View From The Front: The Independent Venue Dilemma
Tuesday, 25 March 2014
Written by Ben Bland
Photo: Torche at the Brudenell Social Club (c) Metal Dave Photography 2013
In the first edition of View From The Front, a new series of opinion pieces, Ben Bland offers his take on the landscape of independent venues in the UK and what the future holds for the bands, fans and scenes they support.
We all love independent venues. Their continuing existence, as the centre of local scenes, is crucial to the survival not just of live music but of passion in music altogether. The faceless character of some of today’s more commercial venues does have its place, but only because a nationwide network of sustainable independent venues would be impossible without the sort of government funding that proves crucial in many European countries.
Independent Venue Week 2014 was the first event of its kind, a series of gigs held across the country between January 28 and February 2, designed to highlight the enormous cultural significance of the independent venue to the UK gigging circuit. With help from artists like Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood and Frank Turner, it proved a success in the eyes of its founders, especially considering the difficulties of establishing such an ambitious event in its inaugural year.
While the aims of the project are undoubtedly praiseworthy there is, to my mind, a problem. As a seasoned gig-goer, one who has travelled around the country for a lot for gigs in numerous cities, it has to be said that not all the UK’s independent venues are what they should be. If I had a pound for every time a band told me that touring in this country was twice as painful as touring in Europe I’d have built up a sizeable amount of record buying money by now.
For me, this is an issue that Independent Venue Week should be addressing. When I spoke to the event’s co-founder, Sybil Bell, a couple of weeks ago, she highlighted the subsidising of many European venues as a key factor for the rave reviews they get from touring artists, as well as the fact that better catering and rider provisions mean that British bands abroad often tend to “feel better looked after, perhaps more so than their status on the circuit merits”.
Significantly, as Bell notes, “venues are worth a lot more as bricks and mortar than they are as music venues”, which means that, when left to stand alone, the owners and managers of such businesses have a variety of tough choices to make. Unfortunately, from my fairly broad experience of venues in the UK, sometimes the choices that are taken have more far reaching consequences than many may initially realise.
To help explain these consequences it’s perhaps best to use a case study. My favourite music venue in this country is the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds, a self-described "community ‘non profitmaking’ venue". It wasn’t on the Independent Venue Week list of official venues, but it’s certainly one of the most inviting, and one of the best operated, I’ve visited in my years on the gigging scene.
A working men’s club a good 25 minute walk outside the city centre, the Brudenell not only provides a diverse line-up of gigs almost every night of the week, it also stocks a range of reasonably priced refreshments, provides the opportunity for a game of snooker between sets, and attracts artists far bigger than the venue’s 400-odd capacity suggests it should. Johnny Marr is performing his only UK headline gigs of the year at the Brudenell this month and the venue has also hosted the likes of Fuck Buttons and Local Natives in the last 12 months. Like many independent venues, the Brudenell also promotes its own gigs.
It is, to my mind at least, the perfect example of the independent venue as Bell sees it. “Venues don’t need a lot of the things that some people seem to think they need,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if they need a fresh lick of paint or if they’re not in the coolest part of town. All the band want is to sound good and all people there want is to have a good time.”
The Brudenell may be lucky in that it plays a significant role in the local community even outside its stature as a live music venue, and that it holds charitable status as a result, but it is also run by a team, headed by Nathan Clark, that works hard to provide the best possible experience for artists and fans alike. It has more competition than most of the venues on the Independent Venue Week list, being based in a city that has possibly the most thriving music scene outside of London, and it also should theoretically suffer from disadvantages of both location and fashion.
It’s a place where people actively want to be. While there is, and always will, be a demand for live music there will always be a greater demand for value for money, and for that intangible feel about a place that makes it special. People love the Brudenell because it provides both of these features and, to be frank, lots of independent venues don’t.
It’s obviously tempting for independent venues to see the success of O2 Academies up and down the country and think that there must be something in their strategy that will aid their own businesses. This has resulted in an increasing number of venues putting club night priorities over live music, as well as adding the “fresh lick of paint” that Bell identifies as unnecessary.
The financial upshot of policies such as this for venues can quickly transfer into negatives for paying fans. Drinks tend to be more expensive, and there is often less selection. Gigs are frequently subject to strict curfews, which often result in them starting ludicrously early and causing problems for bands.
Venue promoted gigs suffer the worst, but even when working with promoters venues have an obligation to do as much additional promotion for their shows as possible. A lack of focus on this can mean that gigs are empty and bands lose money, but for some it no longer matters. The lack of revenue gained from a gig can easily be supplanted by even a mediocre club night attendance. Live music needs to be seen as something valuable in its own right once again, not merely as an appendage to running a swanky bar or club.
It should also be recognised that larger halls, Academies and independent venues can exist on the same landscape. After all, the same night that Independent Venue Week hit Oxford, with a show at the Jericho Tavern, local heroes Foals headlined a short notice gig at the nearby O2 Academy 2 (formerly beloved indie venue the Zodiac). “There were several gigs in Oxford that night, including ours and Foals, and all of them were close to capacity,” Bell said. “These places can run alongside each other.”
I firmly believe that, if independent venues are to survive and thrive, a change is needed. It needs to be realised that what makes them different is what has, and what always will, make them special. Part of the way to do this might well be through embracing the competition offered by commercial venues and challenging their hold on live music by offering something different both to performers and audience members.
Venues need to look to examples like the Brudenell, Manchester’s Soup Kitchen, London’s Cafe Oto and Bristol’s Thekla to see that you can run a successful independent venue by swerving away from trendy stylings in favour of something more individualistic, something far more special.
When Bell described Independent Venue Week’s main aims to me, she stated that the goal of the project is to ensure that “venues are still there for the next generation of new bands and new fans, as well as for the local communities they play a part in”. To that I feel it is essential to add a degree of clarity as to what the future of independent venues looks like.
We need them to be music venues first and foremost, places that provide for a passionate love of live music that seems to be missing from a lot of people’s lives right now. It’s a team effort. Promoters, bands and fans all have a part to play as well. We need to support the venues that make a stand on behalf of live music. Otherwise they will have little choice but to be swept away. I’m confident that our independent venues can survive. Ultimately, though, if they do so only by losing their souls then what will have been the point?
Ben Bland is a freelance music journalist and features editor of Echoes And Dust. Find him on Twitter here. For more information on Independent Venue Week, head here.
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