DJ Chris Arnold has gone from vinyl records to CDs to USBs over his twenty-five years of entertaining clubbers, so he’s had a long and varied career. But it’s his show The Beatles Dub Clubthat’s really put him on the map, playing to the epic Glastonbury and Boomtown festivals in the UK and Shambhala in Canada. Now he’s here with his show for the Adelaide Fringe. 

Dub is a music style derived from the remixes of existing recordings, focusing on a dance beat that follows a reggae stream. DJ Chris Arnold’s concept of dubbing the soundtrack of the world’s most recognisable band – The Beatles – is a solid one. Maybe a little kitschy, but some of the most successful shows at Fringe embrace the kitsch and that’s part of the Festival’s endearing legacy.

Characterised by sound systems, heavy bass and echoes, dub is dance music, so the crowd at the Arkaba Hotel – scant as it was – headed the call and hit the floor. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds kicked off the night, the three screens filling the space behind DJ Chris Arnold showing live footage of The Beatles’ performances and interviews, and those of their fans, plus animation. It was a treat to see the screens projecting Madonna videos when Lady Madonna loaded the speakers. 

Wearing his 80’s Weird-Al threads with pride, Arnold mixed covers of Beatles’ songs: a celebratory Stevie Wonder rendition of We Can Work It Out; a nuanced Los Fabulosos Cadillacs featuring Blondie’s Debbie Harry singing Strawberry Fields Forever; a feisty Salt-N-Pepa partying to Twist and Shout, the projected video clip a near blueprint for Outkast’s Hey Ya. 

‘If Sergeant Pepper had been a DJ,’ famed DJ Fatboy Slim says of Arnold’s show, ‘this would have been his set.’ But let it be known that some cheeky post-Beatles solo projects from Paul McCartney and George Harrison made the cut. Perhaps most memorable was Billy Paul’s live Soul Train version of Wings’ Let ‘Em In, in which he replaces McCartney’s ‘Sister Suzie, Brother John / Martin Luther, Phil and Don / Brother Michael, Auntie Gin’ lyrics with ‘Pauly Williams was my twin / Elijah Malcolm, still our friend / Brother Martin, we can’t forget John / Bobby Maker, Louis Armstrong’, faces of revolutionary African Americans flashing on the three screens. 

At least three-fourths empty, the Arkaba wasn’t an ideal spot for such a show that, in the right atmosphere, could’ve been a blast. It’s far from the Fringe hub and too spacious, so the ‘festival’ part of the equation felt to be missing. As The Beatles Dub Club is a roving show, those at Gluttony are likely to be most successful. The show’s got the right ingredients; it just needs the proper mixing bowl, in the form of a dance floor, for the vibe to even think about rising.