It was the final night that the venue would feature live music. The Last Indie Waltz. Featuring Wonder Villains, VerseChorusVerse, Colly Strings and a score of bittersweet contenders. Time then, to remember some of my most memorable nights there.
1. Cat Power. She insisted that the audience helped her to drink a bottle of whiskey. She told stories that had no beginning or end. Or indeed, a narrative middle. The music was special, but not in the way that her recordings of her reputation had primed us for.
2. Meg White from the White Stripes standing in the corner during a Soledad Brothers set. Dead nonchalant, like.
3. Gary Lightbody on a stool downstairs in December 2000. Singing ‘Shining Light’. Snow Patrol had just supported Ash and an awestruck Gary reckoned that this new song was a sure classic. He was not wrong.
4. David Johansen from the New York Dolls singing a Mississippi blues set. Legend.
5. First time I saw the Panama Kings, 2007. ‘Your Children Are Screaming’. Which they were.
6. Beachwood Sparks on some half-forgotten occasion. Woozy and supreme.
7. John Grant when he sang with The Czars. He was so nazzed off with two guys talking at the front that he quit the stage in anger. I respected him for it.
8. Those Friday nights at Animal Disco, when proceedings went awry. Cashier No. 9 playing their best.
9. Long before that, the Skibunny club nights, when time was elastic and mash-ups were de rigeur.
