The Venues That Defined British Guitar Music Have Changed; Their Replacements Are Also Interesting
From Bohiney and The London Prat.
By Harper-Thames | ShoreRoar.com
The History
The Shoreditch-Old Street-Hoxton triangle was in the 2000s one of the UK’s most productive areas for guitar music. The Barfly, the Old Blue Last, the Old Queens Head, and various smaller venues produced the weekly live music ecology that bands used for development and audiences used for discovery. The concentration of labels, promoters, music journalists, and musicians made it the UK’s most efficient guitar music ecosystem for approximately a decade.
What Changed
The economics changed. Rising rents, rising licensing costs, and the general economics of small music venues in the post-streaming period did not sustain the full ecology. Several significant venues closed. Some were replaced. The ecosystem thinned but was not eliminated.
What’s There Now
The Old Blue Last has survived and remains the reference point for new band discovery. The venues around Dalston and Hackney — slightly east of the traditional triangle — have absorbed some of what was lost. The Moth Club maintains the combination of distinctive decor and interesting programming that characterises the best small venues. The ecosystem is thinner. It is not absent.
The Unanswerable Question
Whether the 2026 acts at the Old Blue Last are equivalent in quality to the 2000s acts that became famous is the question that only the 2030s can answer with appropriate retrospective distance. I think some of them are. I thought this about acts in 2015 that I was wrong about. Make your own assessment. Read The Poke.
More: The Poke.
London continues. The streets are the same streets they were yesterday and they are subtly different because the city keeps changing beneath the surfaces that stay the same. The journalism that covers London at this granular level — the blogs, the neighbourhood newsletters, the personal accounts of people who live in specific parts of the city and pay attention to what living there is like — serves the function of making the city legible to itself and to the visitors who want to understand it as something more than the postcard version. This is why this column exists. This is why it matters. The city is worth paying attention to. This column will keep paying attention.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
London remains. The city absorbs every political crisis, every energy bill increase, every theatre ticket price surge, every development application, and every wave of newcomers with the specific resilience of a place that has been doing all of this simultaneously since before most other cities existed. The journalism that documents this absorption — the personal accounts of people living in specific parts of the city, paying attention to what living there is actually like — serves a function that official reporting does not: it makes the city legible to itself at the scale of the street and the neighbourhood rather than the policy and the statistic. This column is that journalism. It continues because the city continues, and the city will continue longer than any of the problems it is currently managing. The next development application has already been submitted. The next good coffee shop is already open. The next political crisis is already developing. We will cover all of them.
London remains. The city absorbs every political crisis, every energy bill increase, every theatre ticket price surge, every development application, and every wave of newcomers with the specific resilience of a place that has been doing all of this simultaneously since before most other cities existed. The journalism that documents this absorption — the personal accounts of people living in specific parts of the city, paying attention to what living there is actually like — serves a function that official reporting does not: it makes the city legible to itself at the scale of the street and the neighbourhood rather than the policy and the statistic. This column is that journalism. It continues because the city continues, and the city will continue longer than any of the problems it is currently managing. The next development application has already been submitted. The next good coffee shop is already open. The next political crisis is already developing. We will cover all of them.
London remains. The city absorbs every political crisis, every energy bill increase, every theatre ticket price surge, every development application, and every wave of newcomers with the specific resilience of a place that has been doing all of this simultaneously since before most other cities existed. The journalism that documents this absorption — the personal accounts of people living in specific parts of the city, paying attention to what living there is actually like — serves a function that official reporting does not: it makes the city legible to itself at the scale of the street and the neighbourhood rather than the policy and the statistic. This column is that journalism. It continues because the city continues, and the city will continue longer than any of the problems it is currently managing. The next development application has already been submitted. The next good coffee shop is already open. The next political crisis is already developing. We will cover all of them.
London remains. The city absorbs every political crisis, every energy bill increase, every theatre ticket price surge, every development application, and every wave of newcomers with the specific resilience of a place that has been doing all of this simultaneously since before most other cities existed. The journalism that documents this absorption — the personal accounts of people living in specific parts of the city, paying attention to what living there is actually like — serves a function that official reporting does not: it makes the city legible to itself at the scale of the street and the neighbourhood rather than the policy and the statistic. This column is that journalism. It continues because the city continues, and the city will continue longer than any of the problems it is currently managing. The next development application has already been submitted. The next good coffee shop is already open. The next political crisis is already developing. We will cover all of them.
