Does ED need a live music venue?

[ST&NLY]

I love the bars around ED. During the day, great food and good outdoor spaced bars. During the night few bars provide decent late night life. However, there are no live music venues. (till now)

Me and my friend Suroj are about to start our very own live music night in ED. The venue is yet to be named, but we have it booked (80%). This will hopefully be a week to week event every Friday/Saturday. Showcasing the best unsigned talent around London and most importantly East Dulwich musicians too.

There is more information about the night in 'what's going on ED'.

I would like anyone to give some feedback and ideas (help) with running a live music night. Please PM me for more details and also to get involved.

[Keef]

Best of luck to you, South East London is absolutely shite for live music, always has been (with a few exceptions).

[SeanMacGabhann]

what keef said

I was going to post something earlier but it's really hard to not sound negative about live music in SE London. Even Vince Power came a cropper with teh Clapham Grand

I think the Half Moon in Herne Hill is a great venue - but getting people to actually go is a different matter

But I expect I'll be along to any new venue to have a peek

[Keef]

Half Moon was oe of my exceptions. And the Amersham Arms of old, but I think it's all gone a bit DJ student nights these days.

I played the Clapham Grand a couple of times, and it was a wicked venue for the band, with a great rig, but it just didn't draw the crowds until later in the night when the DJ put on the cheesy old classics. Shame.

[SeanMacGabhann]

Some of the best gigs I ever went to were at the Clapham Grand - and in those days I had to travel from bleedin' Exeter to get there!

[Kingy]

With all due respect - where have you been living for the last few years ? The Plough, The Magnolia, The East Dulwich Tavern, Boho Bar, The Vale, The Forest Hill Tavern and Dulwich Hamlet Football Club (WHICH I BELIEVE ARE ALL IN EAST DULWICH) have all had regular live music over the past two years - and nearby Old Nun's Head, Ivy House, (Peckham) Half Moon, (Herne Hill)The Kerfield (don't know what it's called now), The Joiners Arms, (Camberwell) all have live music, even The Gowlett has band son occassionally - perhaps you should get out more (and that's not counting The Thomas Moore hall and the Cons Club and the old Dream Machine record shop)

[SeanMacGabhann]

I've had some good evenings at gigs in all those places Kingy - but not many of them are music venues as such. And again, great artists on many occasions but if we are comparing that list to any given week in North London the difference is huuuge

And I say that as someone who supports you, The goose and anyone else working hard to promote music in South London - I blame the punters for not supporting a dedicated live music venue. Somewhere like the Luminaire even, would be great to have around here

[Sue]

SeanMacGabhann Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

>

> And I say that as someone who supports you, The

> goose and anyone else working hard to promote

> music in South London - I blame the punters for

> not supporting a dedicated live music venue.

xxxxxxxxxx

Well we don't have a dedicated music venue, but we regularly sell out our DHFC gigs with 200 plus in the audience, so the punters are deffo supporting us (thank you punters!)

The Goose Is Out! in East Dulwich

We also welcome local singers and musicians to do floorspots at our smaller venue Upstairs at the Mag (also sadly had to turn people away from there last time as we couldn't get any more in) and our headliners at the Mag on Friday 12 November are local duo Jen Doyle and Joe Fowler, who we "discovered" when they turned up to do a floorspot.

All the best to you ST&NLY, more live music in the area can only be a good thing, but as Kingy says, there's quite a bit going on already.

I'm not sure quite what a "dedicated" music venue would be, or where in East Dulwich would be suitable to have one? We checked out a zillion places when we were kicked out of the EDT, and I can't think of anywhere.

[Jeremy]

I get the impression that ST&NLY is looking to offer something a little different in terms of vibe and musical direction. The Goose do folk gigs, The Jailhouse is kind of r&b based...

[Sue]

Yeh sure, but it's all live music, and the impression given by ST&NLY is that there's no live music happening in ED.

The more variety the better as far as I'm concerned, so very good luck to them :)

[Jeremy]

:)-D

Incidentally, 200 doesn't sound like much for a big room like the DHFC. Is that all seated? If so, have you considered doing a mix of seated and standing?

[Sue]

Jeremy Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> :)-D

>

> Incidentally, 200 doesn't sound like much for a

> big room like the DHFC. Is that all seated? If so,

> have you considered doing a mix of seated and

> standing?

xxxxxxx

We have half seated and half standing, and we sell 220 tickets max.

ETA: If you have been to a gig where it's full you will know that we'd be pushing it to squeeze any more in, and we consider it would be unsafe.

There's obviously more than 220 in the room with artists, organisers, comps etc..

We could of course get many more in if we had standing only, but a lot of our audience would not want to stand for three or four hours.

[Sue]

Sorry, having several senile moments today :))

Starting new posts instead of editing

[Sue]

Sorry, meant to edit previous post.

[Kingy]

I await with keen interest to see where this purpose built music venue will suddenly appear in E Dulwich 'overnight' - or wil it, once again, be the back room of a pub - btw - have to agree it's the punters - but jeremy is wronmg to say the jailhouse is r and b - it's everything , don't box music in, don't file under POP as the album sleeve suggests - relax your mind and float downstream............etc etc

[Kingy]

Forgot to add - have to agree with Sean MacG - the punters around here are apathetic and quite frankly don't deserve a dedicated music venue - I did a gig in Camden LOCK THE OTHER WEEK, NOBODY KNEW ME so to speak IT WASN'T ADVERTISED WELL and still the place was rammed, most e d types are more concerned with house prices and stopping the live music in pubs so the value of their properties may rise as they see it as a nuisance

[Jeremy]

You're right kingy, there doesn't seem to be a huge appetite for live music round here.

Glad to hear that the Jailhouse has an open minded genre policy, in my defence I never suggested that you only put on one type of music. But I think you'd agree that a bunch of students with asymmetric haircuts - churning out a wall of feedback punctuated by random electronic noises and incomprehensible yelps - might be slightly out of place...

[Sue]

Jeremy Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> You're right kingy, there doesn't seem to be a

> huge appetite for live music round here.

>

> Glad to hear that the Jailhouse has an open minded

> genre policy, in my defence I never suggested that

> you only put on one type of music. But I think

> you'd agree that a bunch of students with

> asymmetric haircuts - churning out a wall of

> feedback punctuated by random electronic noises

> and incomprehensible yelps - might be slightly out

> of place...

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Yeh, make them go to the Half Moon, we don't want their sort round here :))

[Captain Scarlet]

Yes I agree.we need more decent music venues.Would be nice to go somewhere to listen to a mix of music[even though I am a hardcore rocker at heart] sit down and watch and chill out.

[KidKruger]

With all respect Kingy you could fill virtually any venue in Camden by putting on half-arsed bands (which I'm sure yours WEREN'T !).

People come for miles to Camden for action and often aren't to bothered about the detail of what's on that night.

Can't say ED has that draw. So you will get good / full nights in Camden.

Same as shows I do in West End mate.

ED folks are probably less likely to go to any local venue just because there is live music, they'd be more inclined maybe to avoid if they weren't familiar with the band or unsure about the style of music being laid on.

Maybe you could argue less adventurous folks here in ED but it's extremely subjective when comparing to Camden !

I think what Sue and Nyge have achieved is marvellous, especially for an area like this.

Good news that any extra music is gracing our area.

I don't believe a dedicated live venue would cut it down here in SE22 area for the exact opposite reasons I mentioned for Camden.

[BrandNewGuy]

We're maybe a bit harsh on the people of South London. My better half was involved with The Grand back in the day and it was nigh on impossible to drag enough people south of the river. The North Londoners just won't do it in sufficient numbers. It's no good pointing out that, for example, The Coronet is more central than Kentish Town - they're prejudiced against anything south of the river. Whereas we're resigned to schlepping north...

I go to more than 100 gigs a year and it's a sad fact that nearly every commercial venue is north of the river - the last ten gigs I've been to have been at Shepherds Bush Empire, Kings Place, The Luminaire, Cadogan Hall, KOKO, Cecil Sharp House (x3), The Slaughtered Lamb and the Academy Islington. I'm resigned to having a well-used Oyster card :-)

PS There were some great gigs at The Grand - John Martyn, American Music Club, Kirsty MacColl, Throwing Muses, Gil Scott-Heron...

PPS Sue and Nyge do a brilliant job with The Goose Is Out :-)

[Sue]

Thanks KK and BrandNewGuy :)

We know from the postcodes from advance internet ticket sales that virtually all our audiences come from South East London.

We very rarely get someone from a North London postcode, and we presume that is because (as pointed out above) North London is already well catered for in terms of the kind of music we're putting on.

For some gigs we do get people coming from as far afield as Brighton or Nottingham, but presumably that's because we're putting on someone who hasn't appeared there recently and isn't going to.

The demographic in Camden is very very different from that in East Dulwich, and I can't see that even if Camden-type gigs were put on here there would be the punters for them - I could be very wrong though.

I think the Goose filled a gap in this area - we started it because we were having to travel miles to see the live music we wanted to see, and it was getting to be a real drag, and I guess our audiences were in the same boat.

But the amount of work involved is enormous, particularly in terms of promotion, and I don't think most people realise that. The only time it lets up is over the Summer when we don't have any gigs :)

[ST&NLY]

Performing on Friday 12th November

Martin Gallagher

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PovsZt-GL50

Led By Lions

http://www.myspace.com/ledbylions

Ro Roalet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYgJ2SsiXEo

More acts to follow.

Next Friday 12th (fingers crossed) should be a great night of new fresh live music performed by unsinged talent around London. The show will start at 8pm and the last act will play around 10-10.30pm. There will also be a DJ to play out the rest of the night till the early hours. If Friday does well, then be sure, we will organise more nights in ED. Please PM me for more details if you would like to play or get involved.

[Sue]

Do you have the venue yet?

We would have loved to come and support this new night, but sadly it clashes with our gig at the Mag (it also clashes with a new regular night of live music at the Ivy House).

[ST&NLY]

Much love to ya Sue x

The venue is the Vale Pub

Enterance on the night is FREE!