Jingle Jangle
When is a club night not a club night? When it's hosted by Smokey La Beef and Exercise Mike
By Millie Stein
It's fair to treat a new club night like a 1950s housewife would treat a travelling salesman: approach with caution and assess the wares before buying into the pitch. However, when the night is Jingle Jangle and the men at the door are Exercise Mike and Smokey La Beef, we suggest letting them sell you whatever the hell they want. Scheduled for the last Friday of every month, Jingle Jangle harks back to a time "when men were men and women were women," according to La Beef. "We play music that appeals to the primitive urges; anything from the 1920s to the late 1960s, girl groups, wild instrumentals, swing, jive, garage, psych and an assortment of pop oddities". And just when you think you've heard it all, Mike and Smokey pull a surprise from the sleeves of their three-piece suits: each month, the fellows invite a guest DJ to entertain the crowd with sleight-of-wrist, spinning records from their personal collection. In the past, this has included vinyl aficionados Jay Katz, Jack Ladder, Jack Shit and Dynamite Sounds' Captain Franco and Count Doyle. A night like Jingle Jangle gives us the sense that truly anything is possible and, according to La Beef, it is – with a few exceptions. "No show-offs, no hussies, no tarts, no junkies," he tells us. "Just good clean fun, with a healthy splash of liquor mixed in for good measure."
Jingle Jangle happens the last Friday of every month at Goodgod Small Club.
