I travelled up to Birmingham on the train from Wales and caught up with my good mate DJ Jim ‘Shaft’ Ryan from Miss Moneypennys / Chuff Chuff. Luna Springs is an open-aired nightclub in Digbeth, a great clubbing zone in Birmingham city centre. It was a bit wet and my first experience of ‘daytime clubbing’. Jim kicked off the afternoon with a nice laid back DJ set, peppered with funky classics.
While Jim was spinning I was chilling with his lovely wife, Ruby and his sisters from Ireland.
The book you can see in the photo I was doing my best to promote – It’s Jim’s new poetry book, We May Win We May Lose
It was raining up in Birmingham although it was still quite hot. The place was starting to slowly fill up. It’s a nice venue and despite the rain and it being open air, there was covering over the tables. Drinks were flowing fast and freely and I could see it turning into a messy night ahead!
The star of the show and the reason I headed up for this clubnight was a LIVE PA from Alison Limerick. Not a DJ in the world dislikes her hit song ‘Where Love Lives’ – It’s just a timeless house music classic, in every DJ’s record box from New York legend club pioneers to a kid banging out the beats in his bedroom.
Aliso n came on stage with a huge presence and did 3 songs. I caught the second which was quite a big hit in its own right: ‘Love Come Down’.
Alison Limerick has a voice like Whitney, it’s so deep and powerful. Anyway, I won’t bang on and on about what is obviously a great song. Here it is: ‘Where Love Lives’ the LIVE PA from soaking wet Digbeth in Brum.
Super experience, one for the bucket list…
Jim ‘Shaft’ Ryan and his lot were heading off to another gig up in Shrewsbury so I stayed on in Digbeth and met a few friendly faces and got a few shandies in.
The pace did get quite full by about 8-9pm and it was really kicking atmosphere in there. A friendly knowledgeable crowd, very receptive to decent underground funky DJ songs, from the past and present. Birmingham clubbing trends to be a bit less pretentious than London most of the time and you can relax more and express yourself on the dancefloor. Less obvious idiots floating around with sub agendas.
Fat Tony was the headline act of the evening. He’s just written a book himself that I just bought and will review shortly, once I have finished reading it. He’s a great DJ, got some real hammering tunes and can mix well. He had the crowd in his lap and it went off big time down in Digbeth. A good night all around. Luna Springs is well worth checking out if you are in town.
