Mr Scruff

When Mr Scruff says he's doing a 5 hour DJ set… he's doing a 5 hour DJ set! The reason for the frankly piss poor turn out at 9pm when doors opened must be down to the fact that people must have thought he would start later or there would be a support act. He started at 9. However this made for a quite intimate show until 10pm when folks did show up.

I was rather hoping to buy some Mr Scruff goodies. I myself don't drink tea but find his lovely drawings of small 'potato style' characters and tea memorabilia very unique and make they make lovely gifts. However sadly there is no merch. I was also looking forward to some of the same characters popping up in visuals around the stage…. You have to hang around for this!

The set starts with jazz, chill out and very weird electronica sounds (sorry I'm no genius on the dance genre so can't say specific titles!). Mr Scruff is renowned for DJ sets of epic length, and you can't blame him for treating the early birds to the "more surreal" tunes! The sound of scratched records means that there are some rarities blasting out over the speakers and these are the finest copies of these tracks you can get (as Mr Scruff uses vinyl and mp3 tracks live). You can't see the man himself as its very dark in here but when he does go to collect records you can see how much effort he puts into these sets; his head is bobbing about constantly too!

The place is as full as its gonna get just before midnight, and it's a lovely crowd and everyone is having fun and dancing. The atmosphere is very friendly. At midnight the potato characters appear projected onto the back of the stage. Little ones playing drums and decks. Cartoon big speakers also boom out. All in that black background and white pen drawing style that you immediately associate with Mr Scruff. The nice touch here is that Mr Scruff's recognizable handwritten font is used to spell out "Big up all the Wakefield Massive!" and then goes on to spell out Wakefield districts. "Castleford", "Hall Green", "Alverthorpe", "Normanton"… loads of 'em. It's the little touches and attention to detail here that make the man so likeable. That and the awesome music that's doing the rounds.

So far we have had break beat, house, down tempo, hip hop, reggae, dub, and even some Latin salsa which is too good an opportunity to watch drunken folks try and dance to it's trippy beats. Including myself. I must say I did not like the house music and found this part seemed to drag and become boring (that's personal taste though), but then the music changed into funk and the party picked up again. It's just after this when the disco ball that had been looming lazily overhead all night flashed into life. This and some 80's beats and classics including 'I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)' by Daryl Hall and John Oates helped turn this into a disco and not a mere club night.

'Get A Move On' from his album 'Keep It Unreal' was a welcome original hit that people had been waiting for and played at around 1pm. There's some more house and then onto The O'Jays 'Love Train', which reunited the crowd as nearly all of us made a conga line to it!

Just time for Bob Marley's 'Is This Love' followed by some roots music and a bit of that there drum n bass, then onto the odd party anthem and finishing with a jazzy trumpet number. I will say there was something there for everyone! Well no rock but this is a DJ set… and you can't go wrong with 5 hours of one!