A good gig is a sum of its parts – the performers, the audience, the venue. So do odd venue choices enhance the overall experience, or are they just for show?, asks SINÉAD GLEESON
IF YOU’VE been to a gig in the last month, it was probably in a bar that was once smoky or a windowless room built for ear-splitting loudness. Well and good, but you could have jostled for elbow space at a Calvin Johnson gig in an apartment; watched electronic performers Für Immer at a 12th century abbey or basked outside a stately home listening to Leonard Cohen.
Myriad things make up a good performance, from the artist’s mood on the night (remember those Bob Dylan gigs where he refused to take his hood down?) to the sound quality, but the space itself adds something tangible. In the mid-1990s, Julian Cope announced a tour of the UK and Ireland – but only if he could play in castles. A frantic search for something suitable in Dublin resulted in a show at Imma in a fancy, ornate room. Ankles sank into royal blue carpet and the audience was surrounded by paintings of longhaired dandies, aptly enough for Cope.
A year previous, I shuffled along to a show in another incongruous spot: London’s Scala cinema. Instead of the usual shushing that the walls were used to, writer/singer Momus played his heart out and made us watch 1928 surrealist film The Clergyman and the Seashell. It turned out to be the summer of strange venues. There was a terrible gig in a squat (Hawkwind had once played this very room, a grizzled crusty informed me during the encore). Then I caught Death in June playing the dungeon of an old castle, sporting camouflage and gas masks.
Cheery stuff. The Scala was once a theatre, so the sonic qualities were an obvious plus, but a dungeon was more about the setting and performance than keeping the sound engineer happy.
Oilrigs are not synonymous with bell-like acoustics, but in 2006 Katie Melua played on a North Sea platform, setting a world record for the deepest underwater concert (300 metres below sea level).
In 2007, the White Stripes embarked on a tour that included shows on city buses and in bowling alleys.
The quirky venue is publicity-friendly and has recently flourished in several online video projects. The blackcabsessions.com films musicians doing "one song, one take" in the back of a black cab as it drives around London. More than 100 acts have participated, including Fleet Foxes and The National. National Public Radio in the US has a version of the "intimate gig" with its Tiny Desk concert series. Bob Boilen, who hosts the show All Songs Consideredinvites acts to play a show in his office (Villagers played last month).
Closer to home, this weekend you can see Tindersticks in St Canice's Cathedral as part of the Kilkenny Arts Festival. Every year, RTÉ's Other Voiceshas hosted gigs in St James's Church in Dingle and there is something special about the atmosphere.
WITH ATYPICAL VENUES, there's also a sense of bending rules, of stepping outside predictable spaces. Not only does it mean autonomy, it means that anything goes.
For Dermot McCabe, it also means mobility. The Westport DJ converted a 1970’s ice-cream van into a DJ booth and plays gigs with his Mr. Whippy Soundsystem.
Three new venues open their doors in Dublin this autumn and while all are attempting to diversify, they still embody the traditional gig venue. It’s a great loss that the now-defunct DEAF festival is not around this year to provide its usual offering of unconventional spaces. Last year, DEAF organised Dublin shows in the Waldorf Barber, The Old Boy’s School in Temple Bar and City Hall.
When Sligo’s Model Niland was closed for renovation, the curators were undeterred by the lack of a venue and used the opportunity to explore locations with their 2008 New Spaces for Music.
As part of the programme, Canadian act Milosh played in a Sligo hotel room, flautist Emer Macock performed in Summerhill’s handball alley and Chequerboard’s venue was a pharmacy on Wolfe Tone Street.
Venues are expensive to hire. Mid-recession, there is much scope to bend the rules with auditoria. An unusual space is part of the experience – you never forget it. At the end of a working summer in the US, a friend convinced me to visit her hometown of Cincinnati. A big music fan, she brought me to see local heroes Brainiac in a place called Sudsy Malone’s. “Wait until you see it.”
The accompanying wink hadn’t prepared me for the fact that Sudsy’s was a venue and a launderette. There were washing machines lined up at the back that doubled as seats. Already awed by the concept, a guy leaned over mid-gig, slapped the machine he was perched on and said, “You do know that you get in free if you bring your washing, right?”
Strange Places I Have Played
Adrian Crowley
“I once played in a Fisheries Museum in Scotland with nets and hooks hanging around the place. I also played in a wine cellar in Toulouse with mortar and brick dust falling from the ceiling.”
Jape (Richie Egan)
“A guy called Jens Uhl organised for me to play on top of the third highest mountain on the Slovakian-Polish border. It was called Lomnicky Stit and it was so cold we could only play about three songs before our hands froze up. Jens had to deal with so much red tape to get us up there, but we ended up on the six o clock news!”
David Turpin
“I once did a performance on a circular felt-covered plinth in the back garden of a grass-topped house made of mirrors. In Leitrim.”
Tindersticks and 3epkano play St Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny on Sunday, August 15. kilkennyarts.ie
