CityLife

Preview: Good Vibrations - Joshua Brooks

Nicola and Chris

A great man once sang: “Music is a world within itself. With a language we all understand [and] an equal opportunity for all to sing, dance and clap their hands.”

As well as being the opening lines of Stevie Wonder’s 1977 hit Sir Duke and some of the truest words ever committed to vinyl, these are also the sentiments which epitomise the ideology behind the monthly Good Vibrations session, which returns next Thursday at Joshua Brooks.

“That song really sums the night up,” says the club’s Nicola Bell. “The lyrics say it all; and people go mad for it every time.”

Bell founded Good Vibrations – a night dedicated to the very best 60s, 70s, Motown and Northern Soul records known to man – last year along with fellow old school enthusiast Chris, as a reaction to what they perceived as a glut of student-based indie nights filling the city.

“We’re both like-minded people with similar music tastes,” says Chris. “And we were a bit fed up of the same old studenty indie nights drowning Manchester. We thought that Joshua Brooks would be the perfect venue so we set up a meeting with the management and it went on from there.”

“From a DJing perspective,” continues Nicola, “we basically wanted a night with a good atmosphere, where people are kept up on their feet dancing all night long.”

But couldn’t they have achieved the same effect with any number of more recent styles? What about house music – made for dancing – or even the genre du jour, dubstep?

“They aren’t really our forte. Plus we wanted to strike a chord with people and play music to them that they might also have been brought up listening to.

“Time flies when we play the music that we do because we genuinely enjoy it so much.”

'Crowd pleasers'

Kudos, then, to the Good Vibrations partners for having the courage of conviction to stray off-trend and start an all-back-to-mine-style club bubbling to sounds produced up to 50 years ago.

But isn’t there an added benefit to plundering the playlists of time for a night’s soundtrack? There’s a theory (albeit, one we made up during the course of our interview with Chris and Nicola) that clubs which stick resolutely to the present day for their audio inspiration limit their frames of reference to the point of denying themselves access to years’’worth of wonderful music.

Do the DJs feel they have an advantage over new music clubs, being able to draw upon five decades of classic sounds?

They’re not so sure: “In some ways we are more limited because obviously the music is not being made any more,” says Nicola. “But at the same time every date we do, we play new tunes that both of us have gone out and discovered every single month.

“I’d like to think we’ve got a rich library and if other DJs playing the same genres were to look at it, they’d be impressed. Obviously we also play the usual crowd pleasers – the timeless classics that never grow old.”

Speaking of crowd-pleasing classics, the night shares its name with perhaps one of the most popular of all: The Beach Boys’ 1966 surf-me-do masterpiece Good Vibrations. Is the association deliberate?

“It’s partly because of the song and partly because of the impression we wanted to give of the night,” says Chris. “The atmosphere the music creates; the fact that people come along and dance the whole night. They may not even be drunk and for a student night that’s really saying something!”

The fun ‘n’ inclusive feel of Good Vibrations has played a large part in its rise from fledgling Thursday night tester to established weekend-starter.

“We can’t really put our finger on the type of people who come to the night,” says Nicola. “Every single party we have put on has attracted a wide range.”

Good Vibrations is March 18, 2010 at Joshua Brooks, Princess Street. 10.30pm-3am. Free £2/3.