2 great gigs in 2 days at 2 proper venues
We all come on here and sing the praises of good venues and moan about the bad ones and also how recession, smoking, noise levels or whatever is killing the scene? This weekend we played Whittles in Oldham on Friday and The pub in Lancaster on Saturday. Both were amazing gigs for us but, more importantly, they were packed with enthusiastic punters who were making a mockery of the 'staying in' culture. Now I can't speak for Lancaster in terms of the local economy and how much money there is to spend but Oldham is very similar to where we live in Bolton in so many ways and they have 2 cracking, well supported, venues in Whittles and The Cricketers in Shaw. You may well have seen my post about The Butchers here in Bolton pulling the plug on bands and part of the issue there is the geography of the place, not being a town centre pub for a start! Regardless of that you still have to create a place that people want to visit and put on bands that people want to see or they vote with their feet and too many failing venues are failing because they just aren't getting the balance right. I do think Whittles is ideally placed just on the edge of the town centre and far enough away from the chav pubs and The Pub in Lancaster benefits from being on the local town centre crawl and also benefits from the local student population, we had shedloads of em down on Saturday with accents from accross the UK but the place was bloody rammers! There surely can not be landlords in the country that could be happier than Debs and Kev @ the Pub, if you walked in there last night you would have never known there was a recession on!
I guess the point i am trying to make here is that pubs/venues entering into putting bands on must do it with 110% LONG TERM commitment, there seems to be a lot of venues coming on NWB with occasional gigs 'trying it out' but that simply won't work. It needs proper investment and long term commitment. We've all had it when we turn up at pub gigs and it's a case of "well where do we play or where's the power points?" We all know those kinda places cause we've all played them but how many times do we go back? I am sure there must have been many sleepless nights for Keef @ Whittles and Debs & Kev @ the Pub in the early days but them sticking to their guns is paying off and they bloody deserve it too.
BTW they are taking out all the benches in the window @ the Pub and building a stage next month which will improve it ten fold........See what i mean? Investing in the bands and their future!
Nidge