Venue Stories - Narratives, Memories, and Histories from Britain’s Independent Music Spaces - Fraser Mann
Sold-out, Locked out, Power out
Venue Stories - Narratives, Memories, and Histories from Britain’s Independent Music Spaces - Fraser Mann
Tom Hingley [+]
Musician and Writer
Description
So many good memories, so many venues gone, even before the disaster of COVID-19. Gone but not forgotten, including venues we didn’t even get to play. Cardiff Square Club on the way up in 1989. The promoter oversold the tiny show three times over, so we packed up and went home. He called us and left a message on the office’s answerphone: “200 disappointed people outside.…fucking wankers”. We used it as a coming-on tape at future shows. Birmingham Burberries – another sell-out in 1989. This time we sold twenty extra fans in - a fiver a head - through the dressing room fire exit. Strathclyde University May Ball, 1990 - three fire alarms, two stage walk-offs, one can of beer thrown at an audience member by a roadie (Noel Gallagher). The Kilburn National where the band were locked out for thirty minutes before the show by a malicious tour manager. Lucifer’s Sawmill in Dundee on the way down in 1994. The stage was so little that Clint had to play on his own smaller one on the other side of the toilet passageway, and the sound desk had belonged to the Bay City Rollers in the 70s. Leeds Polytechnic where the soundman laid the power cable down the front of the dance floor, and a prankster kept switching the plug off during the show. The Hardman House show in Liverpool sponsored by electricity company, MANWEB. Local band The Farm kept switching the electricity off mid-performance. The show in Sydney where the electricity failed during a performance of ‘This is How it Feels’ but we sang the remainder of the song acapella with the audience. A thousand sweaty nights, lads & girls, dancing, singing, laughing, screaming, spitting, fighting.