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
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.