Popscene (club)
Encyclopedia
Popscene was the pioneering UK "indie dance" club of the 1990 Brit Pop movement, setting a successful template that continues to be copied around the world in many clubs over subsequent years.
The pair had previously run a successful pre-britpop night called 'Happy' at The Clapham Grand for the Mean Fiddler
organisation, which featured the first major live London appearances by bands such as The Verve
and was contained within a club night structure along the lines of the acid house
'PA' appearance model.
In 1995 the duo were asked by the owners of the Astoria venue in London's Charing Cross Road
to take over Friday nights at the LA2 club in the venue complex. With a 'free entry' opening night proving a 1000 capacity sell-out and a new strict policy of 'no live bands' the club went on to run for the next five years to weekly capacity crowds.
Taking its name from the single by Blur
, and in so doing establishing the trend for most of the indie-dance clubs that followed in its wake around the world, Popscene became synoymous with the Britpop
movement, alongside its more Sixties orientated retro-based rival Blow Up. Many of the scene's bands were themselves regular customers at both clubs, with members of Oasis
, Blur
, Manic Street Preachers
and many others often in attendance. Popscene deliberately avoided a separate VIP area and made a selling point of the fact that everyone was equal once inside the doors.
The club attracted more than 300,000 customers over its lifespan, with people queueing in their hundreds for hours to gain admission every week. With a forward-thinking music policy which laid the foundations for the rock/dance crossover of the next decade, the tagline on many of the distinctive (and now highly collectable) flyers was "the dance club for people who like bands".
The night was also notable for the DJs taking centre stage in the venue, leading to riotous scenes with hundreds of people dancing onstage alongside the DJ decks and the development of a special "flying decks" set-up suspended from the in-house lighting rig. The Evening Standard
magazine wrote "man, the crowd is fun. Deep into the night I watch the tasty-looking throng go mental" and the mid-Nineties UK MTV
Magazine summed up the atmosphere when they wrote "cigarettes, alcohol and lots of snogging are the order of the night".
London's nightlife bible Time Out called Popscene "the indie superclub with an altogether hipper vibe" and the contemporaneous clubbers reference guide magazine 'UK Club Guide' described it as "a thriving, begging for it happy crowd. It's the busiest indie club in the country."
As Popscene developed over its five year lifespan it went on to be cited by many as one of the major breakthrough clubs in London (together with the Heavenly Social
) for the Big Beat
music genre in the latter part of the decade, indeed the Guardian
Weekend Magazine declared it was "now deemed cooler than the heavenly jukebox."
Ultimately Popscene came to be as important to a generation of UK clubbers in the 1990s as The Haçienda
, Blitz and Wigan Casino
were to previous waves of older clubbers . In 2004 BBC Radio London's mid-morning DJ Robert Elms
asked his audience which clubs had been the culturally most important to his listeners each and every caller cited Popscene as the defining London club of the era
Amongst many other notable achievements, the DJ duo of McCarthy and Be were the first successful UK club DJs to move from vinyl to CD, gave Erol Alkan
his first opportunity to play to large crowds and McCarthy was the first London club DJ to play what became known as bootleg
/mash-up
tracks with cut-ups he made using the first available editions of Acid
sound production software in 1999. The club was also host to the first ever public playback of the third Oasis
album Be Here Now in the world.
After Popscene finished in 2000, McCarthy went on to continue to create mash-ups for MTV and then forge a successful international DJ and recording artist career in the latter half of the new decade as IDC
, whilst Be continued to run a string of indie club nights in London, Popscene made a welcome return to an enthusiastic "New Generation" of Clubbers, in the Summer of 2007. Selling out the LA2, as if it had never been away.
History
The founders were Dave McCarthy and Mac Be, who were both the promoters and DJs of the night.The pair had previously run a successful pre-britpop night called 'Happy' at The Clapham Grand for the Mean Fiddler
Mean Fiddler
The Astoria 2, subsequently known as the LA2 then the Mean Fiddler, was a nightclub at 165 Charing Cross Road in London, England.The venue was connected to the London Astoria such that the two venues could function as a single venue where needed...
organisation, which featured the first major live London appearances by bands such as The Verve
The Verve
The Verve were an English rock band formed in 1989 in Wigan by lead vocalist Richard Ashcroft, guitarist Nick McCabe, bassist Simon Jones, and drummer Peter Salisbury. Guitarist and keyboardist Simon Tong later became a member. Beginning with a psychedelic sound indebted to shoegazing and space...
and was contained within a club night structure along the lines of the acid house
Acid house
Acid house is a sub-genre of house music that emphasizes a repetitive, hypnotic and trance-like style, often with samples or spoken lines rather than sung lyrics. Acid house's core electronic squelch sounds were developed around the mid-1980s, particularly by DJs from Chicago who experimented with...
'PA' appearance model.
In 1995 the duo were asked by the owners of the Astoria venue in London's Charing Cross Road
Charing Cross Road
Charing Cross Road is a street in central London running immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles Circus and then becomes Tottenham Court Road...
to take over Friday nights at the LA2 club in the venue complex. With a 'free entry' opening night proving a 1000 capacity sell-out and a new strict policy of 'no live bands' the club went on to run for the next five years to weekly capacity crowds.
Taking its name from the single by Blur
Blur (band)
Blur is an English alternative rock band. Formed in London in 1989 as Seymour, the group consists of singer Damon Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree. Blur's debut album Leisure incorporated the sounds of Madchester and shoegazing...
, and in so doing establishing the trend for most of the indie-dance clubs that followed in its wake around the world, Popscene became synoymous with the Britpop
Britpop
Britpop is a subgenre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom. Britpop emerged from the British independent music scene of the early 1990s and was characterised by bands influenced by British guitar pop music of the 1960s and 1970s...
movement, alongside its more Sixties orientated retro-based rival Blow Up. Many of the scene's bands were themselves regular customers at both clubs, with members of Oasis
Oasis (band)
Oasis were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1991. Originally known as The Rain, the group was formed by Liam Gallagher , Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs , Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan and Tony McCarroll , who were soon joined by Liam's older brother Noel Gallagher...
, Blur
Blur (band)
Blur is an English alternative rock band. Formed in London in 1989 as Seymour, the group consists of singer Damon Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree. Blur's debut album Leisure incorporated the sounds of Madchester and shoegazing...
, Manic Street Preachers
Manic Street Preachers
Manic Street Preachers are a Welsh alternative rock band, formed in 1986. They are James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire, Richey Edwards and Sean Moore. The band are part of the Cardiff music scene, and were at their most prominent during the 1990s...
and many others often in attendance. Popscene deliberately avoided a separate VIP area and made a selling point of the fact that everyone was equal once inside the doors.
The club attracted more than 300,000 customers over its lifespan, with people queueing in their hundreds for hours to gain admission every week. With a forward-thinking music policy which laid the foundations for the rock/dance crossover of the next decade, the tagline on many of the distinctive (and now highly collectable) flyers was "the dance club for people who like bands".
The night was also notable for the DJs taking centre stage in the venue, leading to riotous scenes with hundreds of people dancing onstage alongside the DJ decks and the development of a special "flying decks" set-up suspended from the in-house lighting rig. The Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
magazine wrote "man, the crowd is fun. Deep into the night I watch the tasty-looking throng go mental" and the mid-Nineties UK MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
Magazine summed up the atmosphere when they wrote "cigarettes, alcohol and lots of snogging are the order of the night".
London's nightlife bible Time Out called Popscene "the indie superclub with an altogether hipper vibe" and the contemporaneous clubbers reference guide magazine 'UK Club Guide' described it as "a thriving, begging for it happy crowd. It's the busiest indie club in the country."
As Popscene developed over its five year lifespan it went on to be cited by many as one of the major breakthrough clubs in London (together with the Heavenly Social
Heavenly Records
Heavenly Records, aka Heavenly Recordings, is a London-based record label, distributed by EMI. Founded by Jeff Barrett, a former press officer for Creation Records and many successful indie bands of the time including Happy Mondays, Heavenly Recordings' first releases were 7" and 12" singles for...
) for the Big Beat
Big beat
Big beat is a term employed since the mid-1990s by the British music press to describe much of the music by artists such as The Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers, The Crystal Method, and Propellerheads typically driven by heavy breakbeats and synthesizer-generated loops and patterns in...
music genre in the latter part of the decade, indeed the Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
Weekend Magazine declared it was "now deemed cooler than the heavenly jukebox."
Ultimately Popscene came to be as important to a generation of UK clubbers in the 1990s as The Haçienda
The Haçienda
Fac 51 Haçienda was a nightclub and music venue in Manchester, England. It became most famous during the "Madchester" years of the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the 1990s it was labelled the most famous club in the world by Newsweek magazine...
, Blitz and Wigan Casino
Wigan Casino
The Wigan Casino was a nightclub in Wigan, Lancashire, England. Operating between 1973 and 1981, it was known as a primary venue for northern soul music. It carried forward the legacy created by clubs such as the Twisted Wheel in Manchester and the Golden Torch in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent...
were to previous waves of older clubbers . In 2004 BBC Radio London's mid-morning DJ Robert Elms
Robert Elms
Robert Elms is an English writer and broadcaster. Elms was a writer for The Face magazine in the 1980s, and has a self-confessed love of clothes and fashion...
asked his audience which clubs had been the culturally most important to his listeners each and every caller cited Popscene as the defining London club of the era
Amongst many other notable achievements, the DJ duo of McCarthy and Be were the first successful UK club DJs to move from vinyl to CD, gave Erol Alkan
Erol Alkan
Erol Alkan is a London-based electro DJ of Turkish Cypriot descent.-DJ and club promoter:In 1993, Erol Alkan started DJing in various Indie nightclubs in London....
his first opportunity to play to large crowds and McCarthy was the first London club DJ to play what became known as bootleg
Bootleg recording
A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...
/mash-up
Mashup (music)
A mashup or bootleg is a song or composition created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental track of another...
tracks with cut-ups he made using the first available editions of Acid
Acid
An acid is a substance which reacts with a base. Commonly, acids can be identified as tasting sour, reacting with metals such as calcium, and bases like sodium carbonate. Aqueous acids have a pH of less than 7, where an acid of lower pH is typically stronger, and turn blue litmus paper red...
sound production software in 1999. The club was also host to the first ever public playback of the third Oasis
Oasis (band)
Oasis were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1991. Originally known as The Rain, the group was formed by Liam Gallagher , Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs , Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan and Tony McCarroll , who were soon joined by Liam's older brother Noel Gallagher...
album Be Here Now in the world.
After Popscene finished in 2000, McCarthy went on to continue to create mash-ups for MTV and then forge a successful international DJ and recording artist career in the latter half of the new decade as IDC
IDC (music)
IDC is David McCarthy, a DJ/recording artist from London, UK.In early 2011 DJ Mag stated "IDC is a genius and 2011 will be his year" and iDJ named him "clearly one of electronic music's finest purveyors"....
, whilst Be continued to run a string of indie club nights in London, Popscene made a welcome return to an enthusiastic "New Generation" of Clubbers, in the Summer of 2007. Selling out the LA2, as if it had never been away.