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KOSOVO REFUGEE BENEFIT A HUGE SUCCESS
APRIL 1999 SCALA, A FAT REDESIGN
MARCH 1999 THE HISTORY OF THE SCALA
MARCH 1999 SEAN MCLUSKY, THE LEGEND
MARCH 1999 |  |  |
SEAN MCLUSKY, THE LEGEND
MARCH 1999
The Scala is the product of ten years of Sean McLusky's experience. As with all of McLusky's previous projects the Scala is an expression of rebellion and unconventionality, but in addition McLusky is anxious to maintain the site's history as a well-loved centre of the Kings Cross community . Promising sanctuary to the multitude of Londoners who demand a four-dimensional experience from their night-life, the historic Scala will be a melting pot of art, film, dance and music, stirred up by Sean McLusky and on Saturday nights by McLusky's errant child, the Sonic Mook Experiment.
Whilst definitely not mainstream entertainment, McLusky's events have always drawn a diverse and substantial following. Cutting his teeth in the middle and late eighties with various Northern Soul all-nighters at venues such as Holborn's Paddocks and the Scala in King's Cross, to both of which he would later return, McLusky soon had established himself and his ideas as a remedy for the formulaic rave scene that dominated the late eighties and early nineties and became so quickly part of mainstream tabloid youth culture.
McLusky's first foray into venue makeovers and take-overs started with the Brain Club with partner Mark Wigan in 1989. The Brain Club was a notorious rent boy club that McLusky and Wigan talked the leaseholders into handing over to them. It was the first club in the West End to have regular house music nights and fledgling bands like Orbital and Adamski gave some of their early performances there.
By 1992 McLusky and his ever-widening cast list of like-minded bohemians had found a more permanent home on Saturday nights at Maximus, in London's Leicester Square. Love Ranch, renowned for its vast popularity and unpredictability, marked a definite beginning in the evolutionary story that would eventually lead McLusky back to the Scala. Within the next two years he had been rightfully recognised as a leader of London's club scene rather than a follower of others. Following Love Ranch, in 1993 and 1994, McLusky also launched and established the decadent Merry England at the Cafe de Paris.
McLusky's prowess and innovative reputation led to his appointment as the creative heart of a huge venue in South London, which he christened Club UK, soon successfully challenging the dominance of the well-established Ministry of Sound. The experience of designing and naming a large club venue, and the bureaucratic challenges associated with a wholly new venue, further added to already well-developed administrative and diplomatic skills - the experience proving indispensable to his current project.
In early 1994 McLusky returned to his old stomping ground at the Paddocks , which he re-designed and re-launched as the Leisure Lounge, a voracious pace-setting and attitude-free venue that like so many of his other projects has become part of the collective consciousness of night-time London. At the same time McLusky began a long-term annual collaboration with the Mean Fiddler organisation, at the Rivermead at the Reading Festival, which in turn led to him, in early 1996, being asked to once again open his bag of tricks in launching their new Islington venue, which he named The Complex .
Around the same time as The Complex was seizing a substantial share of the Islington market on his Kingsize Saturday night, McLusky amused himself with a more radical and definitely more intimate club night, the sometimes bizarre Fantasy Ashtray at Soho's Madame Jo Jo's. Called by Time Out "...a rockin', funkin', disco-flavoured, punky Hip-Hop dance thrash with live acts", Fantasy Ashtray was founded on genuine musical variety and a door policy richly articulated by McLusky as "no bastards will be let in - they know who they are".
Whilst McLusky has credentials that attract interest from many different types of club-goers, visitors to 333 Old Street, nursery to his current offspring the Sonic Mook Experiment, will experience a club that is both at the peak of its powers and a definite product of both his personality and confidence in his own judgement. Unconventional and debauched in its extremes Sonic Mook Experiment attracts a cosmopolitan mix of clubbers who, at McLusky's behest, have dispensed with the pretensions and conventions of the West End and come to sample what has been cryptically described as "..an eclectic Capri of madness - driven by the insane", and lauded by a visitor as "the worst club I've been to in my life" - praise indeed!
Since the mid-eighties Sean McLusky has proved himself repeatedly as a club promoter of unique creativity, appeal and humour. Now as he prepares to launch his latest and grandest product, the Scala in King's Cross, McLusky is to be regarded as a growing threat to the conventionality that has governed large London clubs for so long. The hedonistic creativity that has come to dominate Sean McLusky's projects is clearly in direct opposition to the covert conservatism of many of London's clubs.
No biography of McLusky would be complete without mention of his contribution to the live music scene. McLusky has been the drummer in three bands all signed to major record labels, Jo Boxers, If? and currently Speedway. Speedway will release their first album in the USA this year. Not content with promoting and drumming, McLusky also ran his own record labels, Fantasy Ashtray Records and Brainiak Records and recorded and produced Live At The Brain and Live At The Brain 2.
Bands that have played live at his clubs include: Jayne County, Dee Dee Ramone, Mr Fingers, Orbital, Buzzcocks, Nexus 21, A Guy Called Gerald, Adamski, D;Ream, Sheep on Drugs, Arial (Chemical Brothers), Nancy Boy, Dust Junkies, Cold Crush Brothers, Suicide, Clinic, Earl Brutus, One Dove, Peepshow, Supercharger, Fabulous, Dub Pistols, Headrillaz, Doll, Fuzz Townsend, Monkey Mafia, Asian Dub Foundation, Lo Fidelity Allstars, Death in Vegas, Flying Medallions, Disco Assassins, Big Buda, Urban DK, Apollo 440, Jake Vegas, Grechen Hoffner, Kinky Machine, Airstream, Blubber, These Animal Men, Monotonic, Lucci Daddio, DF118, Cooler and many more (we can't remember them all)
Disco-ography
1981
Club Left - Whiskey-A-Go Go, Wardour Street, Soho (club night - weekly)
Club Left -Ronnie Scott's, Wardour Street, Soho (club night - weekly)
1986
60's Soul All-Nighter - Scala, Kings Cross (club night)
The Night Gallery - Paddocks, Holborn (monthly)
Miser E's Soul Club - Drummond's, Euston (monthly)
London's Chosen Mass Soul All Nighter - Palm Tree Club, Edmonton (club night)
1988
Gold - Corks, Cork Street, Mayfair (club night - weekly)
1989
The Brain Club - Wardour Street, Soho (venue - nightly)
1990
Brain Club with the Happy Mondays - Reykjavik, Iceland (away club night)
Brain Club - Reykjavik, Iceland (away club night)
Brain Club - Edinburgh Festival, Scotland (club night - six weeks - nightly)
Brain Club with Michael Alig New Years - Limelight and The Building, New York, USA (away club night)
1991
Love Ranch - Maximus, Leicester Square (club night - weekly)
Midnight Cowboy - Bagley's, Kings Cross (club night)
Love Ranch - Zap Club, Brighton (club night - monthly)
Love Ranch - Venus, Nottingham (club night - monthly)
1992
Love Ranch with Adamski - 5th Column Club, Washington DC, USA (away club night)
London Calling - Astoria, Soho (club night)
Merry England - Cafe de Paris, Piccadilly (club night - weekly)
Arttrob - Astoria, Soho (club night)
Love Ranch New Years - Taxim, Istanbul, Turkey (away club night)
1993
Club UK - Wandsworth (venue consultant)
Merry England with MPeople - Sound Factory, New York, USA (away club night)
Merry England with Michael Alig - Limelight, New York, USA (away club night)
Love Ranch - Le Bain Douche, Paris, France (away club night)
Tattoo You - Bagley's Warehouse, Kings Cross (club night)
Orgy Porgy - Maximus, Leicester Square (club night - weekly)
Depeche Mode after show party - Crystal Palace (party)
Psychedelic Circus - Bagley's Warehouse, Kings Cross (club night)
1994
Leisure Lounge - Holborn (venue consultant)
Saturdays at the Leisure Lounge, The Leisure Lounge, Holborn (club night - weekly)
Fantasy Ashtray - The Leisure Lounge, Holborn (club night - weekly)
Fantasy Ashtray - Paridiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands (away club night)
Elastica after show party - Shepherds Bush Empire, Shepherds Bush (party)
Oasis after show party - The Leisure Lounge, Holborn (party)
Fantasy Ashtray at Reading Festival - Rivermead Centre, Reading (festival)
Tartan Ball New Years - Connaught Rooms, Holborn (club night)
1995
Fantasy Ashtray - Madam Jo Jo's, Soho (club night - weekly)
Sounds of Soho - The Leisure Lounge, Holborn (club night)
Leisure Lounge - Space and Extasis, Ibiza, Spain (away club night - weekly)
Fantasy Ashtray at Reading Festival - Rivermead Centre, Reading (festival)
1996
Jet Set - The Leisure Lounge, Holborn (club night - weekly)
Fantasy Ashtray at Reading Festival - Rivermead Centre, Reading (festival)
The Complex - Islington (venue consultant)
Kingsize - The Complex, Islington (club night - weekly)
Kingsize - The Raw Club, Bloomsbury (club night - weekly)
1997
Sonic Mook Experiment - 333 Club, Old Street (club night - monthly)
Oasis after show Party - Earl's Court & Roundhouse, London (party)
Reading Festival - Dance Tent, Reading (festival)
Sonic Mook Experiment - Rivermead Centre, Reading (festival)
High Octane - Hanover Grand, Mayfair (club night - monthly)
1998
Sonic Mook Experiment - 333 club, Old Street (club night - monthly)
Eruption - 333 Club, Old Street (club night - monthly)
Sonic Mook Experiment - The Concord, Brighton (club night - monthly)
Earthquake - The Camden Centre, Camden (club night)
Sonic Mook Experiment, Prague, Czech Republic (festival)
Fantasy Ashtray at Reading Festival - Rivermead Centre, Reading (festival)
Sonic Sabotage - Open, Soho (club night)
Sonic Mook Experiment New Years - Open, Soho (club night)
1999
Sonic Mook Experiment, 333 Club, Old Street (club night - monthly) The Scala, Kings Cross
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