Imagine the scene late in 2005, the Army and Navy was over three years gone, the heyday of music at the YMCA a distant memory, live music in Chelmsford was clinging on by its fingertips.
The Bassment was leading strongly with the Fellowship of Funk jazz nights on a Thursday and Bitterscene the last Wednesday of every month.
St Anne’s Castle was adamantly sustaining the ethic of keeping music live through thick and thin that they had brought with them from the Alma. The Box was doing its best to cram as much of the young music fans of Chelmsford as it could into its tiny space, like a music-loving life raft from the Titanic.
And at the Bay Horse what had been a monthly open mic had flourished, by the summer of 2004, into weekly gig nights (joined by the Exile Off Duke Street indie nights later that year) that, by the winter of 2005, momentarily looked threatened.
In part it was this threat, and the generally weakened state of the scene at the time, that prompted the birth of the Panic project. But how do other Chelmsford music fans remember it?
Rob Lord, co-founder of Exile Off Duke Street and bass player in Things We Lost in the Fire, is uncompromising:
“Chelmsford was a f***ing awful place for me after coming back from uni at Leicester and the only thing keeping me here was my band. But that didn’t fill the massive cultural hole this town had in a lack of music venue, lack of decent night club and lack of decent cinema.”
De from Death of the Elephant remembers things rather differently as being:
“Pretty awesome, that was right after I arrived in Chelmsford and I started going out to see live music every week. Going to Bitterscene every month, The Bay had bands every Thursday, and The Box had bands every Friday (and I was still young enough to get away with going there!). I was skint but happy, and remember falling down a lot of stairs drunk, and making my first attempt at a punk band.”
Dan Bailey, recently of Sirens At Dawn and back then playing in The Stunts, also has fond recollections of the time:
“From what I remember it was good. Not only was I playing but I was watching a lot of local bands, many of them down the Bay Horse in Moulsham Street, …ish, Hi-Jinx, King Khamun to name a few…good times.”
Faz, of Subject to Change and, more recently, Bouncing Arsouls, is succinct in his memories of the scene back then:
“If you mean a music scene, I can’t actually remember there being one.”
But a change was coming to Chelmsford. Rob Lord was at the forefront of that:
“I guess it was just starting to kick off, well for me certainly. I had started Exile off Duke Street with Stu around then, and had given myself a reason to stick around Chelmsford instead of jumping ship to Manchester or London. Exile actually started as a fanzine, as much as to give me a reason to get up in the morning as to publicise the local bands whom I genuinely loved (the first and only issue had interviews with Echelon, Free Repeater, The Brights, Neat People and, in a bit of nepotism, my own band …ish).
“So making the magazine and putting it around town was enough to give us a start of creating our own indie night at The Bay. The idea of the night (indie/electro music and well suited bands) seemed to work really well, and it was cool to get The Bay busy on a Sunday night.”
In 2006 when the Fleece decided to change its outlook (and ditch the pre-Dukes clientele) by adopting a live music policy Rob was one of the first people they turned to:
“I took Exile to The Fleece and had some great nights there, with even a few where the dance floor was rammed til the early hours. We did it for a year or so but by then loads of other great nights had started so I dipped out of the promoting, happy to let others do the hard work!”
These new promoting teams included the floor filling DJ Andy Hepburn’s Nobody Don’t Dance No More, Christian Wright’s High off the Dancehalls and included contributions from dance promoters and DJ collective Korkus, which featured a certain Marc Miller and Jon Board, of whom we will be hearing more later.
During that time another long term music fan and well known face of the Chelmsford scene, Dave ‘Shakey’ Wheelhouse, also began to get more involved behind the scenes:
“I was getting more and more involved with some of the local bands and by 2007 I’d been asked to manage The Stunts and started Shakster Records also.”
Pretty soon his involvement starting evolving into a genuine vocation:
“After that I ended up putting the first CD together, taking it to LA, getting it reviewed on Future Sounds, coming back and seeing the advert in The Chronicle for bands required for Seabrights beer festival, taking the CD there and ending up talking myself into hosting my first ever gig – a three day festival with seventeen bands!”
Shakey is now busier than ever:
“I’m now hosting regular nights at Barhouse, I’ve done a sound engineering course in the Dublin Castle, and am getting work experience in different venues around London and at my nights in Barhouse. I also host my own radio show on Saint FM, just hosted my first night in Camden and about to go back to SXSW for the third time, again promoting the local scene via a double CD.”
But it was as part of the 2008 Panic in the Streets that Shakey put on what was to become the first of nearly a year’s worth of regular gigs at The Two Brewers, culminating in the opening of the short-lived Shakey’s club in what had been (and now remains) The Two Brewer’s function room.
Coincidentally as part of the same weekend of music the boys behind Korkus (see, I said they’d come up again) held an event in a little venue on Victoria Road that they had struck up quite a positive relationship with. This was what had been Elan Lounge, at that time traded as Bar Toucan and was soon to become something altogether different.
By that August the little trendy bar, with a lot of hard work and dedication from Jon Board and Marc Miller, had been transformed into a dedicated live music venue – Barhouse.
Faz is clear on the importance of this change:
“Barhouse opening changed everything really, in that they put money in decent equipment and decent bands, as well as hosting club nights. There’s competition for gigs now, where there wasn’t really anything before. In general the bands being put on seem to be indie bands or DJs playing dubstep or minimal techno, but that’s more a reflection of the people in Chelmsford and a change in music trends than anything else.”
Although he mourns the lack of:
“anywhere in Chelmsford that’s a total shithole that can put on death metal or crust punk or any of the more extreme music out there. Whether there’s a market for that or not is anyone’s guess, though, as there must be a reason someone hasn’t tried it yet. It would be nice to put on touring bands as well, Barhouse does all right, but a band like Sick of it All that will tour small venues would love to play somewhere like Chelmsford.”
Rob Lord agrees:
“Barhouse came and did what the town was crying out for, and long may it continue. We could just do with some more regular radar touring bands playing, as well as the cutting edge DJs.”
Dan Bailey is positive too:
“There are open mic nights dotted throughout the town each week so the future seems bright for musicians. I reckon, as a town, Chelmsford could do with another ‘real’ live music venue to add a bit more variety for musicians and consumers.”
As for De, she has found these years full of happy memories at least on a par with falling drunkenly down stairs, such as:
“…Having springtime picnics with the lovely Norwich band Aluminium Risk, putting on a night with electro punk activist Ste McCabe, many happy nights spinning discs and dancing to my own wonderful music taste as a Panic DJ, Von Jergo and King of Conspiracy at the Two Brewers, hanging out with the lovely stoners that are Miss Cosmos, cute Japanese garage rockers No Cars playing with picture diagrams for each song and stories about tampons….”
So are people’s hopes for the future of the Chelmsford scene as bright and what fears might they have or predictions would they make?
Rob Lord: “I hope Bitterscene will continue for another 10 years, because throughout thick and thin they have persevered and given hope to us alternative music types”
De has a revolutionary attitude:
“I hope that with a Tory government in again, people will use their anger/disgust/frustration to start making revolutionary music.
“I hope they’re not too skint to buy instruments, and that bands don’t become solely a middle class endeavour; that is my fear. I believe there are enough creative people around to make interesting stuff happen here, so what I say to everyone is stop thinking just do it!”
And what of Dan Bailey’s fears and predictions? Well I’ll leave it to him to say:
“I predict Panic Magazine will continue for another 50 issues. My fear for the future? If it doesn’t.”
