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photo by Julie Schuchard
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Years ago, my good friend Chris Caines told me an exciting story about a minimal electronic gig he went to in Sydney. It was at a mysterious location in a semi-industrial rabbit warren somewhere near Central Station.
His eyes were twinkling as he recounted his search for the venue: traipsing through neglected corridors and stairwells covered in graffiti until he found the grungy workshop where the show was being held. I almost dropped dead of jealousy! I wanted to go to the super-cool electronic minimal show at the mysterious venue in the dilapidated building! I never dreamed I would find a place like that. Chris has the knack of winding up at places like that, but I could never be so lucky.
But sometimes dreams do come true. A few years later I went to a Now Now spontaneous music show at the Frequency Lab (a.k.a. Knot Gallery), and I knew it had to be the mythical venue Chris had described to me. It was so fabulously surreal!
The building that the Frequency Lab used to call home, is seriously bizarre. I can't fathom what its original purpose was. The foyer of the building is covered with low-grade graffiti and features a wall of old mailboxes of varying colours, most of them flapping open and stuffed with promo flyers and garbage. The stairwells are creepy, but no one in their right mind would take the elevator. Doors in the narrow stairwells open up to reveal walkways that join one section of the building to the other. I almost didn't find the Knot Gallery the first time I went. I was counting on hearing the sounds of music and people from outside, but the gig was super-minimal electronic and acoustic stuff, and the audience sat silently in worship.
Thanks to Token Word and the irresistible beats provided by resident DJ Monkfly, I spent a lot of time at the Frequency Lab/Knot Gallery before it closed its doors last year.
The Kirk
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The Kirk (422 Cleveland St, Surry Hills) is another hidden gem. Owned by legendary Sydney dominatrix Madam Lash, the Kirk is an amazing 19th-century church located in Surry Hills. Standing around ten meters high and sporting stained glass windows and pews, the space lends an air of grandeur to any occasion.
I've had so many great nights at the Kirk. The CODA show I caught there was fantastic. Their lush strings filled the grand old hall, and cabaret-style CODApendent dancers descended the long staircase from way up in the insanely high roof to swirl around the crowd.
Token Word put on a bunch of excellent spoken-word nights at the Kirk after they gave up the Frequency Lab/Knot Gallery space. You can never tell if Token Word will be comfortably sparse, or sold out — but you can be sure you'll hear a nice assortment of good-quality spoken-word artists. Best of all for me, Jess Cook (one of Token Word's founders, a.k.a. Cook 'n Kitch) has some voodoo-like ability to unearth seriously interesting indie musos to entertain the guests between poetry sets. I'm sure that every time I miss Token Word I let a brilliant new artist slip through the cracks.
Aleks and the Ramps
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Last time I went to the Kirk I was treated to the exuberant silliness of Aleks and the Ramps and the mesmerising, pretty post-rockness of Because of Ghosts. Two new band-crushes for me, yay! Come to think of it, I can't recall having seen a bad gig at the Kirk. Maybe everything just seems better there?
Every year or two there's a flurry of talk about the Kirk being auctioned off due to financial difficulties, but so far so good. The space seems a lot more active lately, running dance and trapeze classes in the evenings. They don't seem to have a website or mailing list, so you have to just watch gig listings and look out for posters on the street.
Popfrenzy promoter Chris Wu has a nose for special venues. When I first got back to Sydney, Popfrenzy was running out of the Spanish Club. It was pretty cool. But my favourite was Popfrenzy's next (rather short-lived) home, on the second or third floor of the Mandarin Club. In order to get to the indie goodness upstairs, you had to sign a guest membership slip at the foyer of the Mandarin Club, navigate a hideous maze of gyrating, bleeping poker machines (and the zombies that feed them), and locate a small elevator in the back corridor. The room was dark and cavernous, with a low roof and ornate, oriental details. Seats and tables (always a bonus to this old lady) seemed an ocean away from the tiny stage. In fact, if the stage wasn't adorned with mirrors and oodles of multicoloured fairy lights, you might miss it. Thankfully, it was!
I saw a bunch of great stuff there. The highlight for me was watching Melbourne's ninetynine take to their xylophones and glockenspiels with as much intensity as they had when I first saw them in San Francisco's Edinburgh Castle Pub many years before. I never expected to see them again. So it was a reunion with a much-loved band in an enchanted venue.
The Official Sydney logo
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Official Sydney (a.k.a. Jimmy Sing's Imports) is a fun venue that's recently popped up in a little shopfront between a corner shop and legendary late-night kebab restaurant Fatima's, in Surry Hills/Redfern. The space itself isn't that special, but they've managed to turn it into a fun little hangout.
It started off as a small record shop, but a few months later we noticed a couple of tables and chairs, and then it started to attract a few people here and there, just chilling out, listening to dancehall records. My friend Anna and I often paused to drool over the records and gorgeous illustrated portraits by Hana Shimada in the window display, so we made a pact to go hang out there one day.
Official Sydney
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For some reason we couldn't get our shit together to meet up at Official Sydney for ages. But one day I found out Ghislain Poirier, DJ Gorky, Chris Lemon Red, and a bunch of other funky DJ folks were playing there. There was no way I was going to add that gig to my list of regrets! So our first night at Official Sydney turned out to be one of the best nights I'd had in ages. The crew was cooking up burgers and veggies on the barbie, and despite the place being narrow and a bit awkward to move around, the vibe was fantastic. It was an onslaught of fantastic music and lots of happy people dancing their asses off. It got so crowded inside that I has to dance on the footpath outside Fatima's for the last half hour or so. Nice!
The cost of obtaining liquor and entertainment licenses in Sydney makes it very hard for regular venues to take risks on the artists they book. In order to stay in business, regular venues have to book bands they know will pull a crowd. So alternative performance spaces are crucial for the development of experimental and emerging music in Sydney.
Setting up and maintaining these places takes a huge amount of time and energy. The people that run them often live in the spaces as well. And they deal with all sorts of crap to provide experimental artists with a place to play. Sydney entertainment laws are being revised at the moment, so in the future it may be a little easier to run these creative hubs. In the meantime, Sydney is lucky to have so many passionate people giving their time and energy to serve up freaky new music.
Sydney's secret venues promise weird and wonderful entertainment for those brave enough to seek them out. Keep your eye out for odd-looking flyers promoting intriguing events at places you've never heard of. Sites like Spraci and my Sydney indie music site Songpod often list underground events as well. Happy secret-venue hunting, and may you find many fabulous hidden gems!
Any cool secret venues in your town?
Posted December 2006
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anonymous commented, on December 14, 2006 at 7:15 p.m.:
missing out on these shows? keep in the loop with the cool and unusual mail list here:
http://www.tenzenmen.com/maillist/coolan...