Godskitchen @ Metro Radio Arena, Newc - 10/4/04

The tickets had been sold, the music was shaking the Metro Radio Arena and the queue twisted and turned more than a blind snake with back spasms. Godskitchen had returned to Newcastle, bringing Polysexual vs Quality with it.

Whenever you arrived, you knew you were going to hit the queue, so it was no surprise when we did just that. What was a surprise was reaching the end of one queue only to be put into another one. Surely this sort of thing only happens at Disneyland? It seems not. Another surprise greeted us at the front of the queue as well. This time in the form of a sign telling us that no bags would be allowed into the Arena. Thanks for giving us notice Godskitchen. I mean it wasn’t as if you could have said this on the tickets…or indeed anytime before we reached the front of the queue. That would have been far too sensible. Thankfully, they did provide a place to leave your bags, they just ‘weren’t responsible’ for them while in their possession. Basically this meant that while you were having a good night inside, somebody was probably raking through your belongings outside. Nice one!

Once inside, it soon became apparent that there would be no set times for us to look at. They weren’t even prepared to charge us a fiver for the privilege. Instead, it was a game of chance as to which DJ’s you saw and which DJ’s you missed. This was a bit frustrating to say the least.

So, I hit on lucky when I walked in on Promise resident, Richard Tulip, warming the main room up nicely for what was to follow. This man is already held in high regard with the Promise faithful and it was nice to see him get his chance to shine on a bigger stage at last.

The room itself looked good too with Godskitchen angels hanging from the rafters, lasers going everywhere and a big screen behind the DJ booth adding to the visual atmosphere of the place. As always, the size of the main room was more than adequate for the 7,000 crowd.

Another North East favourite, Matt Hardwick, was next up and it was his set that really got the night going. He managed to make the main room busy by dropping tunes like DJ Tab- Radiate and Exertion- Partizan and Ronski Speed – EOS. And when Oceanlab – Satellite came on, you just knew the place would go mental….and it did. Top marks to Matt.

After this, I decided it was time to explore the Polysexual vs Quality room AKA the Arena foyer. To be fair, the foyer was never meant to be used in this way and it showed. It was too bright for a start as the lights remained on well into the early hours. Even when some lights did eventually get turned off, it still proved to be too bright. The room was devoid of any real decoration as well and I found it really hard to get into the mood for any hard house when it was like this. Not even the Tidy Boys, who were on at the time, could help me.

To say it was always like that would be unfair though. After all, K90 – Red Snapper can’t fail to pick the place up and Andy Farley ended a night of hardness in style. But it was the main room that got most of my attention on this particular occasion.

Hardwick’s set had left the others with a very hard act to follow and, for a while, they didn’t deliver the goods. Tall Paul, MIKE and Fergie all tried but failed to do so with Fergie in particular being unimpressive apart from his ability to deal with a skipping record by throwing it into the crowd.

The man who stood up to the challenge was Marco V, who played a very good set which included many new tunes. Passive Resistance – Praiseworthy Tunes and Jens - Loops and Things going down particularly well with the crowd.

Ferry Corsten impressed as well, starting his set off with Solid Globe – Sahara before eventually playing the predictable Rock Your Body Rock. It may be cheese but what’s wrong with that if it is dropped at the right moment? The answer came in the form of thousands of smiling faces. At that moment in time, it was exactly what the doctor had ordered!

It was Judge Jules who had the pleasure of ending the night and he didn’t do a bad job. His only downfall being his almost constant looping with the CDJ and his use of acapellas.

By this time though, Farley was banging it out in the other room. Now that’s how you end the night off in style!

Now, where did I leave my bag………………..