The Duchess of York

When you hear the words Duchess and York, you probably think of flame-haired money vacuum and “author”, Sarah Ferguson. You probably don’t think of the venue in the city of York which hosts a regular rock night.

I went along to The Duchess’ rock night a few weeks ago after hearing about it from some local mentalists. It didn’t start until 11pm, so I waited patiently at home until 10:30 rather than spending four hours drinking in various pubs beforehand. This was my first mistake, as I was the only person there who was sober. My second mistake was to turn up dead on 11 when there were only about six people in the entire place.

Even in a dark venue containing only six pissed people, it’s hard to look inconspicuous as you stand next to the dance floor clutching a nostalgic bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale. This became worse when the DJ obviously spied my Sick Of It All t-shirt and put on Step Down. He proceeded to give me a look which said “why aren’t you dancing, you like this?” I responded by giving a look which I thought suggested “I’ll stand here and enjoy my drink and this great song”, but was probably more “look at me, winking at you because I’m a massive homosexual”.

It got better as the venue began to fill up, but the DJ seemed to struggle a bit as he switched from pop punk to death metal to Sisters of Mercy and managed to empty the dance floor several times. A friend of mine turned up and introduced me to some other guys in the way that only happens in a club: shake hands and scream your names into each other’s ears.

For years it’s been acceptable for rock fans to listen to Prodigy and it was no surprise when one of their songs was played. What was surprising was the half hour of techno garbage that followed it and the fact that the dance floor was full of arm-waving lunatics the entire time. “They play this shit for the pillheads,” I was told by a man who looked like he’d taken an alarming amount of pills very recently.

It got a bit old school after this with a bit of Pantera, Anthrax, Machine Head, Metallica and Slayer. This took me back to the rock nights of my youth and I indulged in a little headbanging and scary shape throwing.

A guy who looked like he could have been in Trainspotting then randomly asked me who sang Winds of Change. I told him it was The Scorpions and he responded with “I knew you’d know that. You always know the obscure ones”. Hmmm, 1) it’s not remotely obscure and 2) this was the first time I’d ever spoken to this guy in my life.

The only other thing of note to happen was a girl who looked like she was in Shakespeare’s Sister  turned up at 1 o’clock and took thousands of photos with an expensive-looking camera. I bumped into her at the bar and asked why she was taking so many pictures. “I am photographer,” she replied with a strong Russian accent. The world is full of crazy people.