Tales of The Unexpected - we recommend Electric Ladyland warehouse party

You might think it strange that we would promote a Coolness party, but we recommend ELECTRIC LADYLAND WAREHOUSE PARTY on October 1st, cause we CAN. Now read on and find out why our culture correspondent PHILLIP HILL says that The Coolness are slick satirists of the hipster brand, and why their next party will be kick-ass.

"I first met Chaz John Ross a couple of years ago when I was running one of the hottest underground venues in London with a consortium of promoters and djs. He’d crashed on the sofa overnight and I stumbled into the office to find him sprawled out on the settee with what appeared to be a pair of ladies knickers on rising above his trousers and a lepoard print jacket. His hair was more afro than most africans manage and he was skinny to boot, surrounded by sleeping girls in various stages of undress. Within a matter of weeks he’d performed at the venue and I remember beng startled by his potential. But what do you do with a band called ‘The Coolness’, a band who seem to write every song about masturbation or tits and dress in criminal fake furs, purple leggings and capes? Especially when everyone in the industry writes them off as having ‘an image bigger than their music’?

A couple of years later and Chaz has turned his Club Cool brand into a legend, and at the level of the grass roots managed to raise his game far above what many predicted. I find it almost endearing that he hasnt tried to play the fame game as aggressively as so many of his peers have done (K-tron to name one of many, and look what happened to her - massacred on channel 4 for being a ‘hipster’). Whilst the Big Pink were busy spending 30 grand of their parents money (the father of one of the Big Twits produced ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’) wining and dining the music industry and squeezing their familial connections dry in the process, Chaz, who comes from more humble roots, relied on his wits and the strength of his ideas as a promoter to push his act into London’s underground consciousness, simultaneously critiquing Shoreditch cool from the name of his band down to his leggings. Whilst this irony may have gone over some people's heads, and whilst they may be in need of an image change that reinforces the strength of their music, you can’t deny the velocity at which the Chaz bandwagon rolls forward, being voted one of the best new 25 bands in the world by MTV.

Yet for all this, Goliath raised his ugly head. Enter Vice Magazine, the printed equivalent of school-ground bullying, and hipster chic at its most detestable. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve received snivelling emails from Vice staff begging their way into parties on the back of their press card (they did not get in) and after the recent episode where their video art prize was awarded to a multi -millionaire Canadian who had literally paid her way into the finals and was already an established plagiarist of other people's work, you can sympathise with anyone for losing their respect for journalists altogether.

After being a darling of the mag for a couple of years, Vice recently turned on Chaz and I was shocked to see how brutal their treatment of him was. The much talked about band Private Lives cite Vice’s attack on Chaz as the sole reason for gluing the magazines office doors shut with superglue (a feat they tell me they will attempt sometime next week). Yet he dusted himself down, wrote a new set of songs and carried on. Its for this reason, his ability to rise above the criticism that comes his way and his ability to throw some of the best warehouse parties, parties that nonetheless filled the gap left vacant by the nu-rave fiasco, that you will enjoy Chaz’s next do. Being as it is in one of the sole remaining industrial spaces in the East End where you can fit more than 200 people it’s going to be a heavy, heavy night. The sort of party you leave with sunglasses on and bags under your eyes. Because after all, Chaz is a party survivor. And unlike most ‘dickheads’ in Shoreditch, he’s just like you. Electric Ladyland Party is on October 1st at an undisclosed location."


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