Two beautiful things happened this Saturday night at the 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls' party at the Whitechapel. The second involved a redhead, the first involved a lift. Yes, for the moment, let us discuss lifts.

Previously in my journalistic careen I have only had cause to mention lifts once. I was going to write a music piece for some mag and pitched the idea with this tag line

‘Jamie Cullum and lifts are living proof of re-incarnation because without doubt, at some point in history, he was one.’
 

Two beautiful things happened this Saturday night at the 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls' party at the Whitechapel. The second involved a redhead, the first involved a lift. Yes, for the moment, let us discuss lifts.

Previously in my journalistic careen I have only had cause to mention lifts once. I was going to write a music piece for some mag and pitched the idea with this tag line

‘Jamie Cullum and lifts are living proof of re-incarnation because without doubt, at some point in history, he was one.’

As a metaphor it has issues. For a start it states that lifts are alive which they clearly aren’t. Secondly it means the lift that was Jamie (keep up) had to die, presumably in some sort of plungey incident in which other souls would have splatted too. Did that make Lift-Jamie a sort of musical hearse? An unspeakable fate that, expiring inside Jamie Cullum and in a group situation too.

The ghastliness of the image, the easy listening shame of it, forced me to bury all thoughts of elevators but this Saturday night I once again had cause to reconsider the humble lift. Useful things, up and down you might say but normally reserved characters. Characters? Well they do have voices; in fact if you think about it lifts are mostly quite posh. The words ‘seventh floor’ are rarely delivered in Lancastrian or even Winehouse mockney.

‘Basement level- and it’s a total minger.’

Still apart from RP floor announcements and the odd boing they generally keep themselves to themselves. Nothing though, nothing could have been further from the truth this Saturday!

Frankly the night was a bit aimless. I really wanted it to be good, lord I needed a party, needed it in my bones. It had been a slow week. When I got to the Whitechapel a rent-a herd of wonky haired, vintage shoed types were wondering round but no one was nearly drunk enough. I had that horrible certainty I wasn’t going to pull and not much was going on. I tucked into my drink and waited for something to happen. It didn’t. Where were the fifty feet women? The wild grrrlss the PR promised? Well one was on her screeching way but at first an art gallery hush was infecting everything. I wondered through the white spaces feeling lost.

Suddenly a girl wearing a tin foil mini and waving a laser pistol grabbed me.

‘Come with me! We’ve only got seconds to live!’

She clamped a gloved hand on my forearm and dragged me into the big warehouse style lift. Inside was a big gang of space cadets, all similarly clad with silvery hair and big earrings.

‘Come on!’ they shouted to the po-faced wonky cuts passing the lift.

‘This pod’s gotta blast!’

And that was it, they slammed the concertina door and off we went. All the space cadets jostled manically, tilting this way and that like the bridge of the Enterprise after a meaty photon blast. All us normal passengers began whooping and one man started repeatedly jumping over a plastic road works barrier that (for some reason) was sharing the lift with us.

It was a lot of fun and I even stayed on for about ten minutes, finishing my wine and enjoying at least five good blast offs. In fact as lifts go I am happy to say it was the funnest lift I have ever been in. Generally, however, a party might be said to be struggling if the best thing about it is the stair alternative.

Luckily the second beautiful event was brewing. The door was flung open and I pushed my way out of the escape pod wreckage back into the main room. A redhead was hanging about a microphone, apparently channelling one of the naffer scripts from Smack the Pony.

She bumbled and said the words ‘bloke’ and ‘crap’ quite a bit and then mentioned her guitarist was a fireman normally and should do a strip. He looked out from his predictable guitarist flop hair and kept twiddling the knobs on his pseudo Hoffner.

My friend nudged me.

‘I saw her in the toilets. Someone asked if she was a lesbian. She said only in Paris.’

Which is a good line but as she announced her name I didn’t expect much. It was the bumbling.

‘Hi ! I’m Florence and the Machine’ she bumbled.

‘This one’s a bit…a bit weird really. It might sound crap, yep bit weird. It’s the only one with a backing track. I do the crap piano.’

Then she made a strange, amazing sort of howl that to be blunt sounded like a dolphin being fingered… but in this arresting way. The crowded room went quiet as the backing track of clonking ivory and that whale-ish trio of notes kept looping.

Sometimes you don’t know why a song is good, it’s just more of a spell really. And this had that…a smoky, experimental touch of magic. The rest of the set was roaring too if more compound than alchemy, PJ Harvey spliced with Springsteen. Florence is one of those singers that gestures with her hands, chopping the notes out in front of her and every tone had something. An Anti-Cullum basically and one look at the enraptured crowd and it was obvious they were thinking, both girls and boys. Dying inside her might not be such a disaster. She certainly had amazing legs and there was all sorts of filth and mental emotion in her lyrics. Filth, I decided right then, as I listened to another of Florence’s big ventricled warbles is evidence of big, clean souls. And we all need one of those. Then I had another thought…songs either have something or they don’t

Much like people and parties.

After she disappeared I rode the pod a few more times but left soon after. The man was still jumping over the road works barrier, the cadets were still screaming. On, on to the next party London…I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…

Sample Florence at:
http://www.myspace.com/florenceandthemachinemusic

Want your lift to rock? Check out the Laundrettas:
http://www.myspace.com/laundrettas