Your Top 3 most seen live acts

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Re: Your Top 3 most seen live acts

Postby TheAlex » Sat Jul 28, 2018 10:35 pm

Blackout wrote:
TheAlex wrote:I don't know why I made that assumption, but I've kicked myself for it already. I remember missing a couple thanks to holidays, but I went around 5 years without seeing a gig at The Sugarmill, which is ridiculous considering it's my main local venue. I think a lot of bands miss out Stoke because it doesn't have an O2 venue.


Seems there's a train at 20 past 11 these days I could get, but as you say nobody plays there. As you know I am the sort of person who will happily travel to another relatively nearby town if there's a gig I want to go to, and I like a lot of bands, but last went to a gig in Stoke in October 2010 (Exit Calm at a venue called the Underground) and we used to go to a semi-regular shoegaze/psych night at the Fat Cat in 08-09. And about the third gig I ever went to in my life was The Damned at Shellys in Longton in 1987.

I get the bit about not having an O2 for larger gigs (though again, why not?) but I really don't get why there are no (or very few) smaller gigs there. Out of interest I looked at Ents24 and it's all either tribute acts, the occasional touring act you've heard of at the Sugarmill or local unknowns. Most of the bands I like are at the level who would probably play the Sugarmill anyway size wise but (that one BSP gig aside - pretty funny that you who live in Stoke and me who pretty much goes to every northern gig both managed to miss it) they just don't. Weird.

I'm not even sure if all Sugarmill gigs get listed on Ents24, so I check Seetickets or the official site. Eleven has mostly tribute acts, and they're good at listing their shows and probably responsible for most of what you saw. The Sugarmill has had plenty of fairly notable 'up-and-coming' names in the past year or so, like Honeyblood, Black Honey, Jane Weaver and The Big Moon off the top of my head (with Goat Girl coming up).

Maybe Stoke doesn't draw the crowds for the size of bands you'd think would play The Sugarmill. I saw Wolf Alice there not that long before they broke and it was half full. I often get ticket 0001 for Sugarmill gigs. The most memorable bad attendance was for Broken Social Scene, when there was only one other person in the crowd who wasn't in the support band. That was 15ish years ago though, and attendances do seem to have grown on the whole. Some gigs surprisingly (to me) sell out (like The Sunshine Underground last year) so maybe I'm totally wrong.
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