whenever he speaks, rather than waiting for a break or speaking over the tracks. This interrupts the flow of the music. Wayne says later this is common dj practice at soundsystems, but since I keep trying to bounce to the music, the constant but irregular interruption is jarring. Some radio djs do this as well – which reminds me a bit of some UK pirate radio moments- but I still find it jarring, especially because it's usually more about the personality of the DJ than the music.

We end up hiding out in the back (a few minutes later a cop wanders through, bullet-proof vest stark over a white t-shirt, not stopping any of the rastas selling big trees, nor any of the smokers), and watch the crowd, listen to the music and chat. Some of the tunes are intense –one keeps dropping almost into a Chicago-house beat, keeps changing, really weird and interesting. There's a few I make mental notes of, but promptly forget in the wash of visual, sonic, and other messages I'm receiving. The vibe, despite the tightly packed crowd, is pretty positive. I spot two white women in ponytails, walking behind them I think I hear German, but I'm not sure, could be Scandinavian of some kind.

As the night develops, the crowd keeps circulating but not depleting, and then starts thinning out by 2am. We get back to the dancefloor and most people now are just watching the stage, where the dancehall queens are leaping, wining, and disappearing below my line of sight. When they disappear, their feet, legs and waists reappear as they do headstands on the stage and flex lower muscle groups in time to the music. Sometimes men leap up acrobatically over them or lean and wine or vibrate against them. The partnering increases, and men and women fling themselves together –women's legs around the men's waists- and spin around until they can't stand up. And then something weird happens: a man grabs one of the women and starts tossing her around and it's like lindy hop time: around the back, over the shoulder, through the legs.

Not even simulating sex at all, which seems disorienting since that has been the common theme of most of the late-in-the-party dance moves. Then some of the guys start tossing one woman back and forth between them. Higher and higher she goes until the inevitable – I can't see it but the crowd dissolves in laughter and it's clear somebody missed. boom! However, when I return my attention to the stage, there are three men holding a woman horizontally in the air by her limbs (she's on her back I think) and swinging her against a fourth. A bizarre image, but everyone up there seems into it. Tony Matterhorn is interrupting the music every 15-30 seconds at this point to say something filthy. As people are leaving he shouts "all the man go home all the girls wan' f*ck stay here." This makes me feel like leaving, but basically it's time to go anyway. Our taxi company of choice pulls up in 2 minutes and we head home.