(The Penthouse above the ‘butt will be still be running, though, so do keep heading there. It’s a scrappy little bar that I’m still really fond of, and it has some cool esoteric DJ nights.)

This rapidly follows confirmation that The Providence is being sold by the Barracuda chain, quite likely to Tesco. Make of that what you will; it’s been pointed out that several other Tesco branches are about 5 minutes walk away, and there are already 11 Tesco shops in Brighton (plus there’s the one they’re considering building in Lewes Road too). I wasn’t hugely fond of the Providence as a pub but the sound was decent enough and some long-standing promoters put on a lot of shows there.

In the last month we’ve also heard news that The Engine Room has been closed. No official statements have been released as far as I’m aware, although the word on the street is that there just wasn’t enough money for some payment or another. Anyone reading this got the facts? [UPDATE: minutes after I posted this, an article popped up on the local paper's website explaining that the venue is up for sale. Balls!]

And of course earlier this year came the end of the Hobgoblin, a genuine Brighton punk rock and metal institution, which despite eking a few more months of life after its initial closure late in 2009 has been bought by another chain. They’re currently in the process of entirely revamping it; initial rumour was that it was being turned into a gastro pub (ah yes, no shortage of those in Brighton) although its new exterior paintjob does still tout “live music” as a feature. It seems unlikely that they’ll want to play host to the same D.I.Y. promoters and touring bands as in the past, though.

Several years back the Pressure Point was sold to a developer following a lack of interest from purchasers who wanted to keep it running as a venue. It’s since been converted into a hostel with a bar. The Brighton Gloucester / Barfly remains closed and unused following Barfly / MAMA’s abortive attempt to break into the local music scene around the same time. I assume they still own it and may intend to reopen it in brighter economic times.

The saddest thing is that most of the venues that have bitten the dust were the ones doing the most to support relatively unknown outfits, small touring bands, local groups and musicians and so on.

SIGNS OF LIFE

On the positive side of things the Hydrant (was the Hare & Hounds) is making a huge and laudable push into supporting local music with both a large upstairs function room for shows and regular gigs in the downstairs pub as well. Then there’s Hector’s House which seems to have picked up a lot of the punk and metal shows the Hob would once have hosted – and good on them, speaking personally it’s greatly preferable to the student drum ‘n bass crowd I remember from 5 years ago! Finally one of my current favourite venues, the Prince Albert, is also keeping on rocking – and their P.A. is one of the best I’ve heard in a small venue.

And of course there are other venues like Jam, the Greenhouse Effect, Audio and larger venues like the Concorde 2. So live music in Brighton has taken some major blows, but there are still plenty of places to go and play.

If you’re involved with a local venue, whether as an owner or a promoter, please get in touch via email or the comments below. I’d like to do a round-up of venues in a separate post in the near future, and counteract some of this bad news with a reminder of how Brighton still has a lot to offer!

The Freebutt today.

This news broke last Wednesday but I’ve been busy recently and so I’m only writing about it now! One of Brighton’s longest-running venues, the Freebutt, is under threat of closure as a result of a noise complaint and subsequent Environmental Health Office investigation. As I put it on Facebook:

Many of you will have seen this already, but so what, it’s important. The Freebutt is facing closure due to ONE noise complaint. They are doing everything they can to solve the noise problem, but the EHO and the neighbour are preventing them from doing so. For a venue with decades of history to be shut down for such a bullshit reason would be a travesty.

This summary is a bit unfair on the EHO – they’re helping, just somewhat slowly – and the neighbour – who presumably has a legitimate complaint, but they’re not helping get it resolved except in the sense of “if the venue closes, the problem goes away”.

The Freebutt is presently owned by a small group of local music fans and entrepreneurs. They’re put a lot of work into ensuring the venue is shipshape and this is the only noise complaint since they took ownership. Although since the redesign the giant pillar in the middle of the room is still a source of constant complaint, Brighton’s live music scene wouldn’t be the same without the ‘butt.

The Freebutt circa 1968.

You can read the full story from the Freebutt here. The Argus has an article covering Brighton Council’s statements and some tedious, reactionary reader comments. There’s a petition you can sign here and a Facebook group here. The MP for the area is Caroline Lucas (Green) and the city councillors can be contacted from here.

The venue’s owners sent out an update 24 hours after the news and campaign broke which you can read below the cut.

Within the first 24 hours of our petition going live we have managed to get over 2400 signatures, that’s over 1.5% of the entire population of Brighton who are opposed to the unjust treatment of the Freebutt by the Environmental Health Department of the Brighton & Hove City Council and the single complainant.

It has been brought to our attention via the freedom of information act that in the 12 months since we took over the Freebutt there has only been one officially logged noise complaint against the venue, that’s over a 400% reduction in complaints logged to Environmental Health since we took over on 24th June 2009. Between 2004 and 24th June 2009 there was an average of 4.6 complaints per year.

Both of Brighton’s key independent record shops ‘Resident Music’ and ‘Rounder Records’ are now stocking physical petitions for people to sign.

Early supporters to have come onboard in the past 24 hours include:

National Radio DJs:
Steve Lamacq (BBC 6 Music) / Huw Stephens (BBC Radio 1) / Lauren Lavern (BBC 6 Music) / Rob Da Bank (BBC Radio 1) / John Kennedy (XFM)

Bands:
Kaiser Chiefs / Foals / Blood Red Shoes / The Pipettes / Dan Le Sac / Caribou / Esben & The Witch / Chris T-T / Chesney Hawkes

Record Labels:
Witchita / Bella Union / FatCat Records / Big Scary Monsters / City Slang / Sub Pop / Memphis Industries / Holy Roar / K Records

National Press:
NME.com / Pitchfork.com / CMU Daily

National Promoters:
SXSW / Eat Your Own Ears

Local Brighton Institutions:
Resident Music (record shop) / Rounder Records (record shop) / The Source Magazine / XYZ Magazine / The Komedia (venue) / The Brighton Centre (venue) / Concorde 2 (venue) / The Duke of Yorks (cinema) / Melting Vinyl (promotions) / Lout Promotions / The Great Escape (music festival)

Essentially, the band ended when Alex (bass) decided to leave. The others opted to continue as a band but to make some changes. These included one of the band’s two guitarists adopting bass duties (at the moment Chris and Pinder share, swapping over on stage for different songs), Alec adding keys and synth to his distinctive vocal slurs and screams, ditching all of the old tunes and writing entirely new ones, and changing the band’s name to WW2 vs Dinosaurs.

(The name, incidentally, span out of a drunken conversation at our old house. As far as I can recall I was recounting an old dream which was the ultimate teenage boy’s dream because it featured Terminators, Predators, Aliens, WW2-era battleships, battalions of soldiers, and of course Jedi. It could only have been better if it had involved dinosaurs as well. World War II versus dinosaurs!

…well, it’s as good a name origin story as Snuff, at any rate.)

So far WW2 vs Dinosaurs have played a couple of shows which have been storming; the songwriting is as technical and off the wall as ever. Everyone hates the label “spazzy” but it really fits this band: brilliantly tight drumming with ludicrous guitar riffs laid on top, with sinister keys and three sets of vocals interspersed. At the moment they’re including a Devo cover (‘Mr. DNA’) while they work on more songs, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what they do in the future. Probably my favourite song is ‘Trying Times’ which ends with a demented riff that, paraphrasing a Brookerism, I likened to being chased through a deserted fairground by an evil clown with a massive erection.

It’d be a real shame to see the Offcuts entirely vanish into obscurity, so in the interests of avoiding that I’m writing this post and uploading an EP that was never released. Chances are some of the band will be pissed at me uploading this because they don’t like the recordings, but 1.) I do like them, and 2.) you won’t tell them, right? Right.

1. Flesh
2. See Through Your Eyes
3. Round the Town
4. Fucking A Random

These were recorded at some London studio or another, I forget which. I also can’t remember who produced them. Sorry!

Here’s a full Offcuts discography:

2005 – A Very Good Question (the ‘demo’ album; closer to trad. hardcore punk though still uniquely demented with ska and jazz influences on display)
2007 – Untitled EP (you should already be downloading this)
2008 – Pig On Pig (the officially released version of A Very Good Question, with a different track order and title)
2008 – White Horses & the Unicorn (the camply titled album that collects up some of the most experimental tunes the band ever recorded; they were pretty much at the heigh of their creativity here… oh, and did I mention that my band played the album launch party? It was our first show and we were rubbish)
2009 – Structures Built by Peasant Hands (a great swan song for the Offcuts; every tune on here is fucking fantastic especially ‘A Burial’, my favourite Offcuts tune and the only one the greasy bastards ever dedicated to me)

You can still buy the last three on the list; drop me a line if you want to get copies through me. The band themselves are pretty fucking disorganised!

Finally, here’s the video for ‘Flesh’, which is a brilliant video unfortunately backed up by a much-too-quiet version of the song (click through for an embiggened version):

R.I.P. the Offcuts, long live WW2 vs Dinosaurs!

WW2 vs. Dinosaurs @ MySpace | Facebook | Satanikbatwingdeath promotions / label

I’ve not seen the film and I probably won’t go and see it (looks a bit Lahndan gangster mate innit), but I’ve been asked to point out that the song ‘I Start Fires We Start Riots’ is by Last Days of Lorca, and NOT by Muse. It’s part of a cunning plan to get the right band name showing up in Google results, do you see? Seems only fair that the right band get attributed. Oh yes, and the band are playing Brighton soon.

Anyway, here’s a clip from the film with the song in the background:

That’s enough promotional material on behalf of friends for now… apart from mentioning that The Offcuts, Another Day Lost, ASBO Retards, Bull See Red and Harmful Effects are playing the Greenhouse Effect in Brighton on Friday November 13th, and I’ll be there celebrating my twenty somethingth birthday. So come on down!

Oct 18th – This Will Destroy You, And So I Watch You From Afar – Audio, £8

Oct 19th – Dalek – Audio, £9.50

Oct 22nd – Run, WALK! – Belushi’s, £?

Oct 25th – Sloath, Decapante, Ox Scapula – Prince Albert, £5

Oct 27th – This Town Needs Guns, Tubelord – Freebutt, £6.50

Oct 27th – Burning Love (ex-Cursed), Trippin’ Violet, Blackstorm – Engine Room, £5

Oct 28th – Dananananaykroyd, Dinosaur Pile-Up – Audio, £8.50

Oct 28th – Shield Your Eyes, P For Persia, Illness – Caroline of Brunswick, £free

Oct 30th – Architects, Despised Icon, Horse the Band, As Blood runs Black, Iwrestledabear – Concorde2, £?

Nov 6th – Youves, Calories, Shoes & Socks Off, Swims – Freebutt – £6.50

Nov 9th – Oxbow, Plague Sermon – Prince Albert, £8.50

Nov 13th – The Offcuts, ?, £?

Nov 13th – GBH – Engine Room, £8.50

Nov 17th – UK Subs – Engine Room, £10.50

Nov 25th – The Germs – Engine Room, £14

Dec 9th – Bob Mould – Concorde2, £16.50

Dec 14th – Dillinger 4, Ted Leo, Hard Skin + Four Letter Word (maybe?) – Engine Room, £8.50

Dec 17th – UK Subs – Engine Room – £11

Dec 22nd – Casiotone For The Painfully Alone – Freebutt, £?

Dec ?? – Drag The River, Chris Wollard & The Ship Thieves – TBC, £TBC

Feb 15th – Cannibal Corpse – Engine Room, £8.50

If no supports are listed, or the price is £?, that means I don’t have the details, couldn’t remember them, or was otherwise too lazy to go and find out. Sue me.

Sun July 12th – An Albatross, Rodeo Death Burger, Open Waters – Freebutt, £6.50

Wed July 15th – Funeral Hag (friend’s extreme metal band) – Prince Albert, £free

Sun July 19th – Brighton Breakout 2009 (The Zatopeks, The Accelerators, The Hotlines, The Bat Bites, Those Damn Owls, The Atoms, The Grizzley Ends) – Hobgoblin, 4pm, £donations

Sun July 26th – Lavotchin, Crocus, Our Time Down Here – Hobgoblin, £donations

Aug 4th – Voodoo Glow Skulls – Albert, £8.50

Aug 16th – World Inferno Friendship Society – Engine Room, £8.50

Aug 16th – Spraynard, Bangers, Break The Habit, Big City Plan – Hector’s House, £free

Aug 21st – Dinosaur Jr – Concorde2, £17.50

Aug 27th – Subhumans – Engine Room, £8.50

Aug 29th – Fake Problems, Riverboat Gamblers – Freebutt, £7.50

Sept 3rd – Paint It Black – Freebutt, £8.50

Oct 9th – Johnny Foreigner – Audio, £7.50

Oct 18th – This Will Destroy You, And So I Watch You From Afar – Audio, £?

Oct 28th – Dananananaykroyd – Audio, £8.50

Dec 8th? – Dillinger 4 (not confirmed, but!!)

Dec 11th-13th – Ten Years of ATP Festival (woohoo!) – Butlins Minehead