The next decade....what's in store?

This is no Hellfire Disco

In 1979, Mummy was working at the conference on the then Intercontinental hotel in Montego Bay (now Wyndham Rose Hall). Every weekend, we would come down and stay in the hotel, that was for 5 weekends or so. The two nights would find us in the hotel's disco....Hellfire. Some great music, good crowd and generally a happening place. As my sister and I were in our early teens and hadn't started going out yet, this was a cool thing to be doing.

Here at the Holiday Inn, the disco is called Witches. They must have cast a spell on themselves, because last night I ventured in and yearned for a Hellfire experience. Reached, solo - Sis and Patch chickened out, circa 11:30pm to find a near empty disco. Worse yet, they had chairs, lots of them, all in a row, so people were sitting. Dance floor almost empty. I stood up for the bar for a bit, and watched the sights.

The first concern was the dress mode.

Ladies in slippers, fat ladies in short short micro minis, men in 3/4 pants, sweat suits, caps. Uugh. Merinos too. Ewwwww. Didn't anybody teach them to dress???

Eventually I plunked myself in one of the chairs. The DJ was clearly playing for himself and the Jamaicans. Pure rap/hip hop and dance hall. The bwoy wouldnt even get a hint. On playing Sean Paul and Sacha - which has more of a reggae beat - people flocked to the dance floor....what de bwoy do? Nuh change back to hard core dance hall tunes. Grand exit. Silly sod.

When, after about an hour, my skin couldn't sit still anymore, I got up and went by a column near the bar and started to ease into a jig. Now before this, I had been watching the singer who had performed after dinner. The man could dance, but he seemed to be with a female. I observed that the female had left, and that was when I got up. This was who I picked (unbeknown to him of course!) to be my dance partner.

What Yamfoot wants, Yamfoot gets and so after he went to the bar to get a drink, the fella (Newton) came over and said "why you dancing by yourself?". I replied "because nobody has asked me to dance". On cue, he asked me to dance. Kewl then. Lawks the bwoy have legs. Sweet sweet.

Chit chatted about how he got into the business. Turns out he went to Runaway Heart Hotel Training Institute and did the hotel course, used to work at Holiday Inn, decided he wanted to be in entertainment and so started doing that about 3 years ago. I only heard him sing one song, the last one, and he was quite good.

Danced until I was wet, then he went to talk to some other chicks and a merrino clad Black American in shorts came and beckoned to me, cause I can't call that asking me to dance, he sort of beckoned. Night club was about to close (2:00am) so I traipsed onto the floor for a last dance.

The DJ made no announcement. He just turned on the light. Oh geed, suck in that stomach. But thankfully I didn't turn into a pumpkin. I found Newton and he first thanked me for dancing with him, and I did the same and I wished him all the best in his career. You can tell he was a well heeled man from Westmoreland. He was the ONLY man in there with a shirt with a collar! It was that bad.

There was one guy who had on a white t-shirt that reached his knee, then he had on one of those unbearable 3/4 pants.

The music wasn't varied, just dancehall and rap hip hop for the whole 2.5 hours that I was there. No oldies, no 70's 80's "back in time" songs.

Just no comparison at all the Hellfire. But mission accomplished. I got some exercise. Was sweating trying to keep up with Newton.

Posted by yamfoot at May 23, 2004 02:23 PM