Northampton Roadmender Club Closed

agree with you but after seeing that the place was partly responsible for dizzy rascal then it deserves to be shut down

I shouldn't doubt that it might have had something to do with many ill-fated world music concerts that went on a few years ago. Left the place a bit worse off. and the fact that the soundhaus stole a lot of the trade. Bloody Bent Copper.

that was Vuz/VMan, the bastard of all promoters.

Saw some fantastic bands back in the day at the Roadmender. Mansun (supported by Travis - oh yes!), Super Furry Animals and Beth Orton when she was still small enough to be playing in the bar.

Still, looking at that Soundhaus website at least Northampton still has a venue. It's the only city for miles in that part of the country that doesn't suck beyond belief.

Roadmender, like many, many other venues, got into deep financial trouble when it got Lottery funding to "improve" the venue - that glass/chrome/stone/cloth sculpture facade of the building, the PA system, etc - all based on still being open during the building work, which was a bit daft, left it hundreds of thousands in debt. The Arts Council then poured in another vast amount, but with the usual caveat that a lot of it was spent with pet consultants and advisors, training the staff who subsequently went on to work elsewhere with their skills! But at least the Arts Council and the Borough had some vision for the place, yet at the same time have licensed nearly every other shed in town ... there's a lack of clear cultural vision - it clearly isn;t shared between County and Borough - and it's interesting to compare with places like Cambridge and Aberdeen who have supported comparable venues. It was an expectation that the venue would "diversify" and hence world music and jazz too - not a bad idea given that by this time the old Roadmender promoters were doing a fine job at the Soundhaus! Know your enemy however - it's not "world" music, or culturally diverse music (which usually need a bit of funding to make work, and is likely to have been a requirement of funders therefore), and there's some clear dangers if you go down that route ... Make no mistake, it's the low cultural aspirations of County politicos and the poor sharing of vision at the time they all decided to tart the place up in the late 90s without any clear plan for the what it would be when they'd finished. Maybe it could become a home for retired foxhounds.

<i>If I had the money I'd open it myself as a venue!</i>

And then you'd have no money, and realise why it closed in the first place.

Sad, but thems the breaks.