Long ago, when I was just a boy, my life was organised and planned, ambitions set with heart so full of joy, my ship set sail, full-rigged and manned
But then the world around did other things – it intervened in aspects of my life – brought down my sails and clipped my flapping wings with unexpected turns and causing strife.
Youth’s lovely random lovers came and went – as one came half way round the world it whimmed – and, to me, lifelong friends were sometimes sent ‘By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed.’
When Adulthood arrived my ship was manned with chance encounters governing my fate. Along came people, whom I had not planned, brought opportunities for love or hate.
And then, as much as one might organise, cunning Serendipity had her way when many random factors filled my skies and often dominated every day.
How selected, if we did, to marry, the vacancies to which we made the grade, and the house in which we chose to tarry, were symbols with which we were paid.
And then a brand new car came with the post – seen a random advert in the paper – which was the very one I wanted most soon turned out a very complex caper.
Was this occurrence chance or was it fate? Some higher plan that predetermined life. But who was bothered to arrange my fate command what job I had or who my wife?
Predicted outcome is for us to muse – the many consequences of our choice. Are we so really free to pick and choose? Does Fate desire to parley with our voice?
We much prefer to think that many things do not just strangely happen in our lives, that we are in control of what life brings, free to select our house, our jobs, our wives.
Why did the highest jackpot land on us? Why did we loose that very prize to Strife? Why all the bad commotion and the fuss? Did we select the lottery of life?
Does life just happen? Very loud we shout, in ever-changing currents of our ride, but what when living’s time is running out – are we then floating on the final tide?
But what if Chance has other things in store and circumstances take a different course? What if the wheel of fortune turns some more – opened another door – that of remorse?
What if I never moved away from home? What if I never chose to take a wife? What if I made the choice to widely roam and gave away security of life?
And if I now decide to move away, to chase a new life there or here to stay, would such as these intended outcomes sway the predicated future? Hard to say.
If we blew out the candles on the cake and made a wish to have some other fate would it be such a terrible mistake and would it be too early or too late?
Would sterner strength of will and planner’s aim deliver more success than failure can? But does that confer on us much more gain? A better outcome when it all began.
How can we say that certain things can wait or many great developments delayed? When all we are is fanned by gales of Fate and pirates have our little ship waylaid.
My captain on his bridge, so resolute, planning a course to his desired port, his ship sails boldly on its outward route ignoring storms in which he might be caught.
So often Life does not kowtow to Plan whose condescending fancies variate to vacillate the confused world of Man in vicious turbulence of love and hate.
Chance rules our being, cradle to the grave, and throws us screaming in the wavy sea when Fate determines all that life can have – is this the way that everything must be?
But Fate. we know, can come out either way, sometimes against us, even sometimes good, how living’s dice will roll we cannot say. All we can postulate is how they should.
Trevor Locke
7th October 2021
Despite having worked on this piece for a few weeks now, it is still not’ finished.’ Consider the above to be work in progress. I will, I am sure, polish it up and smooth off the rough edges in the fullness of time.
Here I publish a selection of the poems I wrote in 2020.
Zhivago song, 2020
The Ural’s icy blasts swept leaves along the streets like souls of dead peasants brown and dry. Green they were in spring but all that is born must die. Yuri listened to the sound and thought it carried with it the tinkling of a balalaika’s string like icicles shivering in the snow as they hung from the eaves of Yarykino. Stumbling through the twists and turns of fate Savouring the flowery passions of lost love blackened by the battles of mindless hate driven by blizzards from above your fingers plucked the strings of your instrument – my heart – as into the limitless sky wings wild geese seeking for a mate knowing they must always be apart.
Once upon a time, long, long ago, was an era when people hated interruptions. Individuals could go for long periods without their work or reading or study being interrupted. Today, things are very different. Technology now means that we are constantly interrupted. We have an interruptive culture that constantly prevents sustained concentration. People have lost the will to concentrate and their focus is now shallow and easily broken. Telephones ring. Computers notify us constantly. Text messages arrive on our mobile phones. We allow the outside world to intrude on us throughout the day. Our television sets are, on certain channels, interrupted by advertising. It is as though the outside world is not content to let us be but wants always to remind us of something, notify us of tiny, minor details and intrude into our lives every second of the day. The world has become distracted and unable to concentrate. We live in the era of the interruptive society.
The noise of offices
I remember when I used to work in an office (most of my working life.) The telephone rang constantly. There were some jobs where I was expected to make myself constantly available, irrespective of what I was doing so that people could talk to me on the phone or come to my desk and speak to me. When I became my own boss, I was responsible for sales and marketing of my own business. That meant that I had to be constantly available all day and every day in case I received a call from a prospective customer. If the telephone rang, I had to stop working and answer it. I could not afford to ignore it. There was no one else to answer the phone for me. I worked alone. Somehow I had to multitask and design websites (a procedure requiring sustained concentration) and be at the beck and call of existing customers and available to those enquiring about my services who might offer me new business. The later years of my working life were dominated by information technology. Having taken firstly to computers and then to the Internet, my life was dominated by what then was called new technology. I experienced at first hand the technological revolution of the twentieth century. That revolution brought us all the flowering of freely available information. It is unintended consequence was its intrusion into our lives.
The corrosion of silence
One of the principal sources of this culture of intrusiveness has been the Internet. Prior to the discovery and exploitation of electricity, educated people would read books for long periods of time. In non-literary households, people would talk to each other until it was time to sleep. I say this because I want to highlight the difference between life as it was and life as it has now become. It is a transition of which we are hardly aware. Because we are largely unaware of being interrupted we take it for granted as a fact of life. Unlike our ancestors, we now expect to be constantly interrupted. Being unaware of this, we are unable to assess how it affects us. We take it for granted and therefore fail to consider it critically. For those who have grown up with mobile phones and the Internet, being interrupted all day long is just a fact of life. It’s just how the world is. We know of nothing else. Our lives are lived in an environment of noise. Most of that noise is information. We also live in a noisy environment. Traffic creates far more sound pollution in the age of the motorcar and tarmacked roads, than was the case in the era of horse-drawn conveyances. Noise is all around us. Even when we get in a lift or go shopping, music is being played in the background. Music is forced into our ears whether we like it or not. When I get to visit my friend, in the flat below, he tells Alexa to play music. I did not go down there to listen to music. I went down to talk to him. When I am having a conversation, I cannot also listen to music. Even when I am alone, writing, I cannot have music playing in the ‘background.’ Either I listen to music or I write. I cannot do both at once. Or I should say I choose not to do both at once? I have become averse to ambience. I no longer care for music as part of the ambience of a room. Music that is worth listening to requires undivided attention. If it is just background sound, then I would prefer to be without it. I have tried to write, while listening to music of my choice, through my headphones. The last time I did this, two things happened: firstly, the doorbell rang and I failed to notice it until it was too late. Secondly, the phone rang but I failed to hear it ringing and so missed the call. I then decided not to have my headphones on. When people go to a concert hall, to listen to an orchestra performing, they must (or should) switch off their mobile phones. I remember being at the theatre and, before the play began, an announcement would be read out asking members of the audience to either turn off their phones or to put them on silent. Most people now do that as a matter of course. This does not happen when people are watching television. Viewers are happy to be interrupted by callers. Especially if they need to be available to relatives or loved-ones. Understandable. There are more important things in life than light entertainment.
The invention of the telephone
1876 was an iconic year in the development of Western civilisation. It was the year in which Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in the United States. By the outbreak of the first world war, in 1914, there were ten people for every telephone in the US. By the second world war, this rate had doubled. In the United Kingdom, Bell demonstrated the telephone to Queen Victoria on 14th January 1878 at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight with calls to London, Cowes and Southampton. These were the first long-distance calls in the UK. note 1 From then on, telephones began their rise to ubiquity. In 1914, a submarine cable was laid between Dover and Dunkirk and a third automatic telephone exchange was opened at Hereford. By the 1930s, telephones were commonly found in affluent English homes. In 1921, red telephone boxes began to appear on our streets. They were called ‘telephone kiosks’ and were designed by Sir Charles Gilbert Scott, better known for his architectural design for the Cambridge University Library, among other things.
Today most homes have a landline and this has been enhanced by the growth in the use of the Internet, brought into houses via the landline. Even when individuals have a mobile phone, many like the reassurance of having access to a landline in case there is a problem with their mobile signal. Like many other people, if I need to make a telephone call, I use my mobile phone, rather than my landline. Calls made before 18:00 hours are charged; whereas, on my mobile service, calls to UK landlines and other mobile numbers are free. I rarely use my landline to make outgoing calls.
Texting
With the introduction of mobile phones came text messaging. The Short Message Service. There are people today who expect to receive a constant flow of text messages and also to send them. It is a lifestyle characteristic for most people who own mobile phones. Not only messages sent by human beings, but also automatically generated notifications. My smartphone stores all the SMS texts that I either receive or send until I choose to delete them. That can be useful. I also have the ability to store telephone messages together with large amounts of other data that can be extracted from my handset and stored on my computer. Because my phone is not connected to either the Internet or to Wi-Fi, I am not plagued with notifications coming in through Apps that constantly page their sources. I have freed myself of the constant flow of noise from the mobile service via Apps and social media. If I want to know what my friends have said on Facebook, I log on to it and find out. I do not need to know what people post on Facebook in real-time.
According to one source, UK phone users were sending 217 million texts per day. ‘Britons are sending an average of 60 million more text messages per day from their mobile phones than they did this time last year, according to the latest industry figures’ of October 2008. note 2 In 2012, it was claimed that the ‘UK is texting more than talking.’ note 3 While voice calls over the mobile phone networks were in decline, texting and sending communications online were increasing. The same source reported that the average Briton sends 50 texts a week. At the time, two-fifths of UK adults owned a smartphone. Alongside this, people are using social media networks as a way of communicating. Letter writing has declined considerably since the rise of new technology. The sending of greetings cards has not declined as much as the sending of letters through the post. Today, there has been a massive increase in the number of parcels being sent through the mail because of the increase in online ordering. Orders placed online constantly send notifications of when they have been despatched and when they will be delivered.
The picture that emerges is one of a society that has a mobile phone that is permanently switched on and which could interrupt its owners, for either an incoming phone call or text message, or notification or alert, at any time of the day or night. Not just the telephone system – notifications are being sent to people via the Internet by social media platforms. Take Facebook for example. There are settings on Facebook that allow account holders to be notified about all sorts of things. Some people get a barrage of such notifications all day long, every day of their lives. It is no wonder that we see people totally absorbed in looking at mobile phone screens for long periods of time. Modern people want to be ‘in the know.’ They fear missing things that might be mentioned by their friends or relatives. Being notified of everything has become an obsession.
Answering the phone
My life is very different. I started to write this article at 08:30 this morning. It is now just coming up to 09:30. In the past hour, my mobile phone had not rung or bleeped once. It is switched on but it is not connected to the Internet. Although it is a smartphone, I do not have it connected to the Internet. My landline has not received an incoming call since the day before yesterday when I got an unwanted sales company trying to ask me questions (which I refused to answer.) The only interruption I have had whilst writing this essay is the cat demanding to be fed. How could I write if I were constantly interrupted? Writing an essay requires sustained concentration over long periods of time. At various points in the last hour, I have looked things up on the Internet as part of my research for this article. Apart from that, I have worked in silence and without being notified of anything happening in the world outside.
If I decide I need to know what the news headlines are, I can go to the BBC website and read them. If my friend calls me on the mobile phone I can decide whether I wish to stop working and have a conversation or ignore the call and carry on writing. In the evenings I watch films, documentaries or series on live television or I watch those that are streamed on Netflix. If I am watching a particularly engaging or enthralling programme, I will ignore telephone calls and call back after the programme has finished. There are times when I simply do not want to miss any part of what I am watching. If I am watching something online, I might pause it while I have a conversation on the phone, if what I am watching is not that important to me. I do not have the ability to pause live, broadcast television. If I really want to watch a programme then I will not allow myself to be interrupted by an incoming telephone call or even a text message. The same also applies when I am reading a book. If the telephone rings, I might answer the call or I might not. It all depends on how engaged I am in my reading. If the book is important to me, I am engaged in what is called deep reading. That is something that should not be interrupted. It engages us deeply in its story.
Interruptiveness
A lot of people are content to be interrupted all day long by phone calls and text messages. If this was not a feature of their daily lives (because the service was not available) they would feel isolated and unhappy. But what does this culture of interruptiveness do to people? How does it affect their consciousness? To explore these question I turned to the work of Nicholas Carr. In his book The Shallows. How the internet is changing the way we think, read and remember, Carr examines how society has become interruptible in many different ways. His thesis is expounded in chapter seven: The Juggler’s Brain. What effect, Carr asks, has the Internet had on the way our minds work? The next 28 pages of his book address the question. So, it is not a question that can be dismissed briefly. The culture of being constantly interrupted changes the way our brains work and affect our consciousness. Our brains are constantly switching from one activity to another. How can we learn something or understand complex explanations if we are continually distracted? Why do we need to be constantly notified of anything and everything? Why can we not take time out from the constant ebb and flow of information life to engage deeply with words or music? Do we have to go to concerts in order to freely engage music in a setting where everyone is enjoying the same thing at the same time without interruption? I wonder if we will start to enjoy mass reading sessions where everyone reads a book collectively and where mobile phones are turned off. If we do something as part of a large group does that justify doing it in isolation and being free from interruptions? What is wrong with an individual enjoying a deep experience alone and free from the incursions of the outside world? One reason is to do with parenting. Parents want to be available to their children on the phone at any time of the day or not. I can sit here in silent isolation and ignore telephones ringing because I am not responsible for anyone else. There is no need for me to be alerted to any situation happening in the outside world. I realise, however, there there are an awful lot of people who must allow themselves to be called, interrupted or alerted because other people’s lives depend on it.
The value of deep comprehension
Today’s society is based on the constant and rapid provision of information. Many of the websites I visit each day offer to send me emails or notifications about their topic or subject matter. I do sometimes subscribe to these offers if I am researching something where I need to know the latest news. I see such things only when I log on to my email and read it. I read my various email accounts every day but not all day. When I have finished with my email, I log out. I do not receive emails on my mobile phone. People now have become used to being interrupted. They expect it. There is, for them, no alternative. Occasionally a few people suddenly realise what they are missing out on – silence. Silence is not just the absence of sound. It is also freedom from noise. The noise of daily life. We need moments of silence in order to think, take stock, meditate. Meditation requires complete freedom from the noise of daily life. Even if life is happening all around us, when we meditate our minds disengage from it. Letting go of our senses allows us to retreat into our inner world and enter a silence in which our minds can focus or become empty of all that matters. Most people will have an image in their minds of a monk sitting cross-legged with closed eyes. It is a familiar image. That kind of meditation is practised by religions and in yoga. Not everyone needs to sit cross-legged to meditate. I meditate sitting on a typing stool, my fingers jabbing at the keyboard. It is what I am doing now. Meditating about my theme of interrupted living and thinking what to type into the page before me. I am doing this in silence. I am completely focused. I do not want to be interrupted. In this kind of writing, I am not diving into the world wide web searching for information. I am allowing my mind to come up with thoughts – my own thoughts. That means a lot to me. I have done this for a long time – most of my life. Today there are millions of people around this country who are locked into their homes in self-isolation because of the coronavirus epidemic. Many of them will be alone. The virus epidemic has forced people out of their life-long routines and confined them to their homes. For many people, that is very difficult. They are not used to it. The lockdown has been in force, in this country, for about five weeks now (April 2020.) Many people will find it a traumatic experience. Busy working people suddenly find they have little to do. Armies of advisors have appeared on social media showing people how to do things to pass the time or simply how to keep fit. The Internet has become a torrent with people desperately staying in touch with others, with loved-ones or simply trying to break the awful tedium of not being at work. It is an odd reversal of fortune that I am still at work; still typing articles and essays. Just as I have done since I retired from employment some years ago. For me, the epidemic has not changed much in my life. For others, it is had been a life-changing experience. Lots of people have had to work from home. At the office, they were constantly interrupted by colleagues wanting to talk to them. Now, they have to work in a focussed way without the constant stream of interruptions.
Deep concentration
If we shield ourselves from constant interruptions we can focus deeply on reading or writing. or we can meditate. That increases our mindfulness. If we switch off our mobile phones and put out computers on silent (no notifications about anything) we can begin to think, work and experience our minds as our forebears did. We can fully concentrate on what we are doing. It will, at first, be an unnerving experience for most people who have become used to the constant noise of information and notifications. I am used to this kind of silence. I grew up in a world that was free from the interruptions of new technologies. In my bubble of silence, my mind can focus on thinking. Most people just accept that the world around them is the world how it is and how it needs to be. Refusing to accept that as normal can be the start of something really exciting.
This is a placeholder for the article that was here dated Thursday 11th June 2020.
It was about about the history of live music in Leicester.
This text has now been stored to an offline archive. Copies of the original article are available from the author of this blog.
This post was previously published in my old blog.
Live music is all about venues
In the period between the early 1990s and today, Leicester’s music scene became increasingly dominated by music venues, including The Charlotte and The Shed, which were the most popular and often had the more high-status bands on their stages. The Shed started in 1994 and is still a significant venue for rock music, especially as a launchpad for new bands and singers. These venues specialise in live music and that is what they exist to provide. There are dozens of pubs across the city that put on bands at the weekend but that does not make them live music venues in the sense that is meant here. They are pubs. They happen to have some live music now and then. But then so too can cafes and restaurants. Even Churches can be used for concerts performed by musicians.
In 2000, Darren Nockles became a promoter at the Musician, a venue in Wharf Street East, previously called The Bakers Arms (there was also a pub called The Bakers Arms in Blaby and that too played a significant role in the history of Leicestershire music but for very different reasons.) The Bakers Arms had been a pub since the turn of the century. Writer Jeremy Searle says that Jim Kelly, a local property developer, had a vision of a chain of music pubs across the country, all called the Musician. Six months later, the Musician opened as a live music venue.
The old Musician, with its capacity of about 120 people, closed its doors on 31st December 2004 but re-opened after being refurbished, with an increases capacity of 220. The Musician reopened on 1st February 2005, with a new stage, new PA system, better toilets and even a dressing room for the artists. Further changes were made until the venue came to look much like it does today. As a pub, the Musician does not usually open during the day. Concerts take place at night and there is a fairly full programme of events each week. Many of the shows are put on by promoters (rather than by the pub’s management.) Over the years, numerous famous artists and bands have performed there and the venue has become rightly famous throughout the UK for its dedication to country and western music. Its walls are adorned with framed photographs of the top-class acts to have graced its stage.
Venues closing down and reopening was not uncommon. The Charlotte closed several times only to re-open again under new management. In 1989, Andy Wright took over the Princess Charlotte pub, having worked there since 1985 when it was a traditional public house. Its name changed to The Charlotte and it began to be a permanent live music venue until it closed in 2010.
The Soundhouse opened in 2010, in Southampton Street, behind the old offices of the Leicester Mercury. Prior to that, the premises operated as The Queen Victoria pub and it was there that bands played from time to time. The Soundhouse has, since it started, operated as a specialised live music venue with a stage, sound desk, dedicated PA system and professional stage lighting.
The Donkey, in Welford Road, became a live music venue in 2005. This large pub provides a weekly programme of live music and many notable acts have performed there.
A cafe in the High Street – The Crumbling Cookie – rose to become one of the foremost venues for live music when it opened its room in the basement, have been renamed The Cookie Jar. Today it is called The Cookie.
Alongside these small venues, the music life of the area benefited from the shows and concerts provided by the De Montfort Hall. A large proportion of the city’s music lovers attended shows thereby national, if not world-class, bands and artists.
Prior to its demolition in 2001, the Granby Halls served as a venue for music concerts, alongside its use as a sports centre. Opening in 1915, it was built as a training hall for the army in World War I. Having stood dormant for three years, the City Council pulled it down as it became an increasing cost burden. During the time when it was used as a large arena for rock concerts, it hosted shows by The Rolling Stones and Louis Armstrong, amongst others.
It was not until 2010 that Leicester was to acquire a large-scale venue for music, with the opening of the O2 Academy in the grounds of the University of Leicester. One of the acts to perform on the opening night was Professor Green. Prior to the opening of the O2, the University of Leicester students’ union held major rock concerts in the Queen’s Hall. The oak-panelled room formed part of the O2 complex, being the medium-sized of three rooms, sometimes referred to as ‘O2.2’. The room was converted from a concert hall to student facilities in 2019. The main hall of the O2 has a capacity of 1,450 and the smallest room – now called The Scholar, holds around 150.
Curve theatre opened in 2008 and since then has provided a regular programme of musicals, dance shows and concerts. In the bar area, there used to be regular performances by singers and small acoustic groups. Curve had produced or put on many musicals and some plays where bands and musical ensembles have played live.
Not far from Curve is Phoenix, the arts centre and cinema that has a large cafe area where live music concerts have been held from time to time. Phoenix hosted a series of shows, held on Saturday lunchtimes, mounted by Manic Music Productions. These shows were a showcase of talent for young music artists. With many Leicester venues, the title of the place is not preceded by the word ‘the’, it is a local custom to drop the definite article from the front of place names.
One of the larger venues in the city centre was Firebug. It originally operated as The Firefly but changed its name to avoid confusion with another establishment that had a similar name. Gigs were held in a large room on the first floor, although music has also been put on in the ground floor bar area, on certain occasions. Upstairs the room has a stage with fixed lighting and there is a PA and sound desk operated by experienced sound engineers.
A venue called The Auditorium operated in the markets area of the city centre. Its premises originally served as an Odeon cinema and later a bingo hall and in its time it was one of the largest capacity centres in the city centre. The Auditorium music venue opened in September 2010. One of the best-known acts to perform there was the rap artist Example (Elliott Gleave.)
The Exchange Bar opened, 20 January 2011, in Rutland Street. In its basement room, live music events are held on a regular basis.
The Australian-theme bar Walkabout once hosted live music events. Standing in Granby Street, close to The Turkey Cafe, the bar closed in May 2015. The bar was part of a chain of venues operated by a company called ‘Intertain.’ During the periods when live music was held in the bar, usually about one gig a week held and often local bands were booked to play there. In a large room above Walkabout bar, the venue Sub91 operated between its opening night in August 2010, when the show was headlined by The Damned through to its closure in December 2011.
The Music Cafe, in Park end Street (off Braunstone Gate), has been putting on live music gigs for many years. In 2005, Leicester organisation Get Your Band On put on a rock night there with Ictus, The A.I.Ds, No One Knows and Glitch. At that time the venue changed it name to The Music Cafe from its previous title, The Jam Jar.
Many pubs and clubs in the city centre held live music events throughout the period 2005 to 2015 and beyond. These included Time Bar (adjacent to the railway station), The Barley Mow in Granby Street, The Turkey Cafe (which held weekly open-mic nights), The Queen of Bradgate (in the High Street), Cafe Bruxelles (also in the High Street), O’Neills the Irish-themed pub in Loseby Lane, Original Four, the building that housed Superfly and various other venues (on the corner of Wellington Street) and even Leicester’s longest established gay bar The Dover Castle has been known to put on live music events. One-time gay nightclub Streetlife, in Dryden Street, now serves as a venue for music shows (though not for the gay community.) Other pubs, such as The Criterion in Millstone Lane, also played their part in providing a part of Leicester’s live music scene.
These brief notes about Leicester’s music venues are offered as a digest of the topic, one that I hope to expand on in later instalments of this series.
The dawn of the O2 Academy
The Academy Music Group was one of the UK’s largest music industry corporations (and might well still be.) In Leicester, our O2 was built as part of the student’s union at the University of Leicester. It was just about finished when it opened in September 2010.
It was in May 2010, that news broke about the construction of the new venue. It was described as being three venues in one. The Academy was constructed on the end of the Percy Gee building, part of the University buildings used as a social centre for students. Building works radically transformed the structure of what was the old student’s union. The front entrance to the O2 appeared at the top of an imposing flight of stairs. The main arena was designed to hold 1,450 people while the other two rooms were intended for 550 and 250 persons audiences respectively. All of this was said to cost £16.8 million. A date in September 2010 was set as the opening night. Construction and fitting-out continued right up to (and beyond) the opening night. The three areas were called O2.1, O2.2 and O2.3 but later also got other names, one of them (the second area) being the Queen’s Hall, the locale of many of big-name performance from bands of national standing. The smaller of three areas became known as The Scholar Bar and the largest room was referred to as the ‘main arena.’ When it was finished, it was run and operated by the Academy Music Group although some or all of its halls could be hired out to independent promoters.
At the time it opened, in 2010, it was heralded as providing a transformation of Leicester’s music scene. Sadly, that dream was not realised, certainly not now or in the immediate past. The way the Academy Music Group (AMG) operated the venue was driven by their profit motive and not by any desire to glorify Leicester’s live music scene, in my opinion. There was a lax attitude, on the part of the operators, to live music and more nights attracted greater audiences for the playing of recorded music than nights dedicated to live bands. The main arena was certainly not short of the latest equipment and the lighting and sound electronics were certainly up to the kind of standard you would expect to find at AMG venues. Music-bookers saw it as providing a regional-level outlet for live music events. It could certainly not survive on the patronage of music fans from Leicester alone. Some fans felt its location was too remote and hard to find and parking was a problem, it was said. There was little competition, at the time it opened, from other Leicester venues.
The De Montfort Hall was the only other place in the city that could host audiences running into four figures. All the other permanent live music venues in Leicester were tiny, by comparison. The nearest stadium-sized stages were in Birmingham, Nottingham and Coventry. The only places, in Leicester, where tens of hundreds or thousands of people could see events were Victoria Park and the football ground or the Tigers rugby stadium, which once hosted a three-day music festival. Because the AMG operated a nationwide chain of venues, it could pull considerable booking power with big-name touring bands. Several tours were organised which brought Leicester into the itinerary of famous and popular bands and music artists. The O2 Academy is still considerably smaller than the arena-level concert halls in Birmingham, Nottingham and Coventry. Over the years, discussions have taken place about whether Leicester should have its own arena or stadium. None of these ideas has found favour because they oppose the profit-motives of the big stages in other Midlands destinations. Leicester is likely to remain a place of small venues for a long time to come.
The Shed
In 2019, The Shed celebrated twenty-five years of being a live music venue. This section of the article, reviews the venue’s history, revealing some facts that current music fans might not know. For the benefit of readers who are not from Leicester, the city is described and the significance of the place and its music is presented.
Where is Leicester?
Leicester is known around the country, if not around the world, for many things. Things like the king in the car park, the burial place of King Richard III, the National Space Centre, the remains of the Roman town, its castle and its cathedral and of course its two outstanding universities. As an urban area, Leicester is one of the longest inhabited towns and cities of the UK. It boasts two thousands years of continuous habitation. The name Leicester is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for the town – Ligora-ceastre – but, before that, the Romans called it Ratae Corieltauvorum, the principal town of the district of the Corieltauvi tribe who lived in the settlement on the banks of the River Soar, prior to the Roman invasion. Hence, the peculiar name for the present-day city, which many people do not know how to pronounce. When the Romans left Britain, Leicester was taken over by the Anglo-Saxons and then the Normans. There are many layers of history during which the city changed both commercially and culturally. Probably the most famous things to happen, in living memory, was the discovery of the remains of King Richard III, beneath a car park in the city centre. The king was then re-interred in Leicester Cathedral in a ceremony that was covered by the world’s media. The city of Leicester is located in a region dominated by Nottingham and, nearby, by Birmingham and Coventry. These larger cities have often thwarted the development of Leicester’s entertainment industry.
Venue since 1994
The Shed is a live music venue in the centre of Leicester. The longest-running of all the city’s small music venues, The Shed opened in 1994, on Christmas eve. The opening night show featured the Soul and Motown band, Ten Feet Tall. Before the building became The Shed, I am told, it used to be a night club, though little is known about it, in those days, and I have failed to find any reference to it in old directories. Kevin, the previous manager of the venue, told me, “… it was The Last Resort, The Hothouse, Viceroy and originally The Leicester Variety Artistes Club…”, (given as originally located in Cank Street) so that’s four licensed premises before it became The Shed. The Shed stayed open continuously until it was fully refurbished in 2017 when it was closed for three months, while building work went on. Having been sold to new owners, the whole venue was radically transformed, having a new stage, bar and sound desk in the main room. Astonishingly, windows were placed in the wall that overlooked Yeoman Street. The inside of the old venue never had any natural light in its interior rooms. It continued to flourish as one of the city’s important centres for live music.
The significance of The Shed
In my view, The Shed should stand alongside the Clock Tower, The Racecourse, The King Power stadium, Grace Road cricket ground and the Tigers rugby ground, as being one of the iconic features of this ancient city. Why? Because many musicians began their careers there and some later went on to be famous around the city and county and a few to become stars of the music scene nationally. I went there for the first time in November 2002 and have been going back ever since. The place has played an important role in my life. It has also played an important role in the lives of many thousands of other people, being the venue where many of our local musicians played their first public performance as a band, musician or singer.
In the seventeen years that I have been going to The Shed, I have witnessed many exceptional gigs and seen hundreds of rock bands, some of which have been world-famous. There is hardly a musician or singer who has not performed on the stages of The Shed, at some point in their musical careers. Bands have come from literally all over the world to play at the venue. The place has notoriety and a celebrity equal to that of the Cavern Club in Liverpool, Rock City in Nottingham, The Leadmill in Sheffield, Camden’s Dingwalls, London’s Roundhouse and many others. The Shed deserves to be in the UK’s top 30 live music venues of all time.
What was it like before it was refurbished?
I will tell you about some of the bands that have played there over the years, but first, let me explain what I know about the building. Not many people who have been to the venue, and there must be many tens of thousands of them, know anything about its past. Except that, its branding makes clear that it was opened in 1994. It is difficult to know what the strange little property was before it became The Shed, but some have told me it served as a night club before the mid-1990s. The building is situated in Yeoman Street, not far from Leicester’s iconic clock tower – the Eros and Piccadilly Circus of the city. From the main entrance on street level, you ascend a flight of stairs to the ticket desk and the doors to the main room are just to the left of that. Along the corridor, a flight of steps leads down to the outside smoking area and further down to the foyer for the second stage – the Vault – and toilets, which are effectively in the basement. The main room has a capacity of 180 standing. There are a few seats. The bar used to be located right along the wall that now has the windows in it, following the refurbishment. Downstairs, the bar used to be to the left of the entrance door and the stage was initially at the opposite end of the room. Later on, the bar area was removed completely and the stage moved to the end of the room where you went in. There is no seating when gigs are in operation. At the far end of the room (from the main entrance) there was another door. This lead to a flight of steps that went up to the main bar. Customers could get down to the lower room via either flight of steps. The venue did not have any changing rooms for musicians until its refurbishment in 2017. another feature of the lower room was that the entrances to both toilets were located there. This meant that fans attending the shows upstairs had to walk through the crowd (and in front of the stage) in order to use the facilities.
The place looked and felt very different when I went there for the first time. It is not clear whether The Shed was built as a night club or whether the building had another use prior to it becoming that. I have searched many old maps and street directories prior to 1994, trying to see if there was any reference the place.
Map of 1892 showing the location of Yeoman Street
The road in which the Shed stands was once called Nelson Street, which ran from Humberstone Gate through to Halford Street, although the half adjoining Halford Street was known as Yeoman Street. Halfway along, there was a minor side road called Yeoman Lane which lead up to Charles Street. That was from a map of 1888 but it showed no buildings, only the streets and their names. A map published in 1892, showed Yeoman Street running from Rutland Street to Yeoman Lane, where it then became Nelson Street and off that was an area known as Nelson Square. Again the map did not show buildings. Humberstone Gate was shown in a famous map of Leicester drawn by John Speede in 1610. The Romans built a wall around the city and various place names that survive to this day are based on the gates of the city walls through which major thoroughfares ran.
Back in those days before the 2017 restoration, there were no windows in the main room of The Shed. The stage, at one end, overlooked a large floor area, alongside which ran the bar, from one end of the room to the other. At the side of the room, there was a long alcove, an area of the floor where the ceiling was lower than in the rest of the room. In this area, there were some chairs and tables and it provided a convenient location for the bands to leave their equipment. At the far end of this low area, there was a small room that originally served as a little kitchen and servery that provided hot meals and snacks to the customers. This was later closed and converted into toilets for the staff. The sound control box was originally just inside the main doors on the corner of the small kitchen. It was later moved to the back of the room and converted into a high sound control desk with a clear view of the stage. Downstairs, the long narrow room that served as a secondary performance area, had its own little bar and the entrance to the gentlemen’s and ladies toilettes. There was no separate sound control desk, as there was upstairs. At the end of the room, opposite the bar, there was a low stage. The layout of the basement room was later changed when the bar was removed and the position of the stage changed.
There has always been a smoking area at the back of the property and this is still there today. Of course, when I started going there it was before the smoking ban and fans smoked throughout the shows, the air in the room taking on a blue tinge and the floor being covered in discarded dog-ends. In July 2007, smoking was banned in enclosed areas and the atmosphere became healthier for the bar staff and sound engineers, as well as the musicians and the fans. Some say that the smoking bans spelt the death knell of the licenced trade and they argue that it has never since recovered from it. As I said earlier, many famous bands have played at The Shed. Probably the most world-famous band to play there came from the USA.
The band from Los Angeles
So many bands have played at The Shed over the years, it is difficult to know where to start. Many of our local bands started there, playing their very first gig on its stage. But, not just local groups. Some groups have travelled around the world and included The Shed on their itineraries. Take, for example, the band from Los Angeles called Boy Hits Car. This band was massive in the late nineties and early noughties. They played at The Shed on 3rd December 2007. For me, that was an unforgettable experience. Visiting Leicester as part of the band’s UK tour, BHC visited 18 towns and played a gig every day. The band could have filled some of the country’s largest arenas but instead, they chose to play small venues, in order to get back to the roots of what rock is all about for the majority of bands. Travelling from gig to gig in a massive two-story tour bus, the lads worked incredibly hard but, by all accounts, received a rapturous response from their adoring fans. I remember that bus being parked opposite the entrance to The Shed, cables running into it to power its extensive facilities. It was like a hotel on wheels. It filled the whole of the parking space on the opposite side of Yeoman street from the venue.
BHC toured with System of a Down, Incubus, Papa Roach, and Flyleaf, to name a few. Not only do they have a repertoire of extraordinarily powerful and poetic songs, but they have a massive stage presence which makes a live encounter with BHC, an exciting experience which is never forgotten. Formed in 1993, the band played at the Reading Festival in 2001. They released their first album in 1998 and their seminal album Boy Hits Car in the same year. I still find it difficult to believe that this actually happened. For me, it was like being in the same room as The Beatles or The Rolling Stones. As they stood in front of me, after the gig, I froze; for once, I was speechless. I desperately wanted to meet them and ask them some questions but my feet were rooted to the spot. Eventually, I did pluck up the courage to speak to one of the band members about how the tour was going. He explained why the band chose to play in the UK’s small venues rather than in arenas and vast stadia and that was because they wanted to get back to their roots and connect more intimately with music fans. That night was an unforgettable experience and one of the highlights of my career as a music journalist.
A decade of competitions
Over the first ten years of the new millennium, the period when I started to go there, The Shed witnessed many of the competitions we call the ‘Battle of the bands.’ One that still resonates with music fans today, was called Original Bands Showcase. The organiser was careful to stress that this annual event was not a Battle of the Bands. It was a showcase of the city’s musical talents. During the early years of the OBS (as we called it) all the gigs were held at The Shed. Later, the OBS migrated to The Musician. Each annual cycle of shows leads to one band being crowned the overall winners of that year.
OBS was not the only series of competitions held at The Shed, in the early noughties. Various other promoters held such events there. If they did nothing else, such events brought large numbers of people into music venues to vote for their favourite bands. The Shed was also used by a variety of local festivals including the well-established Oxjam Leicester Takeover, which has happened, annually, in Leicester, since 2010. I doubt that there was ever a year when The Shed was not one of the city centre venues that played its part in this annual charity fund-raising event. Charity shows often saw large audiences who wanted to support their chosen good causes. Band competitions became a standard feature of almost all music venues and they invariably brought in bigger audiences that the majority of regular gigs. The other thing I remember about nights at The Shed was the shows that had no audiences. There were gigs where the audience could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Despite there being a lack of audience, many bands still delivered superb performances. Undaunted by the absence of fans, they played as they normally would at packed events. These band earned my respect and I reviewed their sets in favourable terms because, I felt, they deserved to be honoured for their resilience and professionalism.
Many music fans still have happy memories of attending gigs at The Shed. It was not long after I started going there, that I started to write about live music and have been doing that ever since. In the next instalment of this article, I will write about some of the more memorable gigs that have taken place at the venue and some of the famous bands and singers who have appeared there.
This is archive for the page that was here, dated Tuesday 10th March 2020
This post was previously published in my old blog.
It was about the history of music but has now been removed and stored in an offline archive.
Page taken off on 8/1/24.
In today’s schools, music has been marginalised. That is the conclusion arrived at by Barry Dufour in his paper Not enough music, 2020. Does it matter? The UK’s contribution to music is world-renowned and, as an industry, earns a very high level of income to the British economy. Dufour draws attention to the dire state of music education in schools in this country. This is not new. In 2012, Ofsted found that one in five schools were judged inadequate for music. Even back then lessons placed insufficient emphasis on active music-making, reported inspectors from Ofsted. There was too much talking about music and writing about it but no actually doing it. Have things improved since then? I turned to Barry Dufour’s work to find out.
Not enough music presents a critical overview of music education in English schools up to the end of 2019. He found substantial inequalities in access to instrument learning. Despite this, music remains important – to the individual’s education and culture as well as the economy, to which music contributes high levels of revenue. Music is a fundamental and major component of British Culture, Dufour points out. That applies across the board, as far as genres are concerned. He asks, given the importance and influence of music in the public sphere in England, how can it be that so little time and priority are allocated to music education in schools? The monograph presented by Dufour explains the policies of the government in some detail. What comes across from that analysis to me at least, is the government’s failure to ensure that music education is alive and well and flourishing in English schools.
As few as ten per cent of children and young people receive formal instrument tuition in schools. There is some education about music but, very surprisingly, ‘… not enough music in music lessons.’ Little attention is paid to funding music education. Music is a compulsory part of the national curriculum at key stages 1 and 2 (in 2019). Music is also part of KS 3, but not KS 4. Government policy, it seems, has waved the flag of importance at music education but had done little to support it in practice. What Dr Dufour has done is to draw much-needed attention to a highly important aspect of education and to the declining cultural life of our world.
Dr. Barry Dufour is Visiting Professor of Education Studies at De Montfort University.
The impact of the Internet continued to affect bands and rock music in the UK generally and in Leicester. It could be argued that the rise of the Internet was one of the most influential factors that allowed unsigned, amateur bands to start up and flourish. Music fans also took to the Internet in large numbers and discovered and listened to a wider range of music than those of the pre-Internet age. So, how did the Internet change music?
First. Some background. Websites need an address and the key to this is the domain name, a string of characters ending in .com or .co.uk or some other suffix. In 2004, the domain name arcticmonkeys.com was registered. The Sheffield band Arctic Monkeys, which formed in 2002, was signed in 2005 but before that, they established a sizeable fan base on MySpace, an early social media website popular with music fans. Reverbnation was launched in 2006, as a site for the independent music industry. Soundcloud was started in Germany in 2007 and between then and 2009, it began to challenge MySpace as the main site for distributing music tracks. Bandcamp was founded in 2007.
This then was the period during which several websites became prominent in the music world and many of them are still going today. The domain name kasabian.co.uk was registered in 2002, one of the earliest domain names to be used by a band that originated in Leicester. Someone registered thescreening.co.uk in 2004 for Leicester band The Screening. These were early adopters of the do-it-yourself breed of Internet users. The AIDs, forerunners of Skam, also had a domain name registered for them in 2004. The band Maybeshewill registered their domain name in 2004.
By 2014, almost all of the musicians in Leicester’s rock bands had grown up with the Internet. Utilising it for their music was not difficult. Many of the city’s recording studios did well from this easy access to DIY outlets. Anstey-based pop-punk band ICTUS registered their domain name in 2003. The Attik was also a popular destination for bands and their fans and many people still have happy memories of the place. It closed in 2006. Many pubs put on live music from time to time. In 2004, I remember going to a pub in Hinckley called Northern Territories where I saw ICTUS performing.
Thriving music industry
Businesses grew up to service this market – such as companies specialising in the printing and replication of CDs. A Leicester company called Horus Music provided technical services for the publication of music. In a city with a thriving music scene, it was inevitable that support businesses would also thrive. There were stores doing a busy trade in guitars and strings, drums and drumsticks. Printers worked hard to keep up with the constant demand for posters and flyers. Rehearsal rooms were nearly always full.
By 2014, access to the Internet had become almost universal in the UK. The advent of mass ownership of mobile phones (connected to the Internet) began to replace the use of computers and laptops as the main devices that people used to connect to social media sites. Whereas access had been through computers connected to broadband, now people were spending their time on social media via their smartphones and a variety of hand-held devices. This increased the utilisation of social media and led to increased flexibility in the kind of platforms people could use when interested in music. Local live music venues began to get details of their gigs and shows onto the Internet.
The impact that this technology had on popular music was fundamental and far-reaching. It would be wrong to say that the Internet brought an end to the CD and the vinyl record but the significance of these media declined; music had become mediated through streaming and downloads from websites such as iTunes, Spotify, Amazon and Bandcamp. These were being increasingly used to provide the tracks that attracted the attention of music fans. They became widely used by unsigned bands and start-up music artists.
The Internet had a profound effect on music of all kinds. Music venues and festivals depended on social media to attract fans and to make ticket sales – at a minimal cost. Most social media was free to use and this made it possible to put on a concert and sell tickets for it at almost no cost. Gone were the days of having to print tickets and pay for expensive advertising using paper-based media such as posters. Now bands could organise their own gigs, if they wanted to, and advertise them to a widely spread audience without having to lay out large sums of money. Even so, the city was awash with posters advertising gigs and bands. Not everyone was on the Internet and there were always people who needed to see things on paper because they were not connected to the Internet.
Paper-based music magazines and newspapers began to close down in favour of online versions. In Leicester, The Monograph was published on paper for a relatively brief period of time. Even though the paper was supplemented with a website, its days were numbered. It could not be sustained as a physical product in a world where advertising revenues were increasingly gravitating towards online publishing. The same can be said of paper-based newspapers and magazines generally. Paper is very expensive to print and distribute. The cost of setting up an online newspaper was tiny in comparison to the huge start-up costs of paper periodicals.
Talent scouts
Record label A&R scouts began to work more on the Internet than at music venues. Whereas music scouts once depended on attendance at venues to see and to discover bands and singers, they now had only to sit in their offices and log on to Facebook (founded in 2004) and Twitter (founded in 2006) to find what they were looking for. Bands and artists could be discovered by talent scouts and many of them began to take notice of how many friends or followers were seen on social media sites.
Website hosting became increasingly inexpensive up to 2014. Domain names could be registered for a few pounds and the emergence of content management services, such as WordPress, allows websites to be constructed without recourse to the expensive fees charged by web designers. Having a band website became an increasing possibility for even the smallest of unsigned groups. Although social media platforms provided the mainstream of Internet presence, bands and singers continued to maintain websites as part of creating a professional image. Even today, bands and singers maintain their own websites in addition to their content on social media.
Running a band could be an expensive hobby for most amateur musicians. Promoting your band became increasingly feasible as more and more music fans used the Internet to find the kind of music they sought. Going to gigs did not decline because of downloads and streaming. You cannot download the live experience and streaming does not confer the full experience of actually being there. If anything, these procedures reinforced the desire of fans to actually see the bands that made the music they liked. People continued to attend music festivals where they could see the bands they liked so much when on the Internet. When I went to gigs in 2003 and 2004 they were nearly always full. A large proportion of the audience was young people. Teenagers. A lot of the musicians were also in their teens.
Festivals
There were some significant music events from 2003 to 2004. One Big Sunday was held in Victoria Park, from 1 to 4 pm, on Sunday 20th July 2003. Many readers will remember this event; it seemed that most of Leicester was there, as the whole of Victoria Park was a sea of faces. One of the bands that appeared that day was Busted. Others included Athlete, Daniel Bedingfield, Kelly Rowland and Mis-Teeq. Another of the BBC’s One Big Sunday events had been held in Leicester in 2001. The BBC put on these huge outdoor events to build its audience of music listeners. The Abbey Park festival started to gain importance as a launchpad for local bands. On Victoria Park, Summer Sundae Weekender established itself as a major part of the annual cycle of music festivals. Having started in 2001, the festival became an important event and began to attract fans from all over the country. The festival was held in the De Montfort Hall and its surrounding grounds and lasted from Friday to Sunday. Though not a festival, as such, 2004 saw the foundation of the Original Bands Showcase (aka OBS) as a showcase for local bands and musical talent. Its heats led up to the grand final, always an important event in the city’s music calendar.
Venues and gigs
In April 2005, I put on one of my first ever live music events. I promoted a gig at the Jam Jar, near Braunstone Gate, and for this, I booked Ictus, The AIDs, Patchwork Grace and Nemisto. Notes, made at the time, suggested that 41 tickets were sold. This took place on 14th April. The Jam Jar was the same venue that is now called The Music Cafe. The AIDs was a band that evolved to today’s group, Skam with its lead singer Steve Hill. ICTUS was a pop-rock band based in Anstey. This was a trial run for a bigger event I organised later. By this time I had been attending live rock gigs on a regular basis so I had developed a feel for how things were done. A venue in Millstone Lane was known for its music events; in 2004 I knew it as The Firefly. Today we call it Firebug.
Leicester had several well-established permanent live music venues. The Shed was opened in 1994 and the Musician in 2000. In Oxford Road, The Charlotte was going strong. Andy Wright had taken over the tenancy of the pub in 1989 and a few years later it was extended to form a larger area for the bands and their fans. Over the years, the Charlotte saw many of the country’s most famous rock bands playing on its stage including the emerging Kasabian and the legendary Stone Roses. The Charlotte became the ‘must play’ venue for all of Leicester’s up-and-coming bands. New bands had certain venues in their crosshairs and were determined to play at them as they climbed the local ladder of musical success.
Night clubs also attracted fans of rock music. Mosh opened in 2003 and began to appeal to students and young people who wanted to hear their kind of music being played by DJs. The Fan Club started in 1985 and that too was a big pull for people who liked rock and roll. In the Haymarket Centre, there was a nightclub called Baileys and they sometimes put on live bands including Showaddywaddy and Slade.
My own experience in live music gives clues as to what things were like in those days. I put on a Rock Night at the Music Cafe, previously called the Jam Jar, on 29th April 2005, with ICTUS, the AIDs, No One Knows and Glitch. Tickets were £4 each. Members of ICTUS were Adam Gent, Chris Byrne and Aaron Murray. The AIDs were Steve Hill, Matt Gilmore and Kieran Gilmore (aka Meatpuppet). Glitch was Kristian Tate, James Hoggar, Andrew Winfield and James Hawes. No One Knows were Neil Bennett, Andy Goulter, Rich Rainbow and Adam Tozer. Doors opened at 7:30 pm. Tom Stoppard did the ticket desk. The compère was Paul Cowper. The photographer was Trevor Sewell. Tim helped with the advertising and designed the flyers. Double-sided A6 flyers were printed in full colour at a cost of £216. The accounts showed £325 in ticket sales, and £240 was paid out to bands, leaving a profit of £85. That event was branded as being provided by my business called Get Your Band On. That was a more successful enterprise than anything else I did in Leicester.
The GYBO project was contacted by bands from all over the UK and had one of the most successful rock music websites in the country at that time. The project was based at my office at the LCD Depot in Rutland Street. I considered that show to be a resounding success musically and in terms of the number of people who were there. Financially, it was not very rewarding. I was to find out that financial failure would be a similar situation throughout most of my work as a promoter of live music events. Making money out of gigs was very difficult but that was not why I did it. My income came from other sources and being involved in music was simply a hobby, for me. The people who could earn a living from putting on music shows in Leicester could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Later, in 2005, I held another gig at The Music Cafe in New Park Street with leading Birmingham rock band Blakfish, local bands Emperor State, Own Worst Enemy and The Landaus from Hull. The night was again promoted by Get Your Band On. I sold 30 tickets at £3 each. I made a loss on the event of over £45. That was on 14th October. Having Blakfish there was a real coup because they were, at the time, an up-and-coming band achieving national status. A press release at the time said that Blakfish’s music was ‘… progressive, driving indie rock sound mixing punk and spazz in an intense cocktail of modern rock music.’
In 2005, I thought it would be a good idea to jump on the bandwagon and start a boy band – a singing group that might make a name for itself. So I hoped. I recruited five of the best male singers in the city who agreed to take part in the project. We called the group Horizon. The group rehearsed for many weeks before its first public performance. Horizon did one public performance and then split up. An interesting idea while it lasted. At least I learned something about the music industry and its artists that I did not know before. I wrote later: ‘All of the singers were solo artists in their own right. That is probably why the whole project failed.’ Solo artists do not always make good group vocalists. Each had his own solo career and saw little value in being part of a group. The group lasted for as long as it did because its members were all friends, to some extent. I very much enjoyed organising their rehearsals and helping them choose which songs they would sing.
I continued to put on live gigs in 2005 and managed to gain access to a night club then called Original Four, or just O4, for short. The building used to be a social club for city council workers and trade unions, on the apex of King Street and Wellington Street. It was later called Superfly. Using the room on the first floor, I put on a series of Wednesday gigs and managed to book a line-up of top Leicester bands to play at these events. The shows ran from 9 pm to midnight and entry tickets cost just three pounds. Bands I remember being at these gigs included Method in Madness, The Daniels (from Wolverhampton), Emperor State, Amber Means Go, The AIDs, 2nd to Last and The Displacements.
Hopefully, many more pictures will be added to this collection as they are edited and produced. Please return to this page to see what new pictures have been added.
Musicians at Leicester Guild Hall performing a concert of music from the times of the Tudors.
An example of an early phonograph that played from a revolving cylinder.
Musician from LES. Used with permission. Photo: Jake Hilder.
Leicester Pride 2015. Photo: Trevor Sewell.
The Splitters at the Charlotte, October 2003. Photo: Harjinder Ohbi
The Delis Mix at The Exchange in 2012
Kasabian in Leicester, August 2004 Photography by Harjinder Ohbi
James Lewis of Violet Cities at Simon Says festival Photo: Kevin Gaughan
Band playing at the Cosmopolitan event, 2014
Jonezy at The Abbey Park Fireworks, supporting The Vamps
Carlos Stein at The Musician
Lisa Lashes on stage in 2014
Radio Active at The Shed, 29th May 2014
Weekend Schemers
the rassoodocks live during the obs finals at the shed in Leicester
James Ferraby of Us Wolves June 2011
the jack kenworthy trio pictured before the obs finals at the shed
Members of the Utopians outside Time Bar in May 2009
