Venue Stories - Narratives, Memories, and Histories from Britain’s Independent Music Spaces - Fraser Mann

Venue Stories - Narratives, Memories, and Histories from Britain’s Independent Music Spaces - Fraser Mann

The Wheat from the Chaff

Venue Stories - Narratives, Memories, and Histories from Britain’s Independent Music Spaces - Fraser Mann

Matt Colbeck [+-]
University of Sheffield
Dr Matt Colbeck researches representations of coma and brain injury in literature and media, working with survivors to curate narratives of lived experience. He is the bassist with CreepJoint, featured on Tom Robinson’s 6music show. His book, The Language and Imagery of Coma and Brain Injury, is published by Bloomsbury.

Description

Throughout the 1990s, The Wheatsheaf, Stoke, was one of the leading indie music venues in the UK. In a few short years, music teacher, promoter and landlord, Ann Riddle, took the venue from a pub hosting live music to a multi-stage live entertainment venue hosting bands and artistes, seven nights a week. The Wheatsheaf nurtured local acts and staged up-and- coming national and international acts that were to become household names: from Shed Seven to Oasis; P J Harvey to Radiohead; Green Day to Kyuss. Second stage Wheatsheaf II, devoted to comedy acts, saw the likes of Peter Kay, Lee Evans and Lee Mack cut their teeth there. The Wheatsheaf was the thrumming hub of Stoke. It offered vital services to the wider community, and had links to Staffordshire University (with music students working with the in- house sound engineers) and the New Vic Theatre (the third stage, Wheatsheaf III, developed as a space for community theatre and works in progress). However, in 1998, The Wheatsheaf closed and was transformed (or perhaps de-formed) into a franchise pub after the building was bought by J D Wetherspoon. ‘The Wheat from the Chaff’ is a reflective memoir of the history of The Wheatsheaf and its importance in my own life as a teenager growing up in and around Stoke-on-Trent, as well as its importance for the community at large. Drawing together a kaleidoscope of memories of live events witnessed at the venue, I reflect upon the diversity of formative experiences small independent music venues can generate, whilst addressing the threat to which small venues have always been subject, a threat which looms ever larger in the Covid era.

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Citation

Colbeck, Matt. The Wheat from the Chaff. Venue Stories - Narratives, Memories, and Histories from Britain’s Independent Music Spaces. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 175-184 Sep 2023. ISBN 9781800503731. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=42699. Date accessed: 31 Oct 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.42699. Sep 2023

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