Whilst preparing what to play at tonights New Years disco at How Does It Feel in Brixton London we thought we should recap 2011. It feels like the year just ran away from us in January already and we've been playing catch up since then. We fell crazy behind on new music discoveries and compiling mixtapes due to life and jobs getting in the way, but on the other hand we did tons of club nights, bought loads of records and made lots of new friends but also lost a few on the way. So it was a pretty swell year all in all.
This is what we did manage to accomplish this year in terms of music and clubbing:
- We did a total of 28 So Tough! So Cute! and Too Cute To Puke nights in the UK and in Sweden including tons of guest-DJ sets that took us to London, Göteborg, Lund, Copenhagen and Helsinki.
- There's been quite a bit of heated discussion in Sweden concerning venues, festivals and clubs not booking female artists so we're very happy to say that, out of 21 guest-DJ sets at STSC, 12 of those were done by ladies.
-We had 9 guests compiling some pretty awesome mixtapes for the blog so thank you Jaspin of Hissyfit, Freya of La La Vasquez, Sven-Eric & Ola of KlubbIndiean, the Mongonaut, Ylwa, Elina of You Are The Light, Luke of Sex Beet, the Poppets and Skinny Girl Diet.
There are so many moments that made this year an amazing year and it is a futile task to list them all but there are a couple of special ones we have to mention that really stuck to our memory: The Broder Daniel special which saw Retro set a new attending record and kids dressing up like nineties indie pandas like it was, well, the nineties; Spanish speaking dancers exploding in smiles when we put on Davila 666 version of Hanging On The Telephone; everybody singing along to Beat Happening - Teenage Caveman at the Beat Happening and Vaselines special, everytime we played Another Sunny Day - You Should All Be Murdered, GG Allin - Don't Talk To Me or Crass - Banned From The Roxy; the 25th February when we clashed with London Popfest and thought that the venue would be empty but then instead had one of the best nights ever; the first few songs of Bob Stanleys DJ-set when there was only us, a few early bird friends and the rest of St Etienne chugging bubbly wine and dancing on the dancefloor; the '100 Best Indiepop Singles (Ever)' special where we played the list in order and had people squeezing in front of the poster with all the songs that we had stuck up on the wall; and last but not least: everybody making out at basically every night in the UK.
A couple of thank yous: Guest-DJs and mixtape compilers - thank you so much for taking the time and doing this with us. Clubs that have booked us; the bar staff at the Drop and at Retro and our amazing door boy and girl: Roland and Gemma and Gracie for hooking us up with them; Jassiie Freak for a lot of the club photos and love and support; Sandra for a bed in the UK, everybody who helped flyer in London and poster boy extraordinaire Catalan for plastering Malmö with posters and everybody else we might have forgotten. Here's a drink to you all and we'll see you in 2012.
But what about the best of the year lists with records and stuff? Well you'll have to wait until the year is actually over but until then take a look at all the photos from the various nights here.