Another day, another live music dispute. Yawn.

It seems that not a day goes by without some argument over a venue and its music license. When will we ever have a definitive answer to the problem?

Monday 2nd August 2010

Life is all about balance, and it's good to get it right.  Light and dark, the sun and moon, rum and tonic, etc.  Balance is important - it helps us to assess, and give perspective to, seemingly disproportionate or abstract events, and circumstances that can confuse and cloud our fragile judgement.  

An even, balanced approach, I think, is needed when weighing up an argument such as the one taking place between (yet another) group of disgruntled local residents and Inventive Leisure Ltd.  

This wearisome confrontation is not dissimilar to the disagreements that seem to take place on an almost daily basis across the city between residents and pub/club owners.  On the site of the now-defunct Orgasmic café/bar , on Queen St., Inventive Leisure plan to build a new 'Revolution' Vodka bar, which will have a live music license that runs for 17 hours a day. This has caused some upset.

The chairman of the vitally-important-for-something-or-other Central Norwich Citizens' Forum, Julian Foster, has 'raised concerns' over the new license.  In a letter to Norwich City Council, Mr. Foster questions whether the impact of 17 hours of live music a day would contravene the European Convention on Human Rights, which, among other things, outlines how many hours of sleep a human being is lawfully entitled to.  (No, really, it does).  He says:

“The licensing authority should appreciate that the premises under consideration were constructed originally as offices and were never intended to be a licensed entertainment venue. "

Now, if I lacked perspective and a sense of objectivity, this little scenario would cause me some amusement.  A short-sighted individual might immediately dismiss Mr. Foster as just another irksome, obstreperous fool, whose troglodytic fear of the world at large, irrational and unfounded, clings snivelling to the skirts of a nonsensical convention that exists to give guidance to hapless and paddle-handed amphibians that lack process or equation.

Such an individual may argue that Mr. Foster is simply one of many - a member of a growing breed that slither through the streets of the world, their boil-backs arched in permanent, painful indignity, barely sentient, barely concious, slapping their spit-dribble documents on the pavement, slowly pickling from the inside out in a heady cocktail of bile, rage and desperate, acidic loneliness.

Yet we need balance.  Whilst my default stance is to defend the existence of live music in all its forms, Orgasmic, in my humblest of opinions, was a flesh-crawling den of white-shirt-black-shoe, shove-your-drunken-Nazi-face-in-the-nearest-wobbling-chest kind of emporium.  The last stop before Prince Of Wales road, it provided a link between this world and the next.  It seemed to be the gateway to Hades - a vital place to prepare for an evening of sweat, violence, and the occasional could-be-rape-but-she-won't-remember encounter.

I have no desire to see another such establishment take its place. So, I have a balanced suggestion.  Let the armies of the C.N.C.F and Inventive Leisure Ltd. collide.  Let them tear each other into bits.  We'll host the thing in the football ground, charge hard cash on entry, and let the bloodshed unfold.  When it's all over, we'll give the site to the Grain or Chalk Hill Brewery, with instructions to build a much-needed venue that promotes live music from the best local bands, and serves drinks worth drinking.  In a city where pubs are falling at the hands of both ignorant residents and cut-price sham-bars, this can only help to restore the proper balance that we need.