Venue Smile
Old news now, I guess, but still, CBGB's closing down was a massive shame and an ominous sign. But UK venues are suffering a worse fate. Every new day, it seems, marks the "Ikea-isation" of another previously-endearing music venue, as the flyer-pasted walls and beer-glue floors make way for what might as well be a kitchen show-room, suitably branded up with lager logos as new corporate owners bulldoze in.
There is a flip-side. The emergence of these varnish-stenched yawn-o-domes has inspired bands up and down the country to play gigs in all manner of weird locations. Like up in Salford (yes, home of the Salford Lads' Club as seen on that famous Smiths cover), where I went to see the soon-to-be-huge Ting Tings.
The Ting Tings are a guy: Jules De Martino (drums, Tom Cruise shades, Desperate Dan jaw-bone) and a girl: Katie White (guitar, voice, Karen O deep-fried in peroxide) who are making the most vital, umbilical fresh pop music in the UK. They've just signed to Columbia, and at the gig--the paint-strewn art-hole where they live, with a load of other arty northern beatnik types --they played just five sex pop-bombs of Prince-rubbed, M.I.A.-dorable clatter. Each is incredible. Find "That's Not My Name" somewhere and agree.
That night saw us head from one unconventional venue to another, as we headed to an enormous multi-story car park near the Manchester Piccadilly train station, to an all-night rave. 2,500 people off their nut-nuts in an area usually reserved for reversing SUVs. More gigs in weird places, please.
Further north, and something pretty special has spawned (although they're yet to play at any car park raves, as far as I'm aware). When we played "Daddy's Gone," the new single by Glasgow's Glasvegas, there was a series of thuds as our jaws hit the carpet. A shimmering, Phil Spector-frottered anthem, no less, about an absent father, it's the song of the year without question. Check out their MySpace and start praying to the ghost of Phil Spector's sanity that they've got a US tour somewhere on their radar.
I still haven't seen them live, but their date at Notting Hill's Arts Club is firmly chiselled in my diary.
Unless it gets turned into a kitchen showroom first, of course...
