Bodytonic‘s flagship club night POGO turns 5 years old on Saturday May 15th.
Bodytonic‘s flagship club night POGO turns 5 years old on Saturday May 15th.
In keeping with POGO’s underground ethos, we’ve plucked out a selection of the most exciting & promising artists of the moment with a live set from Ostgut’s (currently the best techno stable in the world in our opinion)Shed, live performances from Belfast stars in the making Not Squares as well as Dublin’s fast rising The Cast of Cheers, and local collective like no other Come As Soon As You Hear bring one of their crazy theatrical off the wall themed club parties to the Mezz room. We also top it off with a rockin party set from all round Bodytonic fav’s Optimo. There’ll also be plenty of non-musical action throughout the club too including MART’s dress up corner, Steve McCarthy DIY t-shirts & more.
POGO was concieved by Trevor O’Shea aka Tayor roughly around the first Electric Picnic in 2004, with the venue deal being struck in a caravan outside Stradbally estate. The idea was simple: to create a festival in a club, to have varied music, visuals and ideas across different rooms every week. When asked what he thought his target market was, Tayor’s answer was simply “I dunno, people into good stuff I guess, I haven’t thought that far ahead” . In the 5 years since, nothing much has changed, POGO still aims to be that little festival, and still hasnt a clue what a target market is.
POGO has been built with a team of solid local residents (our #1 ressie Barry Redsetta having been around since the first night and has very much helped shape POGO’s direction over time), crews & collectives and carefully selected international guests. Over the years POGO has joined forces with the likes of Backlash, Bassbin, Choicecuts, D1, Diskotekken, Electric City, FVF, Psychotic Reaction, Ragged Words, Scribble, Thumped, Tea, Test & many more, as well as having had an exciting roster of guests from small to big pass through, some having gone on to blow up big time like The Ting Tings, Klaxons, Friendly Fires & Booka Shade. We’re quite possibly one of the only clubs in the country where you’ll see ravers, rockers, rockabillies & sillybillies mingling in the same space.
In late 2008 POGO packed up shop and moved to our new venue The Twisted Pepper which we see as it’s new home for good. We’ve had to juggle the structure around a little, losing some elements like POGO Pub and the more “bass” music end of things which have gone into our Friday night Mud, but we’ve also added new collectives like Discotekken & CASAY with the little Mezz room allowing us to throw small niche parties, and we’ve much more scope for galleries, multimedia and any wild ideas we want. The main reason POGO is probably still here after 5 years is because we’ve never stayed in the one place too long, and constantly looked to change and evolve when things got stale. Saying that the team behind it is still, Barry is the main resident DJ, Eoin is the booker, and Tayor pretends to look like he’s busy and doing something .
Bodytonic‘s flagship club night POGO turns 5 years old on Saturday May 15th.
