God's Kitchen now runs at a purpose built venue, owned and
created by the club's promoters,
Neil Moffat
and
Tyrone. The club has tried to move up-market
over the past few years, perhaps reflecting a similar attitude
to that of
Gatecrasher's promoters
towards its cyber-kids, though it has done so without damaging
its rep. in the process, as 'crasher once did.
From being a cyber raver's full-on Friday night Trance club,
at The Sanctuary, it has re-positioned itself as a club of
international renown, playing some of the world's most famous
DJs.
The venue, Code, has a very good sound system, excellent lighting,
superb DJ booth, and a very nice lounge bar overlooking the
main floor. The large main dance floor is itself over-looked
by a 360 degree balcony, on which are seated alcoves. The
bars are all smartly back-lit, and the whole place looks as
though someone put a lot of thought into trying to make it
stylish and smart. It is as far from The Sanctuary's nineteenth
century delapidation as one can get. All that said, it still
feels like an industrial warehouse with lights and speakers,
which, essentially, is what it is. Cold. Boring. Dull. Walk
around it once and you've seen all there is to see.
Leaving us with...? Well, the people and the music.
The music, as mentioned, is BIG NAMES, in a sort of, "if
we can't buy 'em they're not worth listening to" vein,
though I suppose one should be grateful that there are promoters
in Birmingham bringing the famous to the country's second
city.
The people? Hmmm... nice enough crowd. Well-behaved.... they
have to be given the very strict and none too friendly security.
Bit older than the
Sundissential
crowd, though these days that's not hard as
Sundissential
will soon be installing nappy-changing facilities if theirs
get any younger.
There used to be quite a rivalry between God's Kichen and
Sundissential, but that seems
to have diminished somewhat these days, perhaps because they
no longer target quite the same people. Perhaps also because
they have started to co-operate with each other, something
which may have started when
Slinkey tried
to establish itself in Birmingham.
Sundissential
is now part of God's Kitchen's
Global
Gathering annual event, with an extensive line-up
under their name. Global Gathering has now become one of the
major national fixtures in the Summer dance music events calendar,
along with
Creamfields and
Homelands
and is held at the conveniently close, (for me at least),
Long Marston airfield, near Stratford-on-Avon. The same location
as
The Bull-Dog Bash is held. But I digress...
God's Kitchen has survived by re-inventing itself, and by
re-investing in itself. These are not the first promoters
to become venue-owners, and to have to face the problems which
ensue from that. As promoters they ran a one-night a week
event but had the difficulty of forging and sustaining an
on-going relationship with a venue. As venue owners, they
have secured their club's location, and now have the income
from bar-takings, but have to either develop and run additional
events to cover other nights, or have to find other promoters
to work with to do so.
As Code, the God's Kitchen promoters have tried to keep all
their events in-house, but with only mixed results: towhit
-
Polysexual, closed after people kept collapsing,
low attendances, and poor target marketing to the gay scene;
and
Babooshka, hit by the ressurgence of
Miss MoneyPenny's in Birmingham, after that
club re-located to Liberty's. Both keep popping up occasionally,
(and to be fair, friends of mine who went to Polysexual in
April 2003, said it was very good), but not frequently.
Overall though, a nice operation, in which it seems many of
the elements work well together. Now if only they'd do something
about Code!
