Tonight the Vengaboys set Strathclyde Union on FIRE. Yes it’s a bad joke but such is the foundation of all good Freshers Week nights out: cheesey music, awful humour and cheap alcohol. Wednesday at Strathclyde provided all three in abundance.
As the new students start to trickle into Vertigo the DJ plays a run through of classic dancefloor fillers that everyone recognises from their recently cast-off schooldays and the mood is set.
Rang-A-Tang emerge on stage as a two-toned jungle theme salsa band and cover everything under the sun (from the last 50 years anyway) that has ever followed the path of wonderful -> over-played -> annoying -> classic. Livin’ La Vida Loca, Brown Eyed Girl, Brazil, Copacabana, Blue Monday, Don’t You Want Me Baby & even a great audience-participation version of I Predict A Riot. Playing for just over an hour I recognised each tune and enjoyed every single one of them performed with brilliant upbeat fun and no pretensions of being anything other than simply one of the best party bands I’ve seen.
They had a mini-trumpet and a KAZOO! ’nuff said.
In one of the strangest gig moments ever they are cheered wildly off stage and then booed as they come back for an encore – everyone is chanting Ven-Ga-Boys rather than we-want-more but as soon as they start playing again everyone is bouncing along with any impatience for the headliners forgotten.
Vengaboys could easily have disappointed after such a great atmosphere of expectation had been built up, luckily that seems like a stupid fear in retrospect – it’s a Freshers Week gig, no one here is a music-snob expecting high-art musicianship we just want the Vengabus pop disco dance fun. By the second song everyone in the crowd is cheering, by the time I admit to being too exhausted to jump around anymore and stand at the back I find myself in open-mouthed dumbfoundedness at such an incredible atmosphere throughout the entire hall. Even with minimal prompting and more often than not totally spontaneous the whole place jumps. Not just those down the front, not just those in the main crowd – those of us chasing the little free space jump. People at the bar are jumping along, the bar staff bounce and I’m sure I saw security & even the sound tech dancing to We Like To Party!
The stage show itself is everything needed so that no matter your favourite, nobody hides at one side of the stage, the sauce and the cheese are in full flow too with many choreographed moments of tounge-in-cheek humour at themselves and playing to their strength of just having fun tunes to enjoy without any baggage to drag you down deeper. It’s smiley pop dance stuff, nothing else is needed or wanted for this crowd tonight.
Before the hall has even emptied the fire alarm goes off and we all trek outside for a welcome chill out for ten minutes, half the crowd outside still singing along that the Vengabus is coming the others obviously jealous they missed out. The rest of the night is spent reliving the 90s or, for those strange students who still insist on being trendy, listening to default commercial indie offerings. Me I still have the Vengaboys on repeat in my head.
For the next four years until graduation—or longer for those who continue to enjoy the Union more than is best—around this time of year, people will ask ‘what was your Freshers’ Week like, what did you do’. Everyone who enjoyed that amazing hot, sweaty, bouncing atmosphere in Vertigo during Rang-A-Tang and the Vengaboys will have a huge grin while telling that story.
