National Pop League

How do you tell people that the most loved 'club' night in Glasgow is ending? How do you tell people that the place they feel most at home with the music they love, the people and dancing is to be no more? Well, you start with the most heartfelt letter I have read in a very long time.

Here it is in full:

Hi

It is Monday evening as I write, I'm typing this in my old bedroom in Kilwinning. I came down here to write because I thought I would find it easier. I got the train at 6; I read the Evening Times, nothing doing, I walked from the station, through the town... the first day of the school holidays today, wee guys hiding under the bridges at the river, voices rattling like carrier bags, someone calling me "mister", up the long road to Corsehill and it starts to rain only it's warm out and it smells like summer, and the kids up in Corsehill are still in their shorts and t-shirts. You can see the horizon when you get to the top of the hill and the sky stretches like metal across it.

I thought I would find this easier to write here, but the twenty minute walk home reminds me of everything I cherish about the Pop League, and everything that is beautiful about it.

I've decided that the next NPL is going to be the last one, you see. I apologise in advance if I repeat anything anyone read in the fanzine on Friday... that was my dry run for writing this.

There are a number of mundane reasons for ending the Pop League now. I really can't see the Woodside being open for much longer... if it makes it to the end of this year I will be very surprised. It's being run into the ground. The new door staff don't help – even though I have nothing to do with them, I feel personally responsible for their actions. I also, simply, am finding it increasingly hard work to put together something I feel entirely happy with – I worry about the playlists being repetitive, about songs skipping, making a mess of the night...

The terrible thing is, I know that I could quite easily put together a night every month and be done with it. I could cheat; could lift old playlists, line up forty songs from midnight till two that I know would keep the dance floor busy and put my feet up. But if I don't have a struggle with it, if I don't feel as if I have moulded every detail of the night carefully, then I don't feel as if I've done it justice. What is at the heart of the Pop League is perhaps what is most important in the world to me; to be anything other than devoted to it makes a mockery of that.

When I wrote the last fanzine I was thinking a lot about The Go Betweens. An absolute privilege of the Pop League, for me, has been to be able to play The Go Betweens every month and pay tribute to what they mean to me personally.

I realise that that's maybe a little selfish.

I've written about this before, I know. But The Go Betweens, for a long time, were the perfect band to me. A friend made me a compilation tape of their songs and I fell in love with them but I never ever looked further into the band, I never read any interviews, I never saw any pictures. I played the tape endlessly when I moved back to Glasgow, as I got reacquainted; dark October and November mornings before the sun came up, walking through Mount Florida and Govanhill, the buildings dry, black. I think back to that and it feels timeless... the fact I will maybe never be able to feel like that about a set of songs again kills me. The romance of it kills me. The romance of the songs kill me. But every time I play The Go Betweens at the NPL, without fail, I've thought of that and I have felt honoured to have those songs in my life.

I feel like that about Tindersticks. I feel like that about The Smiths first album, about If You're Feeling Sinister... bands and records that are so precious to me that sometimes I can hardly believe they exist. And as things have got a little harder each month I've been scared of committing some grave injustice to their memory, of being unfaithful to them...

...but ending the Pop League, I've realised, won't do that. The routine of the last Friday of the month aside I've realised that, luckily, they're always going to be in my heart.

I've always been prone to nostalgia and regret, I'm afraid. I was thinking about this the other day as I got the bus to Clarkston, going through Cathcart. I was thinking about the winter of 2002 and how cold it was, and about Gino's Café and Eileen's Diner and all the places I would go around then, along Clarkston Road... and I felt such a pull to it, these things that weren't there any more... and it wasn't anything particularly special, you know? But I realised that what part of the attraction was knowing that that time resolved itself. Nothing BAD happened. There is a lot of comfort in that...and I associate a lot of my early Pop League memories with that...listening to songs on the Cathcart Circle, taking photographs for the fanzine, being so excited reading about a ghost club in the window of a newsagents on Holmlea Road that I went home and wrote all about it,
burning the CDs for the first Pop League compilation by the light of my little Charlie Brown Christmas tree that I lost when I moved...I've not wanted to give these things up.

I've realised I won't.

This is my theoretical explanation. What's harder to quantify is the feeling of the night itself. One of the key things with the NPL for me was to be surefooted – to not be apologetic for anything at all, because I knew that every single song was there for a reason. Every song was a story and integral to the night... it's always been a very serious business! I never wanted anything to be a joke you had to be privy to, I never wanted any irony... I just found that contemptuous. You could lay yourself open, you know? But I reasoned that if anyone was going to mock a club for wearing its heart on its sleeve then I was perfectly happy for that person not to come.

I think this has led to the right people being at the club. There are so many people it has been an honour to meet through the NPL, people I have found inspiring and people I am grateful to now know and count as friends. That's still a complete thrill, you know? And seeing people dance... seeing people dance on their own. I get that feeling on my own in the house on Saturdays, Higher and Higher by Jackie Wilson is the best for it, when and all I want to do is dance. It's such a tender, personal thing. Having people come to my club and feel comfortable enough to do that is really something.

I don't want to ramble... and I do want to ramble... I want to write about specifics, I want to write about pictures, I want to write down all the stories I imagined on Friday, I want to write about Madonna in 1985, a lonely Stephen Duffy playing Kiss Me on Top of the Pops, I want to write about The Flatmates and The Shop Assistants and The Jasmine Minks, bass guitars and fanzines, about the shallow bends on North Woodside Road and how it looks when the clocks first go back in October, the allotments at Cathcart and the weeds and the railings, about Cattle and Cane and crying and eyelashes, snow. My favourite song pairings, Outdoor Miner into Allison, Virginia Plain into Mute Witness, how proud I was when NPL got its own football team, the strange quietness, the fury of the first REM record, taxis across the Clyde, the RAFA Club, everything like that.

I'll save it for another time.

The next National Pop League will be the last one.

I've been frightened to say that all day, it's made me feel like being sick a couple of times, it's made me feel like crying. But writing things down, and thinking things through, I feel better about it now. I'm happy about what a fantastic night Friday was, I'm happy that we can end on a real high with the club as powerful as it ever was. I'm excited about maybe building something else again one day, something perfect, in a dusty little hall, with these old records, with dancing.

Thank you for reading this far. And thank you so much for coming down to the NPL and making the night what it was. Try as I might, I'll never quite convey what an honour it's been to do this. It's been an honour to make your acquaintance, and I hope you will stay in touch.

Hopefully see you on the 25th July,

John

John started National Pop League on the 9th of November 2001 and after 7 years of indie pop brilliance, of The Woodside, music, badges, fancy dress, The Smiths, decorations, drinks, memories, requests, singing, dancing, springs, summers, autumns and winters, indie kids, the NPL football team, art school hair cuts, friendships, the bar queue, girls in homemade dresses, fashions, misfits, beautiful people, bands, being too hot, the fanzine, The Go Betweens, the mirror ball, dancing with your eyes closed, laughter and 2338 distinct songs it came to an end yesterday, the 25th of July 2008.

I can not do justice to NPL in words, there are too many wonderful things about it to mention. It is the one place that I have taken to heart. If I had known about NPL when it first started, when I was 19, then I am sure I would be leading a very different life now.

I think John should be very proud for making NPL what it was and I'm sure he knows that it will always be special to the people who attended it over the years. I doubt there are many people who came to NPL and didn't fall a little in love with the combination of the people, the records, the charm of the evening and the atmosphere.

Last night was hot, sweaty, loud, crowded, sweet, sad and perfect.

While trying to cool down in the hallway I came across a great book that had been made for the last NPL. Letters from NPL fans from home and abroad, comments from the website and some beautiful drawings had all been pasted in, people had written lovely comments and thoughtful statements over the course of the evening about their memories of NPL and what it meant to them. I added mine in, passed the book on and returned to the dancefloor safe in the knowledge that there is a permanent record of what NPL meant and will always mean to the people that went.

Just as the last song ended the whole room applauded and cheered. Fittingly, Stuart Murdoch (of Belle and Sebastian) said a few words and announced that National Pop League has a seat dedicated to it in the Glasgow Film Theatre. This was the perfect tribute to NPL. John said a few more words and it all ended with a huge round of applause, cheering and a chant of "NPL, NPL, NPL!".

For me, NPL will last in memories of dancing so much that my legs hurt and of smiling so much that I could barely talk, simply from the joy of being there and dancing to some of my favourite songs both on my own and with my friends.

I'll look forward to whatever John may build in some other dusty little hall with his records.