Pete Tong wins over celebrities

Pete Tong wins over celebrities

21 June, 2007 | 8.21AM

• Written by: Industry Boy
• Filed under: Music News: celebrities, kensington roof gardens

Everything that is wrong with the Western world is on display tonight at the Sony Erickson pre party for the Wimbledon tennis tournament.

This snooty private bash at the ever-so-exclusive Kensington Roof Gardens is filled with the most painfully cringing people Industry Boy has ever come across.

Old haggard divorcees with the kind of expressionless faces that can only be sculptured out of Botox, glide through the party air kissing and sipping Champagne with their little pinkies fully extended.

Z-list celebrities from soap operas and reality TV shows mingle with pretentious blokes in suit jackets and corduroys.

There is a wannabe footballer’s wife vibe floating through the club that is neither pretty nor edifying.

Outside there’s a pack of paparazzi vying for the next exclusive photograph, praying for a celeb spat, a drunken pop star or a blow-kiss from a model.

No doubt, the morning papers tomorrow will be filled with gossip, pics and scandalous lies.

Double-page spreads on how that girl out of Big Brother 5 was seen speaking to a washed-up MTV presenter will take precedent over a car bomb in Baghdad, global warming, or the end of the world.

So why is Industry Boy here?

Because Pete Tong is DJing, and I wanted to witness the man attempt to conquer a dancefloor filled with the most disparate, ignorant and vile society-lotharios.

He digs deep, dropping a bootleg of Human League ‘Don’t You Want Me?’.

The dancefloor toos and fros unaware that Mr. Dance Music himself is spinning just a few feet away.

They didn’t come for the music. They came to be seen and live the dream.

He drops a cheesy-as-hell funky house track, and the crowd start dancing more steadily.

Tong is doing it.

Industry Boy pulls a blonde in a black dress aside.

“What do you think?” I ask her.

“Of what?” she replies, talking over her shoulder.

“The party”

“I think it’s really good,” she says, searching me for signs of insincerity.

“Yes, I think it’s totally shit,” I tell her.

Now she turns and faces me.

“What’s wrong with it?” she puts.

I let rip: “The people, the atmosphere, the pretentious air, the music, the paparazzi outside, the wannabe footballer’s wives, society’s obsession for celebrity culture.”

Tong drops Mory Kanté’s seminal tough house track ‘Yeke Yeke’ and unbelievably the dancefloor keeps moving.

For a DJ there’s nothing more satisfying then seeing people dance to a track, that at the start of the night would have been akin to a shock and awe campaign.

“I see what you mean,” the blonde says after a while.

She looks a little disappointed; Industry Boy’s cynicism has snapped her out of her dream.

“So what kind of music do you like?” she asks.

“Underground house and techno,” I tell her.

“Oh,” she says, “Like Hed Kandi you mean?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I meant,” I say before walking off in my own cloud of superiority.

If you can’t beat them, join them.

For the rest of the night Tong does what he does best.

He conquers the unconquerable – a dancefloor of people wearing posh clobber who would choose r&b and a bottle of Moët over minimal and an ecstasy pill any day.

The lesson is: match the music to the audience.

Tong is playing cheesy, because his audience can’t care any less about electronic music.

And why should they? In a world obsessed with celebrities, there’s little time to develop your own personality, your own music tastes, your own fashion sense.

Just buy, do, wear and think like Heat magazine.

For us electronic music fans, we thank our lucky stars that we’re under their radar. 

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