Soul At The Green Rooms Hinckley

Very few events on tonight for once and I had nothing else to do so figured it was worth the trek over to Hinckley, a pretty stellar DJ line up including Ted Massey (who I appear to be trailing round the country almost constantly). Good crowd and a nice atmospheric venue, a couple of other DJ's in the crowd and a good sound system. I missed the first DJ and came in about half way through through Pete Ankers set, all good stuff rare and varied. A few familiar faces considering I was quite far from home. 

The real problem was the dancefloor though - it was horribly sticky; at first I thought I had a bad spot but moving around it was all pretty much the same. After an hour I went outside a scraped 1mm of thick black gunk off the soles of my shoes and went back again. Talc had appeared (and was OK with the promoter) but as a 'famous' DJ's said to me the "floor was hard work" and it certainly was. I was ready to go home but thought I'd stay for Ted Massey who was excellent as usual but you had to decide what to dance to, after another shoe scrape (getting less, I guess the floor was being cleaned up by the friction of shoes) I came back in to see the end of Ted and a STORMING set from Pete Hulatt - one after another right on the nail, amazing; danced to pretty much all of it, a rarely bettered set just wow!

Would have stayed to the end but the floor was wearing me out so left about 1:30. Only managed one sketch, the lighting was interesting - DJ completely in shadow and there was nowhere to sit on the dancefloor except for miles away and I only had me reading glasses with me! Still it turned out rather well.

So a mixed night, the quality of the music was absolutely superlative which made the difficulties with the floor even worse, I've been to many a venue with a great dancefloor and mediocre music which doesn't inspire much dancing, here the music was inspirational but the dancefloor was an impediment. So this would be a really five star event if the floor matched the quality of everything else. 

I rarely give 5 stars - I've noticed most reviews are by the promoters of the events who inevitably give 5 stars to everything. I am trying to be objective.