麻豆约拍

In his  Steve Lamacq is broadcasting from five cities around the UK, shining a light on the alternative music scene in each area and celebrating the venues which are its bedrock. Here he explains why independent venues, and Independent Venue Week is vital in the life of new music.

On my 25th birthday, I saw a new band from Oxford called Ride play at my local venue, The Square, in Harlow. It was a terrific night. The band did nine mesmerising songs in front of a crowd, probably numbering around 50 people.

But they were fresh-faced, serious, slightly fragile and absolutely compelling. And because they didn’t have a crew with them, my mate Graham Pointy Shoes did the lights for them.

You could tell they were going to be good. But it was the gigs they were doing around this time (at places like The Square and the Jericho Tavern in their home city of Oxford), which really helped shape them and prepare them for what was to come...

Within six months, helped on by reviews in the music papers, they had signed to Creation Records and their second EP was in the Top 40. There was no stopping them. Before you knew it they were 1990’s indie darlings, on the front covers of magazines and with a debut album in the Top 10.

But where would they have got started without all the small venues where they practiced and perfected their set? The Square for example was a great place. It had a 250 capacity room upstairs for bands and a welcoming bar full of musicians and misfits downstairs. It became a second home for a lot of us. I saw Billy Bragg for the first time there, and countless groups who were either destined for distinction or for the dustbin; everyone from Birdland to Coldplay.

And after resigning from my job at the music paper New Musical Express and deciding to start a record label, it was in the Square bar that I was handed a demo by a band called Collapsed Lung (then featuring 麻豆约拍 radio presenter to be Nihal Arthanayake as their lead rapper). All sorts of people used to go to The Square. It was our little community. And a few years later when Collapsed Lung’s "Eat My Goal" became the first record made by a Harlow band to make the Top 40 in more than 30 years we all celebrated as if we’d won the cup.

But The Square isn’t unique. You’ll find little independent venues all over the country, all fulfilling a range of  functions. Obviously they give people a chance to see live bands, but they also nurture new local talent. I’ve always maintained that without a venue, there is no scene. There’s nowhere to meet or rehearse or test out your songs (for example George Ezra, whose debut album "Wanted On Voyage" went to Number One in 2014, is weirdly a former student of the Harlow Square Rock School).

These venues are also wonderfully inspiring little hotbeds of creativity where you can meet and socialise and share ideas. And they’re not just integral to the current fabric of British music, but to its past as well. They are part of the story of pop music. Madness got their first break in a London pub called the Dublin Castle. Oasis were signed after playing a set at Glasgow King Tuts.

Record labels, managers and the media may all claim to have turned groups like these into stars, but it’s the venues that gave them their first platform. And I love going to these places. You see bands at the most raw and exciting stage of their career, full of adrenalin and hope. I’ve seen Blur close on 30 times, but I don’t think anything - even the celebratory first night of their Park Life tour in Nottingham – somehow captures their core art-rock spirit, like the first time I witnessed them at the Oval Cricketers.

It was a one room pub, with a stage down one end where the band (still called Seymour at that time) ricocheted around with singer Damon Albarn careering into guitarist Graham Coxon as he twisted these deranged pop noises from his guitar. It was a brilliant shock to the system.

Of course, The Cricketers is shut now. It closed years ago. And this is a worrying trend which is beginning to accelerate. According to a report last year commissioned by the Mayor Of London, the capital has lost an astonishing 30 per cent of its live music venues in the past eight years; 30 per cent!

Some will have closed due to poor attendances; many are just bowing under the weight of business rates and other overheads. In some cases venues make way for new developments or end up closing due to complaints over noise, made by their new neighbours.

This is why it’s important to stop and consider the significance of these venues. To remember that today’s bands haven’t simply arrived fully formed at the 02 Arena. They all started somewhere.

To help this cause, this week is Independent Venue Week, a seven day celebration of small venues around the UK and a nod to the people that own, run and work in them. It’s an event, now in its third year, with funding from Arts Council England, which has already garnered support from many major artists including Radiohead.

They’ll be all manner of gigs around the country providing the ideal opportunity to see some live music and experience the wonderful atmosphere of these grassroots venues. It’s also a way of saluting the promoters on threadbare budgets, who run these gigs often with very little thanks or reward (other than the knowledge that they’ve helped a band they really like). They are the unsung tastemakers of the music industry. And without them the scene would be a horrible homogenous thing.

I can’t remember who booked Ride on my birthday in 1989. I do know though that the band reformed last year and headlined festivals both here and in Europe and the States. Meanwhile on December 31st the Harlow Square closed for the final time. The site is reportedly going to be turned into flats. The promoters are currently weighing up whether they can afford to reopen elsewhere.  

Steve Lamacq is presenter on 麻豆约拍 6 Music

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