Has Dublin lost its groove?

THE CLOSURE OF the Pod nightclub complex in Dublin is a big story for the capital’s nightlife. Its illustrious clubbing history and setting as a bastion of dance music has seen an outpouring of misty-eyed nostalgia online, in conversations among those who danced and sweated within its walls at Pogo, Ham, Powder Bubble, Antics and the rest of the club nights that filled its 20-year history.

But maybe the bigger story is what is replacing it, the people behind Flannery’s pub on Camden Street, a spot that wouldn’t be on the radar of those into dance music in the city, beyond scoffing at its perceived unfashionable crowd and music policy.

Dublin, a city of 1.5 million people, is now in the rather odd situation of having only a handful of venues that put music first.

For the masses, club nights now often place the emphasis on cheap drink prices rather than what music they’re playing – a complete turn around from the past. On Facebook, students and anyone else who stays out until the wee hours, are bombarded by invites that scream about €1 shots, cheesy event names and cheap booze. For the past few decades clubbing was about the music. Now promoters who are sticking to putting on quality music-driven nights talk about their market as being niche.

This isn’t a global story. In other European cities, you’ll always have the cheesy nights out, but clubs where quality music comes first still draw crowds. But a large part of what’s on offer to students and those in their mid-20s in Dublin no longer prioritises what music is coming through the soundsystem.

There are still strongholds in the city where the music matters. Bodytonic’s duo of Twisted Pepper on Middle Abbey Street and the Bernard Shaw around the corner from Pod concentrate on bringing over critically acclaimed and cutting-edge international acts, alongside creative Irish DJs who aren’t just bashing out Lady Gaga tunes night after night. A glance through their listings for the next while sees acts such as Rustie, Benga, Steffi, Annie Mac, Sinden and more. But they’re greatly outnumbered by venues and nights where the music is far less interesting.

Of course, there are plenty of other promoters taking a punt on DJs and electronic acts, bringing them over and hoping that the crowds turn up. But the masses don’t go clubbing like they used to.

It has constantly been said that when an economy collapses, creativity flourishes, and that’s very true in some ways. But the harsher reality is that many of the people in their early 20s who should be the bright sparks coming up with new exciting club nights aren’t in the city any more thanks to mass emigration. Many of the opinion leaders, upstarts and doers have taken their ideas to London and beyond. Networks of friends – the communities that club nights are built on – have been broken up.

The people who stay here who want to push music-driven clubbing have to work harder, so it’s just as well that when you talk to young dance-music promoters in the city, they feel passionately about what they do.

There are also huge commercial constraints. In an era where dozens of venues, clubs and bars in the capital are practically on their knees financially, a young enthusiastic promoter coming to a venue with a bag full of cutting-edge ideas that may offer quality, excitement and originality, but will take a while to percolate and build up numbers, will find it much harder to get a slot over an ents officer from a college promising hundreds of people as long as the booze is cheap. It’s a no-brainer for venue owners who need cash flow and big numbers through the doors.

With this commercial reality in mind, ents officers acting as promoters create a herd mentality to get people into a venue, regardless of what the place is like, regardless of what the music policy is, with the carrot of cheap alcohol, and the stick that people will basically go where their friends are going, and mightn’t necessarily splinter off to see an interesting dubstep DJ play to a couple of hundred people around the corner.

The restrictions created by Ireland’s licensing laws – both in terms of getting licenses and having to shut doors earlier than many of our European counterparts – continue to squeeze clubs. Occasionally, illegal after-hours spots pop up in spaces around the city, but their lifespan is generally short if there is even a whiff of attention from the Garda.

The role of a club as somewhere to discover music is also now redundant. No sounds are underground any more, and the sensation of a big music scene coming from the clubs can’t happen because everything is easily discoverable thanks to the internet. The idea of going to a club to hear tunes you never heard before, sounds you never knew existed, tracks you’d be desperate to get the names of, is over.

The minute a great new track emerges everyone has it on their iPhones within a day or two. If you don’t know what something is, you can just Shazam it. You can find out about far-flung emerging genres quickly, and churn them over just as easily. The idea of people queuing outside a record store (what few of them are left), or waiting weeks for the delivery of one track, or even actually spending money on music, is now quaint.

Clubs and club nights have a quick turnaround anyway. It’s a brutally tough game. Putting on an international act is often a risky gamble of thousands of euro.

Even the coolest spot with a queue around the corner only has a few years to stay fresh unless the people running it are beyond savvy and can diversify, rebrand, and keep up with punters before the clubbers even know what they want. The majority of club nights hit the skids shortly after their inception. There’s a small window to make something work.

There is one upside, however. On the surface, most clubs and club nights have become increasingly vanilla and homogenous; this means that quality stuff stands out even more. Something exciting shines brighter when much of what is around it is dull.

Creativity in clubbing should be rewarded, even while the pressures of a recession have created a lowest-common-denominator approach. Doing something different generally costs, and it’s hard to make that work when people are going out less and everyone is broke.

One thing is for sure, though: there will always be room on the dancefloor for quality music, for fun, and for promoters with a passion who are doing it for the love of it. The rewards are those epic nights where a club comes together as one, when music, people and a vibe magically combines.

Five kicking clubs

Aside from one-off gigs, nomadic club nights and irregular events, here are five spaces where you’re guaranteed to hear quality electronic music with up for it crowds.

The Stiff KittenStill holding the fort for dance music in Belfast after five years with upcoming shows from Maya Jane Coles, Kerri Chandler, Richie Hawtin, Erol Alkan and T.E.E.D.

The Twisted PepperDublin's all in one club-record store-café-bar space.

Electric Underground@ the Pavilion, Cork This clubnight celebrated its fifth birthday last night with Blawan and Lone.

110th Street@ Monroe's, Galway An Irish clubbing institution run by Cian Ó Cíobháin and Cyril Briscoe.

Mother@ Copper Alley, Dublin A gay night shying away from the commercialisation of the scene and sticking to synth, electro and disco tracks.