In my last post, I waxed lyrical about Jamboree; a unique venue that started life in the Cable Street Studios complex in Limehouse and has recently announced its return to the Kings Cross area of London.
“Every now and then, you find a music venue that has a certain special aura and is simply unlike any other you’ve been to before. Sometimes it’s unique in its interior or location, sometimes it’s the warmth and generosity of the people running the place and other times it’s the programming of the events and the venue’s cultural or historical significance. Jamboree in Limehouse was one of those.”
‘The return of Jamboree’ (Set Your Own Scene, 22nd February 2021)
I want to now shine a spotlight on some of the other special venues that have particularly stood out to me over the years, either from playing gigs at them myself or watching as a punter. Here is a snapshot of ten that immediately spring to mind from Bari to Bedford, via LA and Pune, Maharashtra.
I’ve included links wherever possible to the venues in question – please do take a look and find out more about them! They need all the support they can get after this pandemic year.
Clwb Ifor Bach – Cardiff
I had been reading about Cardiff’s legendary ‘Clwb’ (also affectionately known locally as ‘The Welsh Club’) for years prior to going to university in the city and it lived up to expectations as the beating heart of the city’s alternative music scene. For at least the first year of university, the highlight of my week was going to The Dudes Abide night on Fridays where the DJ was usually Gary Anderson who also ran the hallowed Cardiff indie-pop night Twisted by Design at the nearby Dempsey’s (now bizarrely Gareth Bale’s sports bar Elevens) on Saturdays and Cardiff’s famous rugby pub the City Arms on Thursdays. Through regularly going to these nights as an 18-year-old I discovered Belle & Sebastian’s back catalogue, became obsessed with The Supremes and tracks like ‘The Rat’ by The Walkmen, ‘Happy Together’ by The Turtles and ‘The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth’ by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah became as ubiquitous to my ears as commercial radio’s airplay of Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Since U Been Gone’ around that same time.
The Welsh Club spanned three floors catering to pretty much every genre possible on various nights of the week. I spent on average six hours a week here between 2005 and 2008 and even met Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr there in 2008 after one of his first gigs as a new member of The Cribs at the nearby Student’s Union. I was a little tongue-tied to really say much to him other than ask for a photo but I had a better chat with Ryan Jarman from The Cribs a year earlier when we were both watching Everett True (the journalist who introduced Kurt Cobain to Courtney Love) and Manics biographer Simon Price DJ in the downstairs room. Ryan remembered an early regional newspaper interview I did with them at the Reading Fez Club back in 2004 and the main topic of conversation was how passé and just plain wrong the current Sex Pistols reunion was (The Cribs had recently supported them at Brixton Academy).
Now Clwb is the subject of some exciting new expansion plans involving the venue taking over the derelict building next door. Hopefully these plans will cement Womanby Street’s position as Cardiff’s cultural quarter (as well as the longstanding hub of the annual Sŵn Festival) for many decades to come.
Clockwise (from top left); 1.) Clwb Ifor Bach, Womanby Street, Cardiff. 2) The downstairs floor during Swn Festival 2012. 3.) Telegram getting ready to play a Jack Rocks show at Clwb for Swn Festival 2015.
Shisha Jazz Café – Pune, India
I stumbled upon the Shisha Jazz Café whilst staying in Pune, Maharashtra for a few days in November 2019. Part of the ABC Farms complex in the hip Koregaon Park district of the city that actually contains a couple of live music venues, the café was one of my favourite hangouts from my trip to India and provided some much-needed calm after a week of rushing around hectic Mumbai. Part-jazz café, part-jungle treehouse; there were several huge trees growing through its floor, rustic tapestries and kitsch lanterns hanging from the rafters and its wooden walls were adorned with pictures of the likes of Chick Corea, Dizzy Gillespie, Bill Evans and Sun Ra. It is also home to the Pune International Jazz Festival. It’ll be one of the first places I head to when I visit Pune again.
The one-of-a-kind Shisha Jazz Cafe. Pune, India.
Band On The Wall – Manchester
A national institution as far as independent music venues go, Band On The Wall on Swan Street in Manchester’s Northern Quarter has been hosting live music since at least the 1930s. The venue got its name from the fact that the musicians originally played on a raised stage halfway up the pub’s wall! The venue has had a long association with jazz, blues, folk and punk and today prides itself on hosting an eclectic array of artists from a wide range of genres. I saw tabla player Saleel Tembe perform there in 2018 and before the concert he hosted an interactive workshop with the audience – that’s just the kind of place Band On The Wall is. Now a registered charity, the venue was awarded £3.2 million in 2007 by Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund to transform into a music venue for the 21st century.
Saleel Tembe at Band on The Wall, August 2018 and a band quite literally playing on the wall at the venue circa 1946 (photo: The Band On The Wall archive).
Passing Clouds – Dalston, London
Forever immortalised on screen as the location for the filming of Super Hans’ notorious “juice cleanse stag do” scene in the cult British comedy series Peep Show, Passing Clouds was a community-run arts venue off the Kingsland Road in Dalston, East London.
Opened in 2006; the venue hosted musical nights, as well as community-led initiatives including the ‘Permaculture Picturehouse’, healing and self-development workshops and swing dancing and instrument lessons. Housed in the former printworks of the Hackney Gazette, two notable gigs at Passing Clouds for me were Sun Ra’s Arkestra led by the then 91-year-old saxophonist Marshall Allen and the Brixton-based Effra Hall Jazz Band. There was a blizzard during the latter gig and a subsequent snow fight ensued afterwards, culminating with my friends and I being branded “bumbaclarts” by an angry Rastafarian gentleman who was accidentally hit by a stray snowball whilst enjoying a smoke outside.
Passing Clouds was sadly closed down and boarded up in 2016 and is now The Jago.
Passing Clouds, just before its closure. 
The upstairs level at Passing Clouds, 2016.
Ex Caserma Liberata – Bari, Italy
In a way, Bari’s equivalent of London’s former Passing Clouds venue, Ex Caserma Liberata is a squatted space located in the city’s former Rossani Barracks. Whatever your political persuasion is regarding people squatting in derelict buildings, it’s difficult to argue that Ex Caserma Liberata isn’t a hive of creativity and home to a friendly and welcoming community. In non-Covid times; the space consists of a music venue that hosts both bands and DJs, a permaculture garden, impressive sculptures and street art, workshop spaces and even an indoor skate ramp. It hosts everything from punk festivals to dub nights to poetry readings and political meetings. The site is set to be transformed by the authorities into an urban park and public library in the not-too-distant future at a reputed cost of €450 million so the Barese need to make the most of this unique space whilst they still can.
Ex Caserma Liberata and one of Bari’s most interesting emerging bands Strebla performing there in 2019.
Hootananny – Brixton, London
In 2007, a huge Victorian pub on the corner of Effra Road and Brixton Water Lane which had previously been known as The George Canning and then The Hobgoblin became Hootananny. Now run by a Scottish family, ‘Hoots’ dedicated itself to live music, particularly (but definitely not limited to) the world music side of things. You never know quite what you’ll see when you go to Hootannany but on a Friday or Saturday night it’s guaranteed to be lively. Boasting a large hostel on the upper floors (what a great idea if you were a music-loving traveller) and a huge garden out the front, you can choose between whether you soak up the music indoors or sit and enjoy a cold beer and some excellent Caribbean food on the benches outside. I’ve had some of my best nights out in London here and it was also a packed place to watch the England football team’s unexpected run to the semi-finals World Cup 2018.
Hootannany, Effra Road, Brixton, London.
Sound Department – Taranto, Italy
I’ve written about seeing Berlin’s Ellen Allien at the Sound Department Club just outside Taranto before, but this is a truly unique place. Located about five miles outside of the city near to the Italian naval docks and hidden out-of-sight amongst olive groves and Mediterranean scrubland, the venue appears to be entirely made from shipping containers. There were two separate live rooms; one that was low-lit and a distinctly industrial affair and the other which was brighter and more house-flavoured. At about 3am, the club’s security staff winched up the metal sides of the venue to transform it into an open-air space and an hour later, the roof slid back to let in the early morning Pugliese sunlight.
Tbilisi DJ Newa’s Boiler Room set live from Sound Department, Taranto. December 2019.
The Satellite – Silver Lake, Los Angeles, USA
Located in LA’s at-times, self-consciously hip Silver Lake neighbourhood, The Satellite made its name in the 1990s as the famed Spaceland venue. Its first ever gig in 1995 featured The Foo Fighters and Beck, it hosted early shows by The White Stripes and The Silversun Pickups and it was the venue choice for Arthur Lee & Love’s comeback show after Lee’s release from prison in 2001. It also starred in the Jim Carey film ‘Yes Man’ as the venue where Zooey Deschanel’s character’s band played their live shows. We saw The Bulls there who played a bemusing shoegaze cover of ‘Alright’ by Supergrass – I think we were in the minority in the audience by actually being familiar with the original version.
The Satellite was quite similar to many British venues of a similar size but everything was just nicer, albeit in a slightly sanitised, yet typically Los Angelan way. The toilets were clean and didn’t smell, the floor wasn’t sticky and awash with stale beer and there was even a pool table at the back of the room for in-between bands. Instead of a greasy burger van being stationed outside, there was of course, a converted silver Airstream caravan serving up delicious tacos. Once the epicentre of Silver Lake’s alternative music scene, there are now plans afoot to transform The Satellite into a restaurant.
The Satellite’s entrance. 
The Bulls live at The Satellite. August 2015.
The Angel – Bedford
From sunny LA to Bedford. My old band The Shake was offered a show at The Angel back in summer 2006. The venue on Bedford Broadway had hosted Oasis back in 1994 (it was still extremely proud of this) and was enjoying a new lease of life after a refurbishment and recently hosting Razorlight whilst they were still on their ascendency (and still credible). We had been due to support The Heights, a former Guardian New Band of the Week and Best Before Records signing. However, they had pulled out a couple of weeks before and we were moved up the bill to become the impromptu headliner.
Despite most of the audience originally buying their tickets to see The Heights, it was one of the best shows we ever did and we played to a packed and receptive room. Despite Bedford not exactly being a hotbed for rock and roll, the venue was clearly a labour of love and had a great soundsystem. We got paid, given free beer and even got a cheery hug from the promoter after the show! Sadly, The Angel shut down a few years later (it had stiff competition from the long-established Esquires venue around the corner in the town) and is now Doorstep Dolci, a café specialising in “American-Belgian Waffles, oven-baked cookie dough, artisan gelato and milkshakes.”
The Troubadour – Earl’s Court, London
The Troubadour on Old Brompton Road, West London is best-known in music circles as being the venue for Bob Dylan’s first ever UK gig in 1962. Opened in 1954 as a coffee house, it was one of the city’s prominent folk venues of the time hosting performances from Joni Mitchell, Bert Jansch, Davey Graham and Sandy Denny, as well as the more raucous Jimi Hendrix, Charlie Watts, Sammy Davis Jr (slightly more raucous) and Led Zeppelin – the latter would jam at the club after shows at the nearby Earls Court Arena. Today, it retains many of its original features and décor but has been expanded to include a restaurant / café, outdoor dining space, small art gallery as well as the 135-capacity downstairs venue. I played here in 2010 and contemporary artists to come through its doors in recent years include Florence Welch, Ellie Goulding, Adele, Jamie T and Ed Sheeran, with its small size making it ideal for showcases. The Troubadour was also the inspiration for the Los Angeles venue of the same name, with it even copying the distinctive typeface above the door. Time to put its London counterpart on the musical map again.
The Trobadour’s interior, virtually untouched since 1954 and Ronnie Wood and Mick Taylor playing the club in 2013.