Oasis? Ticketmaster? Dynamic pricing? You can keep it, suckers. Yesterday, I walked into my local record shop, paid SIX QUID, (yes, six quid, probably less than the booking fees for a stadium gig), and then popped into town to see as good a gig as you could ever want.
And I was home by 10:15pm. Result.
In a week where the grim inevitability of an Oasis reunion finally became a reality, like extreme weather in a climate crisis, seeing Me Lost Me supported by LT Leif at Wakefield’s Establishment Music Hall was a tonic and no mistake.
Wakefield has a music venue: who knew?
Local promoters Bodys Wakefield have been quietly putting on small gigs for several years in a lovely small venue right in the city centre on Westgate. This is welcome for many reasons. First, nightlife in The Merrie City, once a vibrant human tide of revellers, has dwindled to the point where ‘dead’ doesn’t seem to be an adequate term. The only thing missing of an evening is tumbleweed.
In addition, since the closure of the infamous Snooty Fox, (where the towels screwed to the wall of the ladies was a particular highlight), there’s been a distant lack of stages for local talent to do their stuff.
Well so what, so long as there’s the X-Factor?
Oasis’ first national tour took in 34 venues, only 11 of which still survive. When they first started getting radio play, you could have seen them for around a fiver somewhere near you. When they were still good. And you could have done it on a weeknight and gone to work, school or college the next day to tell your friends.
This underlines the importance of small venues: first and foremost, you’ll have a great, affordable time and your life will be better. Secondly, you might be seeing someone on their way to “making it big”, what ever that is.
The second element is often quoted as a justification for additional funding to help small venues. Indeed, the Music Venue Trust, among others, has proposed a levy on the already astronomical ticket prices in arenas to subsidise the development of artists who will eventually fill those arenas.
Economically, this might make sense, but experience teaches us that this argument has a flaw the size of Manchester’s Co-op Live Arena and it’s this: The UK has a track record of producing original acts which start as left-field cult acts before tipping over into the mainstream.
The demise of The Duchess
Of Oasis’ contemporaries, there are Pulp, Blur, Radiohead, The Prodigy, Massive Attack and many others who turned into cash cows after starting out in what used to be known as the “Toilet Circuit”.
Famously, it was at one of Yorkshire’s best known such venues, The Duchess in Leeds, (“don’t even look for it: it’s not there any more”), that Oasis, a signed band, drew only six punters for an early gig.
The demise of The Duchess is symptomatic of the whole issue. I played there myself several times (see photo) during the same month as Muse, Doves, Kirsty McColl and JJ72. I won’t say which band I was in but the venue was full each time. The people who came to our gig, (still won’t say) all seemed to have a good time and came to see us again. Each time they drank heavily, thereby creating wealth for many in the hospitality industry and the people from whom we bought our guitars, strings and VERY necessary accessories.
Muse, Doves and JJ72 also did alright for themselves.
Back at The Establishment Music Hall, at 10.00pm, about 60 happy punters spilled into the bar to continue the evening or (oldies like me), set off home and half an hour later were in bed with an improving book.
Or, you could have spent the equivalent of a holiday for eight at Disneyland Paris to spend the next twelve months whingeing about the cost of accommodation before spending a day in a field peering at a distant stage while desperately hoping your middle-age will be as exciting as your youth was.
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