Plastic People vs the Ministry

Jimmy, I can only assume you are employed by MoS. "Class dispute" - what a truly bizarre thing to say. As for the booking policy, Harvey and the late Larry Levan were over 15 years ago, and SecretSundaze are great but a) not exactly innovative and b) had made their name already before MoS took them on. If my dislike of MoS is snobbish, so be it, but don't try and play the "ill-informed" card, thankyou.

And Leo, these two things became news in the same week, it was natural to write about them together. To clarify, I do NOT think MoS or any club should close - I was only comparing people's reactions to the two stories. n.b. I wrote a positive piece about Plastic People on this very site not long ago http://www.theartsdesk.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=190:dj-d...

"Biased" simply means having an opinion in this context, surely, Jimmy? This Buzz section is for opinion pieces. But I absolutely stand by what I said: all of those clubs you mention, excellent though they may be, are essentially very much of the old school - none of them have Plastic People's importance in the cultivation of the new hybrid genres of the 2000s, whether that be grime, funky, dubstep or whatever. Queer Nation may have great house music, HMD great disco and Fabric great techno and drum & bass, but these are all established, more or less global sounds: none of these venues are pioneering sounds that are distinctively of the now and distinctively "London" in the way PP has, are they?

Yes, Dexter, the first is a standard Fabric lineup of international techno - all very good artists but hardly groundbreaking. And the second is a hugely commercial dubstep lineup, of the kind Fabric started putting on in the last couple of years, half a decade after Plastic People first featured the same artists. I don't see what your point is. Jimmy, again with this odd class thing - and you haven't answered my point that PP features more innovative music than any of the other clubs you've mentioned. I understand that you like other clubs too, but I don't get why you are so insistent that PP does not have a very singular place within London's music scene.

Well Jimmy I think we will have to agree to disagree. I said nothing about "important", merely that they were very very starkly contrasting approaches to running clubs. In my opinion, PP has always been run for music first; Ministry is a brand first, and the punter experience comes second. MoS is very "important" to the club music landscape without doubt; just not necessarily in a good way. I disagree about PP only being of relevance to Shoreditch, and I think the flood of support from artists and fans alike from round the world bears this out. And I absolutely disagree in the strongest possible terms with your spiel about "the other". The point about nights like FWD>> is that they do not have any truck with that idea that black music is "the other", and are about new fusions. You might not think those fusions were first played within the walls of PP, but if you read all the tributes to the club all over the web many, many others would clearly beg to differ with you. You say you frequent the club, yet you insist on writing it off as a bourgeois hangout where all the gritty "real" music gets watered down: this just smacks of jaded inverted snobbery to me, I'm afraid.

Ah the trolls are out now. I've answered Jimmy because though I disagree with what he says, he makes coherent and well-informed points. I won't dignify trolls with a reply, though. Ulitmately it comes down to the following: this Buzz piece is a personal view of two clubs that are in the news this week. I have had a very good time and seen excting music in Plastic People many times; I generally don't enjoy myself when I go to Ministry of Sound, and even if the music there is good, I find the atmosphere detracts from enjoyment of it. I apologise if that fact offends anyone's sensibility.

Now that's a bit melodramatic don't you think, Mike? Do you honestly believe a writer on a website giving vent to their feelings about the Ministry will have a detrimental effect on the Plastic People 'cause'? And as for "divisive" - honestly, the Ministry of Sound is big enough and ugly enough to take care of itself, I'm sure it can handle a bit of criticism without the fabric of clubland falling apart. As I said before, this is purely an opinion piece, it's my feelings about these two clubs and the difference beteen them. I'm not making half the claims some people seem to think: I certainly never said Plastic People "invented" anything. It's a venue, it can't invent things.

I'll take that bet, Jane.

There is a petition re Plastic People here: http://www.petitiononline.com/PP2010/petition.html