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Reproduced from The Daily Star (Beirut, Lebanon) 4 August, 1999
Lebanon: Getting down to Euro-sounds at Nijmeh Square
by Shaheen Chughtai
Special to The Daily Star
They were dancing in the streets of downtown Beirut when European pop
artists entertained a ready-to-club crowd with a live show in Nijmeh
Square last Friday night.
The streets were alive with music as first German DJ-producer ATB and
then U.K. singer Tina Cousins pumped up the volume for the Full Moon
Party event, with club DJs providing support in between sets.
"I like the dancer most of all," said 18-year-old Diana Habis, pointing
to the attractive silver body-painted professional as she twirled her
feather boa suggestively round her writhing body. Diana's male friends
all nodded in open-mouthed agreement.
The smallish crowd was a mix of the young and the even younger. With a
large contingent of early-to-mid-teenagers swinging their hips in the
front of the stage, you wouldn't blame the remaining twenty-somethings
and the few brave thirty-somethings for feeling not just a bit over the
hill, but right down the other side of the hill and deep into the valley
below.
Among the older specimens was Shahid Haq, on holiday from London and
admiring some of the local sights. "The women here look great," he
yelled.
And did he have his roving eye on anyone in particular? "No, I'm looking
at all of them."
The highlight of the Full Moon Party came when ATB took the stage to
perform his eagerly-awaited song "9pm Till You Come," a major club hit
in Mediterranean resorts from here to Ibiza. Interestingly, the German
DJ had picked Beirut to perform his live debut. Besides "9pm Till You
Come," he also played his version of "Killer" but this debut then proved
to be a short if sweet affair, as ATB seemed to have fewer songs to his
name than letters of the alphabet.
As a venue, Nijmeh Square - which buzzes with parliamentary activity by
day - proved an interesting choice. On the one hand there were no
neighbors to complain about the noise, but there were one or two useful
features lacking, not least toilet facilities. Desperate men were
eventually barred entry to the sole toilet - a sadistic form of torture,
given the copious amounts of alcohol they'd been encouraged to drink
beforehand. It did, however, give some revellers an unusual opportunity
to get better acquainted with the dark side of the streets and
alley-ways of the new city center.
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