The meaning of the music venue
Historicizing the Click Club
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.39558Keywords:
live music venue, local music history, memory, Click Club, BirminghamAbstract
This article focuses on a venue/music night in 1980s Birmingham called "The Click Club". The history of the club is documented via a critical account of a 2016 exhibition entitled “Is There Any One Out There”, which celebrated the venue and the many bands that performed there. Since the club’s demise, Birmingham is noted as celebrating some of its local icons such as Black Sabbath and The Electric Light Orchestra, with the city now regenerating itself to highlight and celebrate its musical identity. Memories of “The Click Club” are regarded as “lost” from more mainstream depictions of musical histories of the city. Via engaging with what they describe as an online “community of memory”, the article documents not only the origins and memories of the venue and formation of the aforementioned exhibition, but also the wider historical conceptualizations of the music venue as cultural product, through which meanings are made.
References
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Grazian, David. 2005. Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Hesmondhalgh, David. 1997. ‘Post-Punk’s Attempt to Democratise the Music Industry: The Success and Failure of Rough Trade’. Popular Music 16/3: 255–74. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143000008400
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Reynolds, Simon. 2005. Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. London: Faber & Faber.
Rietveld, Hillegonda C. 2011. ‘Disco’s Revenge: House Music’s Nomadic Memory’. Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture 2/1: 4–23. https://doi.org/10.12801/1947-5403.2011.02.01.01
Taylor, Neil. 2017. C86 and All That: The Creation of Indie in Difficult Times. London: Ink Monkey Books.
Toynbee, Jason. 2014. ‘The Decline (and Perhaps the Fall) of Rock, Pop and Soul’. In Popular Music Matters: Essays in Honour of Simon Frith, ed. Lee Marshall and Dave Laing, 209–24. Farnham: Ashgate.
Travis, Dave. 2016. Birmingham Music Archive interview with Paul Long and Jez Collins, 18 April.
Triggs, Teal. 2006. ‘Scissors and Glue: Punk Fanzines and the Creation of a DIY Aesthetic’. Journal of Design History 19/1: 69–83. https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epk006
Waterton, Emma, and Steve Watson. 2015. ‘Methods in Motion: Affecting Heritage Research’. In Affective Methodologies, ed. Britta Knudsen and Carsten Stage, 97–118. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137483195_5
Webster, Emma, Matt Brennan, Adam Behr, Martin Cloonan and Jake Ansell. 2018. Valuing Live Music: The UK Live Music Census 2017 Report. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh.
Young, Rob. 2006. Rough Trade. London: Black Dog Publishing.
Barber, Austen, and Stephen Hall. 2008. ‘Birmingham: Whose Urban Renaissance? Regeneration as a Response to Economic Restructuring’. Policy Studies 29/3: 281–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/01442870802159871
Bennett, Andy, and Ian Rogers. 2016. ‘In the Scattered Fields of Memory: Unofficial Live Music Venues, Intangible Heritage, and the Recreation of the Musical Past’. Space and Culture 19/4: 490–501. https://doi.org/10.1177/1206331215623217
Bennett, Andy, and Catherine Strong. 2018. ‘Popular Music Heritage, Grass-Roots Activism and Web 2.0: The Case of the “Save the Palace” Campaign’. Cultural Sociology 12/3: 368–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975518762569
Burland, Karen, and Stephanie Pitts, eds. 2016. Coughing and Clapping: Investigating Audience Experience. London: Routledge. ttps://doi.org/10.4324/9781315574455
Coxon, Steve. 2016. Birmingham Music Archive interview with Paul Long and Jez Collins, 18 April.
Dudrah, Rajinder. 2011. ‘British Bhangra Music as Soundscapes of the Midlands’. Midland History 36/2: 278–91. https://doi.org/10.1179/004772911X13074595849239
Duffy, Kevin. 1997. Mothers 1969–1971: The Home of Good Sounds. Birmingham: City Council.
Feldman-Barrett, Christine. 2018. ‘Medusa’s on Sheffield, 1983–1992: Chicago’s Alternative All-Ages Nightclub in History and Memory’. Popular Music and Society 41/3: 319–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2017.1281508
Fontana, D. J. 1986. ‘The Click Club Birmingham (A Consumer Guide)’. New Musical Express, 4 October: 53.
Frith, Simon, Matt Brennan and Emma Webster. 2016. The History of Live Music in Britain, Volume I: 1950–1967: From Dance Hall to the 100 Club. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315557182
Grazian, David. 2005. Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Haslam, Dave. 2015. Life After Dark: A History of British Nightclubs and Music Venues. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Hesmondhalgh, David. 1997. ‘Post-Punk’s Attempt to Democratise the Music Industry: The Success and Failure of Rough Trade’. Popular Music 16/3: 255–74. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143000008400
Hubbard, Phil. 1995. ‘Urban Design and Local Economic Development: A Case Study in Birmingham’. Cities 12/4: 243–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/0264-2751(95)00041-J
Jackson, Travis A. 2012. Blowin’ the Blues Away: Performance and Meaning on the New York Jazz Scene. Oakland: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520270442.001.0001
Kent, Geoffrey. 1987. ‘It’s the Only Place for Me’. Click! 3 June: no pages.
King, Richard. 2012. How Soon Is Now? The Madmen and Mavericks Who Made Independent Music 1975–2005. London: Faber & Faber.
Landsberg, Alison. 2004. Prosthetic Memory: The Logics and Politics of Memory in Modern American Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lee, Martyn. 1997. ‘Relocating Location: Cultural Geography, the Specificity of Place and the City Habitus’. In Cultural Methodologies, ed. Jim McGuigan, 126–41. London: Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446250396.n7
Long, Pat. 2012. The History of the NME: High Times and Low Lives at the World’s Most Famous Music Magazine. London: Portico.
Long, Paul, and Jez Collins. 2016. ‘Affective Memories of Music in Online Heritage Practice’. In Music, Memory and Space, ed. Johannes Brusila, Bruce Johnson and John Richardson, 87–104. Bristol: Intellect.
Miller, Dan, and John Schofield. 2016. ‘The “Toilet Circuit”: Cultural Production, Fandom and Heritage in England’s Small Music Venues’. Heritage & Society 9/2: 137–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159032X.2017.1330936
Moore, Madison. 2013. ‘Looks: Studio 54 and the Production of Fabulous Nightlife’. Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture 5/1: 61–74. https://doi.org/10.12801/1947-5403.2013.05.01.04
Moore, Sam. 2018. ‘Black Sabbath Set to be Honoured by Hometown of Birmingham with “Metal Bench”’. New Musical Express, 14 November. https://www.nme.com/news/music/black-sabbath-birmingham-honoured-metal-bench-black-sabbath-bridge-2402558 (accessed 1 January 2019).
Raine, Sarah. 2019. ‘“In the Pitch Dark”: Searching for a “Proper Allnighter” in the Current Northern Soul Scene’. In Nocturnes: Popular Music and the Night, ed. Giacomo Botta and Geoff Stahl, 21–34. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99786-5_2
Raine, Sarah, and Tim Wall. 2019. ‘Myths on/of the Northern Soul Scene’. In The Northern Soul Scene, ed. Sarah Raine, Tim Wall and Nicola Watchman Smith, 142–63. Sheffield: Equinox.
Reynolds, Simon. 2005. Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. London: Faber & Faber.
Rietveld, Hillegonda C. 2011. ‘Disco’s Revenge: House Music’s Nomadic Memory’. Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture 2/1: 4–23. https://doi.org/10.12801/1947-5403.2011.02.01.01
Taylor, Neil. 2017. C86 and All That: The Creation of Indie in Difficult Times. London: Ink Monkey Books.
Toynbee, Jason. 2014. ‘The Decline (and Perhaps the Fall) of Rock, Pop and Soul’. In Popular Music Matters: Essays in Honour of Simon Frith, ed. Lee Marshall and Dave Laing, 209–24. Farnham: Ashgate.
Travis, Dave. 2016. Birmingham Music Archive interview with Paul Long and Jez Collins, 18 April.
Triggs, Teal. 2006. ‘Scissors and Glue: Punk Fanzines and the Creation of a DIY Aesthetic’. Journal of Design History 19/1: 69–83. https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epk006
Waterton, Emma, and Steve Watson. 2015. ‘Methods in Motion: Affecting Heritage Research’. In Affective Methodologies, ed. Britta Knudsen and Carsten Stage, 97–118. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137483195_5
Webster, Emma, Matt Brennan, Adam Behr, Martin Cloonan and Jake Ansell. 2018. Valuing Live Music: The UK Live Music Census 2017 Report. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh.
Young, Rob. 2006. Rough Trade. London: Black Dog Publishing.
Published
2020-01-24
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Long, P., & Raine, S. (2020). The meaning of the music venue: Historicizing the Click Club. Popular Music History, 12(1), 55-74. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.39558
