The farts of Jesus, Desmond Dekker and Kasabian ...

Heat and smoke, smoke and heat.  It was thirteen long years of sunspot temperature and the fog of fags before air conditioning arrived to save us all from stinking, dripping clothes. And that was just the staff; the poor customers had to dance as well. Apart from a wheezing, whirring ceiling fan (once pulled off the ceiling by Ross from Symposium; once by a Half Man Half Biscuit fan and once KO’d by someone’s head) which lobbed around lazily at 33rpm, nothing came between emphysema and the live music lovers as people emerged from a hazy gloom through clouds of steam at the front door looking like they’d just fallen in a swimming pool. I have to say we did investigate alternatives, and one particularly expensive system promised to ‘recycle and sanitise’ through a network of ceiling mounted tubes that dispensed an amazingly expensive gas which needed refilling every three months for £5000.  I remember thinking for that sort of money it must have been using the farts of Jesus.  Hey, it’s all part of rock ‘n’ roll, and I’m pleased to say Fibbers is a much cooler and airier place these days.  In fact sometimes its too bloody cold, although just right for last weekend’s Fun Lovin Criminals show with the coolest man on the planet, New Yorker Huey Morgan.  Shows like that are what we do this for …

Are you thinking of starting a music venue and booking bands?  Don’t. No, I mean it. Stop RIGHT there and stay with the day job, because behind the jewelled curtain lies a forest of predators quite willing and able to relieve you of your savings, overdraft and money you will beg and borrow along the way.

You start off thinking you’re going to spend your days, feet on desk, sipping the rock’n’roll bourbon of choice (don’t know what it is? Oh dear, bad start) and sifting through demos. Passing idle comments from your lofty position as gig-giver like, “Nah, a bit too Pixies” and “Very Beatles meets The Fall, I get it” Nope, as a greenhorn you’ll be pounced upon by agents, inflating fees and riders with glowing testimonials about their new band’s spot play on 6Music or a paragraph in the NME. Some of those agents will become lifelong aides, but only while you are successful and generous - that's business.

It used to be C90s in Jiffy bags but now a Niagara of out-of-town acts fill your In-Box with sincere pleas for a gig, promising coach parties, a fantastic night for your customers (who won’t come) and a request for £50.  They are all good people, juggling jobs and girlfriends to sing their songs, but there simply aren’t enough days, or customers, in the week.

Local bands will, by and large, play the same game but mindful of your place in the community will, I’m happy to say, press gang their friends and family in to paying £3 to hear their we’re-the-next-Oasis/Beatles/Nirvana pleas until they overplay the town and, nowadays, eschew the hard work of flesh-pressing promotion for a simple message, “Check our Facebook for details.”  Having said that, local bands are the heartbeat of your venue, filling otherwise quiet nights and swelling the crowd for the latest unknown recently-signed indie darlings.

Under-age drinkers will magically appear in the your dark corners, girlfriendless bores will complain about your musical taste and ticket prices, band stickers will appear on your framed signed Arctic Monkeys first headline tour poster before it is eventually stolen, your money/hair/conscience/libido (delete as appropriate) will slink down the post-punk plughole, and EVERYBODY wants to be on the guest list.

The Fire Officer will (quite rightly) measure your exits in microns and the Environmental Health will canvass every bugger in the neighbourhood for their musical tastes related to volume/nuisance whether or not they are already sited amongst fun pubs with the windows open, a taxi rank, burger vans with noisy queues and, of course, the emergency vehicle route. One such person occupied a flat two hundred yards from Fibbers, complained constantly about noise and forced £10000 of noise improvements (and the blocking off of the lovely windows which finished the daytime food trade) only to move shortly afterwards. And she was a customer ...

And losing the kitchen, and with it the daytime trade, was a terrible blow. Hard to believe now but it was the lifeblood of the venue. For the first fourteen years, we had to fill the floor and stage with extra weekend tables or you couldn't get a seat after midday. Fibbers was the first venue, never mind pub, to use a genuine cappuccino machine, serve Mexican and Thai food, and the chip butties are fondly talked of even now. Michelle and Paul the chef cooked for the bands, grateful for a break from junk food, and on the occasions the kitchen doubled as a second dressing room Norman Cook dried his jeans in the oven, all of Chumbawamba gathered around a small TV to watch Coronation Street and Desmond Dekker (rider: Remy Martin and fish & chips) smoked a huge jazz cigarette.  When Kasabian returned, this time for a sell-out, they laughed and kissed the floor asking for fajitas – genuinely funny and humble folk.  Chef Paul (who came for a Xmas job in 1993 and stayed for twelve years) prepped endless homemade lasagne and chilli around this and other madness whilst baking birthday cakes (Happy Birthday, Graham Coxon!) but if a band annoyed him an annoying buzz would appear through the PA as he put both microwaves on at once, a sly grin on his face …

More next week on how Fibbers and the burnt-out house, why a Viz character saved the real ale and the market trolley that wrecked the front doors the night before opening ...

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