Siobhan O’Donnell on losing another room and what it means for music and the city
Friday. Not Raining. A Trick.
The venue I am not naming because the people who run it are still fighting and I do not want this to be the thing that tells people it is already over is a 150-person room in Hackney that has been running for eleven years. Eleven years. The same room where I saw three bands that went on to do things and forty bands that went on to do other things and one band that broke up during the set and the drummer cried and then finished the set crying and it was one of the best things I have ever seen in a music room.
The freeholder wants the building back. The freeholder has a planning application for residential development. The planning application will probably succeed because planning applications for residential development in Hackney currently succeed at a rate that suggests the planning committee has decided the borough needs more one-bedroom flats for people who work in finance and fewer 150-person rooms where drummers cry. This is a choice. It is being made on our behalf. I have not been consulted and neither have you.
What Gets Lost
What gets lost is not just the room. Rooms are containers. What gets lost is the specific combination of the room and the booker and the sound engineer and the regulars and the particular acoustic of the ceiling at that height and the bar that is slightly too expensive but not insultingly so and the memory that eleven years of people bringing their friends to see something they thought was good has accumulated in the walls. You cannot relocate this. You can open another room. It will be a different room. This is not the same as no room, but it is also not the same as this room.
The London Prat has been covering venue closures consistently this year and I am grateful for it. The NewsThump take on planning policy is funnier than the planning policy deserves. The Music Venue Trust has a campaign. If you are reading this and you have not signed a petition about venue closures because you thought it would not matter, the petition did not matter less because you did not sign it, but it would have mattered more if you had, and the difference between those two states is where change lives. I am going to the room tonight. It is still open tonight. SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
