Yep. You're right. Blue lights! The small time ones I went to had just this set up. Usually they didn't have any 'disco' lights at all.
Small church hall, usually Baptist or similar.
BIG sound system with a single Garrard deck. A bunch of dreads on the sound, including at least one MC. Totally hard roots and early dancehall sound. Selector flipping the disk to play the version while the MC's chatted pon de mic.
Always at least one Bobo Dread in the session, and him was usually also the herbsman.
Some lovely ladies, black girls, winding there waist in a way that a young white boy just couldn't help but stare at.
And always a few big blonde white girls in boots and short skirts standing with a young black guy dressed with lots of gold and razor sharp suit with impeccable shoes
I would go with a posse of six to ten friends. All of us white. Usually the only other white people in the session apart from the ladiez of the night with the sharp suit man.
We would always buy herb in the dance. This seemed to help get us accepted by the 'home' crowd. Usually a youth man would act as go between and make himself a nice cut. But after a while, we got to know who the main men were and went direct to the dread.
Once the crowd saw that we were smoking the chalice and dealing with no malice, dancing to the reggae riddims and keeping our selves to our selves, we were left alone. But when ever we went to a new night, we always felt very out of place. Which we were!
This formula seemed pretty universal. I saw just this set up in Portsmouth, and also Bristol and Bath.
I never went to small time shows in London, always big sounds - usually with a main attraction like Prince Far I.
The Nottingham nights are similar, but the crowd has changed - young, lots of white faces, just a few dreads. But I think that's because maybe I haven't found the real local blues dances yet.
