By Denny on Sun 28 Jan 2001 at 19:10
Friday was the latest event put on by the Milton Keynes based Absolution team, the second event they have put on at a new venue, the Pink Punter. Sadly, although the event staff made loads of improvements to the evening based on customer feedback from their previous events, their efforts were almost totally overshadowed by an influx of lager-louts in jeans and t-shirts who were apparently "friends of the manager's son".
The event was £5 to members or £7 to non-members, a reasonable price for the quality of the sound system, DJs, dungeon and play areas. Bar prices are a little high, but the venue layout is nice, with a main dancefloor and a raised stage area for the show-offs! The event is held in a basement level, which always lends a nice ambience to fetish events in my opinion. The music policy is mainly trance and hard house, played loud enough that you can only just talk over it in the vicinity of the dancefloor. The dungeon and play areas are slightly quieter, as they are behind a good thick wall.
The previous review of Absolution at this venue give more detail on the place itself, so I'll just get to the differences between that one and this...
The promoters had been asked for more range in music (including in the comments to the last review here, which the promoters read and replied to), and while they felt that not many of their customers would be interested in the rock/alternative set that a few people requested, they did get enough requests for trance music for them to give this a go - and it seemed to go down well. I found the music more enjoyable this time although I couldn't actually tell you what the difference is between hard trance and hard house. Some of the sound system didn't seem to be hooked up, so the volume wasn't quite as impressive as last time, but still adequate to please those on a dance mission.
In response to feedback from customers, the dungeon and play areas had been shifted round, and this did seem to be working much better than the way they were laid out before - in my last review I noted that these areas didn't seem to have seen much use by the time I left at around 1am - this was also the case on Friday, with almost no-one using the play room until past midnight, and it didn't really get going in there until gone 1am. The dungeon started earlier this time, with keen early-arrivals already busy in there when I arrived at around 10:30pm. These areas would probably have been even better used had it not been for the afore mentioned jeans and t-shirts crowd, who were crowding people in scenes, leering at any scantily clad females, and occasionally grabbing flesh when they thought they wouldn't get caught at it...
The venue is running a normal members night upstairs, and these are the people who are sneaking in without dress code compliance or any hint of an idea of how to behave. At one point I mentioned the problem to the promoter, who immediately had the three worst culprits thrown out by venue security staff as they refused point-blank to comply with the minimum effort dress code of 'at least take off your t-shirts guys'. About ten minutes later they were back, with big smirks - it turns out they were friends of the manager's son and the promoter had basically been instructed to let them come in without any dress code enforcement...
You can draw your own conclusions from this sad little tale, but when I told my girlfriend about it, she immediately said "Well I'm not going as long as it is at that venue then", and after some thought, I think I'm of the same mind - it will be a shame to miss my local event, especially as the promoters are trying so hard to make it a real success, but they need a different venue if this one will not allow them to put on a proper fetish event - I've stated in other reviews on this site my opinion that almost nothing will kill a fetish event quicker than a poorly-enforced dress code. I wonder how many other people witnessed Friday's idiot invasion and will now be waiting for Absolution to appear somewhere else?
So, one sentence summary? An event with loads of promise, and promoters working really hard to make it better and better, let down by an inconsiderate venue owner. Tragic.
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