Sunday 16 November 2014

What happens when they close all the small venues?

I just saw that they are closing my local “small venue” The Buffalo Bar in Islington. It’s a wonderful little venue. I played there supporting Prescott a while back and I’ve been to quite a few gigs there. Please visit:


And sign the petition to keep it open. 

It’s made me think, what happens when all these venues are gone? OK so a a lot of them make very little money, often because bands either don’t have any fans/friends or gig too often, messing up their draw. If people don’t come it messes things up for everyone, that’s why bands and promoters need to work together to get an audience to gigs. 

The key with promoting these sort of places is making the gigs “events”. Once these places are gone where will new bands learn their craft? You can’t just start doing support slots without any experience or fans or contacts. You have to build it up and these sort of venues are an essential part of the process. 

It’s a very hard thing to do, The Buffalo Bar has a great promoter in Paul from Guided Missile, well worth supporting. 

Legendary small venues like The Peel and The Bull & Gate are now gone. I played the Peel so many times opening for lots of prog bands thanks to my friend the legendary promoter Twang. That was my "break", where I built the audience. 

Let’s try and keep the Buffalo Bar open. Support you local small venue. 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

We are lucky here in Leicester to have The Musician and The Shed, but The Charlotte has been closed for years (after it was refitted into a really great venue... and it was already pretty damn good.), so we're lucky. It would be nice to have all three, as support slots in them make a huge difference. We can't all play 02 venues at the start.

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