In-depth When one door closes: the present and future of the UK’s independent venues
As Power Lunches becomes the latest small venue to close its doors in 2015, Will Richards asks how we can move forward.
It was only two days into 2015 that legendary East London club Plastic People announced it was shutting its doors. It began a year in which London also lost 12 Bar, The Coronet (announced to close at the beginning of 2017) and most recently Dalston’s DIY base Power Lunches.
In a statement regarding their almost immediate closure last week, Power Lunches more or less cited rising rent prices for their inability to continue. “In the last year it has become financially unviable for us to carry on without compromising the integrity of what Power Lunches is known and loved for. We all know it has become increasingly difficult to do good stuff in a city that is so focused on making a profit without much concern for anything else,” the venue said.
This reason is only one of a host of problems that has recently seen staples of the UK live circuit topple and/or fall forever. Glasgow venue The Arches went into administration over the summer, closing its doors for good. Manchester’s Night & Day Cafe nearly met its end because of a noise complaint from a neighbour early last year, and the same reason served as the end of The Blind Tiger in Brighton; a live music venue for over 160 years.
The Maccabees play London’s Astoria, 2007
It’s vital that the handful of venues that have arrived in 2015 are given the same support as the basements we’ve lost this year.
Soho’s Madame JoJo’s - host of Lorde’s first ever UK gig in 2013 as part of the much-adored club night White Heat - and the legendary Astoria in Charing Cross both fell victim to redevelopment plans, which almost served to kill Peckham’s CLF Art Cafe Bussey Building last month, too. The Bussey Building, subject to a planning application for 11 luxury flats, gained support from local residents and music fans from all over the country, and the campaign opposing the plans meant the proposal was eventually dropped. Countless other venues have had to start similar campaigns, or ask gig-goers to fundraise in order to survive. The Fleece in Bristol, Guildford’s Boileroom, The Joiners of Southampton, The 100 Club on Oxford Street and Farringdon’s dance music hub Fabric are all lucky to still be here to see in 2016.
Venues that defined some of the UK’s current biggest bands’ early careers are now no more, with serious questions needing to be posed. Where exactly will bands starting out now be allowed to cut their teeth, for a start? In DIY’s cover feature with The Maccabees back in August, the band spoke of how their surroundings in Elephant & Castle influenced them as a band, with The Coronet - announced in November to be closing on 5th January 2017 - being the area’s musical hub. The band played their album release show for ‘Marks To Prove It’ at the venue this year.
Arctic Monkeys famously started out at The Boardwalk in Sheffield, which shut in November of 2010. Meanwhile North London’s much-loved Luminaire closed in March of 2011. That venue was instrumental in the musical education of Savages’ Jehnny Beth, who played some of her earliest gigs there as part of duo John & Jehn. “It felt like it was a home for people who cared about music, and people who believed that if you treat artists well, then they will put on a better show,” she said, speaking to DIY back in 2013. “In a way, when The Luminaire died, I realised there was nowhere else that had that mentality in London.”
John & Jehn play the last ever Luminaire show, March 2011
“If you treat artists well, then they will put on a better show.”
— Jehnny Beth, Savages
A similar outcry was aired by Andrew Hung of Fuck Buttons, telling Drowned in Sound: “You can play or organise a gig any time you want now; it’s entirely possible in this climate where live music is blossoming. With that, it brings a spate of half-arsed attempts at venues. But what was important and unique about The Luminaire, was that its respect of integrity was apparent. It’s important for new artists to see that integrity, to experience it working.”
Half-arsed isn’t something that can be associated with the new DIY Space For London; a radical, co-operative space in South East London. DSFL has been an idea in progress since 2012, and since receiving over £20,000 of donations through many benefit shows at other DIY spaces in the capital, the project acquired a building just off London’s Old Kent Road this Spring. The space opened in September, and has already hosted shows from the likes of Sheer Mag and The Spook School. A similar member-run space in Leeds, Wharf Chambers, has also thrived since opening in 2012. The city’s new Headrow House venue has also recently opened its doors for good, first starting out simply as a temporary home for the city-bound Beacons Festival.
In Power Lunches’ closing statement, they asked fans of the venue to give “all your support” to DIY Space For London in their wake. It’s vital that the handful of venues that have arrived rather than departed in 2015 are given the same support and love that made the basements we’ve lost this year so brilliant for so long.
16 year-old Savages super-fans won’t remember the Luminaire, and many of those who worship Arctic Monkeys were still in primary school when the Astoria was bulldozed, but that isn’t the pressing issue. Venues come and go, and always have, but live music venues don’t - and simply can’t - exist on the same spectrum as the culture of instant gratification and access to music on the internet. Only if more venues like DIY Space For London and Headrow House build themselves from the ground up with the same graft and integrity as the Astoria, the Kazimier and the Luminaire died with, will the wheels of live music keep on turning.
Power Lunches are set to hold a goodbye party this Friday (19th December), with sets from the likes of Sauna Youth and Not Sorry, before holding their last show on the 23rd.
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