As readers may know, Inverness has - or possibly had - two different club nights specialising in alternative music: Rapture, which was metal and rock, and Alternative X which was more diverse, also including Goth, Industrial, EBM and Punk music. Recently the Karma Lounge, which hosted these events, closed. As yet no new venue has been announced for either, although there have been various suggestions from within the community.
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| Pre-clubbing selfie. Note swirls and bat hair-clip! |
Raven and I went to the last Alternative X hosted at Karma, which was also a celebration of one of the organiser's birthday (Debra's). This was back in early September (5th), but sadly my computer broke (rather literally; mechanical hard-drive failure) shortly afterwards and I did not get this blog post finished. My apologies for this event review being so long after the fact!
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| My "how do I get the webcam to work?" face |
It was a busy night by Alternative X standards, and I got to spend a lot of time with good friends. We stayed out pretty late! I can't remember how late. I drank more than I usually would hence the ridiculous poses in the coffin booth - at least it shows how green my hair was (Stargazer's UV dye range glows pretty well under a UV light, I found out!), we took a taxi back home rather late indeed, and fun was had by all. My favourite thing about Alternative X and the other Goth nights is that I get to see all the friends who live too far away from either my home or the city to see regularly, which is always nice. The Highlands are quite a sparse area, and those in the scene here are quite spread out over a wide area; it can be hard to keep in touch in person. I really wish I had a couple of photos of Raven, because he wore a black kilt out clubbing!I hope Alternative X and Rapture find new venues; it's nice to have at least one night every month or two where I can go to a club and hear music I like and dance, drink and socialise with other alternative types! Inverness and Highlands don not have much in the way of alternative events and it would be a shame to loose what we already have.
There was a venue here called The Stolen Glass. For exactly one y ear we held our "Darkness Resurrected Dance Nights" there. Although these events only took place every two to three months, they offered us an opportunity to socialize with others of a like mind from around the area.
ReplyDeleteThe venue closed this past May, and the organizers moved several hours away. Even worse, most of the other night clubs here are much more expensive to secure and the local goth subculture is simply not large enough to support the cost of using those venues. So, our bi-monthly events seem to be a thing of the past and I suspect that our community will slowly lose its cohesion, as had apparently happened before.
There are metal events at another local venue and these are quite successful. There really is a dedicated and active metal scene here. Still, these aren't the same as our goth nights.
I hope that something else opens up for you. These occasional events are good for us; especially, when there's a lot of distance between the various members of one's community.
Inverness' Metal scene is thriving, and even the more broadly Alternative nights tend towards Metal because there's just more Metalheads than Goths up here. I don't know if there's going to be another venue or not, or if there's enough Goths and other Alternative types in the area who'll turn up to an Alternative night. I do hope that if there is a new venue that it's widely advertised because I think the turnout would be better if there were posters around town.
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