“It is never too late to give up our prejudices,” wrote Henry David Thoreau. Little did I expect a nightclub to make his case.

Last year I swore off Privilege. One night too many being groped by Italians while wandering fruitlessly around the dancefloor in search of some atmosphere and I decided the World’s Largest Club isn’t for me. Give me the sweat-dripping walls of DC10 or Amnesia’s sci-fi splendour any day.

If it weren’t for my friends Helen and Nikki who are promoting hip-hop trio Sophisticated Funk (playing the second room) at SuperMartXe’s Friday night party I wouldn’t go anywhere near the place.

I do, though, but with vertically-challenged expectations. Especially after popping to Underground for a drink and discovering it’s empty at 2AM. Only walking up the road to Privilege do I realise something is happening. A traffic accident, I assume, from the massive tailback of cars trailing out of the drive and back down the carretera.

Pushing through palm fronds and pebbles towards the main entrance I can’t figure out what’s going on. There are these people, everywhere, scrambling through the underbrush, shouting at each other in Spanish or Italian, smoking, grumbling. “This isn’t the freaking queue?” I groan. Oh yes it is. Forty stifling, elbow-riddled minutes later my friends and I stumble out of the crush and through the entrance into another crush - a gloriously OTT swirl of bodies, lights, thumping house music and grinning faces.

SuperMartXe is reputedly a Madrileno gay night with a heavily Spanish following. In fact, it is completely mixed in every sense. And what a blinding show it makes: couples of every persuasion; gangs of friends chattering in a assorted languages as they struggle for space on the dancefloor; the white-hot blaze of the glittering SuperMartXe logo in lights across the stage; dozens of perfectly sculpted, expensively enhanced dancers wearing imagination-defyingly tiny outfits (a baby oil sales exec’s dream come true) and a staggering stage set - the whole display a glorious triumph of pomp over seriousness.

My friend - a Privilege virgin - is standing goggle-eyed: “Now this is what I expected an Ibiza club to be,” he says reverently. And he’s right. I’ll be back. Without prejudice.

Photos and text By Cila

(Cila is an occasional/regular contributor to the blog and Ibiza NOW magazine.)

Clubbing in Ibiza is big business and I always assumed it was run like big business. Men in suits. Offices. Power lunches (possibly). Faxes. Secretaries making notes. You know, organised.

How wrong I was. Turns out Ibicenco club deals are done on a basis that makes the Sant Jordi Saturday market look like Selfridges. It may (but is by no means guaranteed) to involve: endless hours of waiting, linguistic muddles, chupitos, gay discos, bad wifi connections, cutthroat negotiating, midnight meetings that start in one club and end hours later in another, 4AM cross-island dashes to “check out the competition” - all played out in a haze of booze, hash, thumping kick drums and financial desperation.

That is roughly how unlikely bedfellows SuperMartXe (Spanish gay spectacular) and Sophisticated Funk (a hip-hop/R&B outfit) came to share Friday nights at Privilege. Given they are replacing Manumission and one wrong move in the World’s Biggest Club equals the World’s Biggest Flop the level of barely controlled chaos is either insane or admirable. But very, very Ibicenco.

Cila

its just started and its very interesting so far !

posted from iPhoneSlide.com

This mornings 1st panel was about synchronisation - or as i used to know it: 3rd party exploitation - I have to declare an interest since my job used to be to clear and authorise UK owned Polygram (Universal) repertoire for use in TV ads, Radio commercials, premiums (giveaways) etc worldwide, so for me it was fascinating to see 6 serious players on the panel discuss synch’ing.
We also did a short video interview with Danny Whittle which we’ll put up as soon as we can.

This afternoon’s panel should be interesting with nearly all the club owners on the same table as the Consel….:

IBIZA: THE YEAR OF CHANGE? HOW IBIZA WILL RE-INVENT ITSELF IN 2008. OR NOT
Moderator: Samuel Guetta, Ibiza Voice
1: Paco Medina, Ibiza Consel Insular
2: Andy McKay, Ibiza Rocks
3: Juan Arenas, Space
4: Andrea Pelino, Circo Loco
5: Isaac Hidalgo, Eden
6: Marisol Aguirre, Es Paradis
7: Daniel Magdalena, Amnesia
8: Francisco Ferrer, Pacha
9: Manuel Lopez, Privilege

Some more photos from this morning

	Pete Tong introduces the IMS founders: (himself) Ben Turner, Steve Hulme, Mark Netto and Danny Whittle

The Panel. Neil Barnes, Randy Reed, Adam Wolf, Kerri Mason (Billboard Magazine), Jason Bentley, Bruno Roussel, Adam Bradley	Neil Barnes from Leftfield (left)

	Adam Wolf, Pig Factory Publishing

Bruno Roussel, Editor Six Feet Under, Las Vegas	Lenny Ibizarre

	Danny Whittle

Today we got down to the task of putting ibiza club tickets on our iphoneibiza.com website.

After mucho help from my old mate kosso we went live about an hour ago - there’s some tweaking to be done, but we’re happy with it so far.

eg. you can buy ibiza rocks hotel opening tickets.

We’re just a few days away now from adding in the full club listings for another classic summer of dance music on the island. It’s all kicking off slightly earlier than usual this year:

After another good night at Bar M, Andy confirmed that Manumission will be leaving privilege and going across to Amnesia.

After basically being held to ransom by privilege they decided - that they wouldnt…

Stuff has been going off over the past few days and Privilege asked them back and Manumission said …er no…

So Manumission is now at amnesia

can things gets any more weird ?

(on a side note, hard-fi were good.. and we’ll put up the gallery as usual at some point tomorrow (thurs)

Today we took a wander down to Privilege to see how Manumission set up for their weekly friday night extravaganza. We met a great bunch of guys who work extremely hard throughout the day. Full article will be in next months magazine and on the site but in the meantime here’s some pictures from today.

Click on Images for larger versions. More Pictures at our new Gallery here.

The crew behind the weekly job of building up the Manumission set	A sight you dont often see - an empty Privilege!

This Friday 29th June, MANUMISSION are collaborating with WHAT NOT TO SHARE, the UK based Hepatitis C Trust @ Privilege Discoteca in Ibiza.

“La Chatte Agile” aka the VIP Room at Manumission, will play host to the following guests, all in aid of the cause…. Zane Lowe, Uncle Buck, Guest Star: Carl Barat from the Dirty Pretty Things, Dan Peppe (Themroc) & Lisa Moorish (live).

This is a great cause, and everyone at Manumission are right behind it. They’d love you to help spread the WhatNotToShare word amongst your going-out pals and your workmate pals to raise some awareness of exactly what hepatitis C is and how it can be contracted and hopefully raise some awareness for their premier event/collaboration at Manumission at the same time. They want to highlight the campaign on the island throughout the summer. They’ll be 3000 posters a week throughout the summer to highlight this campaign.

In the main room, Residents Griff, Colin Peters and Tom Middleton will be duelling for attention with the action on the main stage, as A film director, his Muse and the glittering CineManumission Film Studios swing into action. The evil billionaire Lord Otterman, a Bionic Dictator and a dastardly plan. The resistance army of Flamenco Freedom Fighters led by Le Chat Agile.

Step into Sleazeville, however, and it’s a whole different ballgame.. Live to Shop, and Shop to Live (it works for us) with Tom King and guests.

CINEMANUMISSION
In the fight between innocence and corruption there can only be one question: ‘Whose side are YOU on?

See for yourself..

From the press launch and their final dress rehearsal on Thursday.

We’re really looking forward to tonights opening of Ibiza Rocks down at Bar M - we’ll post piccies as soon as we can….

click on any of the images for larger versions: