The Bitterscene – Has it really been 10 years? | On Air Myles

The Bitterscene: Jacki, Paul, Mark, Paul; lovely people.

Eagle eyed listeners of my shows might have realized over the years that I originally come from a town called Chelmsford.

At the end of last month, I returned to my home town to attend the monthly music club known as the Bitterscene for its 10^th anniversary night. “Lovely stuff” I’m sure you’re thinking, “but what’s so important about it?”

From a personal perspective, I’ve also been going to that music night for the past decade. All the way back from 2001 to 2011, I’ve attended throughout my years of being a teenager in school, as a slacker in my year out, during my student years in Greenwich and my current Kooba years of crazy shenanigans coupled with my lovely girlfriend, grown-up job and cosy flat in SE London. That’s ten years of my life; from 17 to (nearly) 27. If you’ve lived those years, you’ll know why they’re so important.

Ok, so far, so personal; fairly self-indulgent stuff I know. What’s of interest to you dear reader?

Well, the Bitterscene is a key example of how a little endeavour can be so important to those who live in a small town. Let me explain…

The Army and Navy back in the day.

“Back in the day” of about 10+ years back, the number of live music venues in Chelmsford was already dwindling, with the last “decent sized” venue, The Army and Navy, closing back in about 2002 (if I remember correctly). The Army and Navy itself was a venue that was considered for many years as being “on the circuit”, allowing fun regular gigging acts such as John Otway and Bad Manners to play in the town, but also up and coming wannabes such as Oasis, Elastica, Echobelly, Gene and plenty of other Britpop acts in the mid 90s, and in the late 90′s the upcoming youths that were Muse and Idlewild…

But, as with so many well-loved local venues, it closed down. Apparently there’s more of an easy market for Franky & Benny’s and Travelodges than hosting the “next Oasis” (or in the case of another venue, The Y, the “next Radiohead”).

The Army and Navy. Post F&Bing

But what about…

Don’t get me started on V. I’m anticipating some corporate spokesperson to pipe up with saying “What about the V festival!”, to which I reply: An event where big name stars (45% overrated, 45% has-been, 10% I’ll let live for another day) are bussed in with blacked out windowed vehicles and kept isolated from the real world to eventually come out and say “Hello Chelsforts! Wadda great town!” at a distance over 600 ft. away from you the punter who has paid over £100 for that “privilege” for 1 WEEKEND in a WHOLE YEAR, does not a thriving vibrant music scene make.

Who needs a vibrant local music scene nourishing a town’s cultural life when you can squint at Kanye West on a glorified pub tv screen for one weekend?

So… that has set the scene of the feeling of the town for the past ten years.

What happened next…

Est. 2001

…In 2001, a small group of friends set up a monthly music club and called it the Bitterscene.

Supporting live music…

They decided they wanted to shore up live music in the town by booking bands not necessarily of popular size but who they thought were of good quality and who needed the opportunity to be heard in other places. Likewise, it gave the town a greater opportunity to hear bands they wouldn’t know of, especially as the town had become off “the circuit”. If you read between the lines, you’ll probably see a bit of the Kooba ethos there as well.

Supporting local music…

There’s also been the case that Bitterscene have made an effort to have local bands play as support. If you’ve ever organised a gig, you know there might be rather cold mercantile reasons for that. Nonetheless it has provided a regular support and focal point for local musicians in and around the town. The lessons to learn from between the lines there are also ones that Kooba appreciate.

Supporting the town…

To focus back on the punter and their situation in the town; like the support the Bitterscene has provided to local bands, it also has provided support for live music fans in the area. There is always the risk for small towns that when places for events close down, the towns can decline into cultural wastelands, kicking off a spiral of undesirability; it has been argued that it took Tony Wilson and Factory records to make Manchester a cool place that people wanted to live in. Admittedly, the Bitterscene isn’t going to reach those dizzying height of cultural success, but it has been a grass roots bulwark against cultural desertification for the town, making the area a more liveable place than if the Bitterscene were absent.

For ten years…

All of this, and the fact that it has been doing what it does for 10 years, is pretty significant; I don’t think there are many local small town clubs that go on for such a long time. Now I will admit I haven’t been to every single one; there have been a good few periods where I haven’t been for months on end. But at least for me and anyone else from Chelmsford, it’s always been there for us. For people to be able to catch up with old faces and get introduced to a few new ones with shared interest has over the years felt incredibly important. For me it’s helped maintain a feeling of community with a hometown where I no longer live and for others who still live the town, that feeling must be even more so.

So… in salute to the Bitterscene, here is a selection of some of the bands (some local to Essex, some not) who have played their basement bar over the last ten years:

Kicker – Blue: