Nightshiftmag.Co.Uk @Nightshiftmag Nightshiftmag Nightshiftmag.Co.Uk Free Every Month NIGHTSHIFT Issue 299 September Oxford’S Music Magazine 2021
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[email protected] @NightshiftMag NightshiftMag nightshiftmag.co.uk Free every month NIGHTSHIFT Issue 299 September Oxford’s Music Magazine 2021 Gig, Interrupted Meet the the artists born in lockdown finally coming to a venue near you! Also in this comeback issue: Gigs are back - what now for Oxford music? THE AUGUST LIST return Introducing JODY & THE JERMS What’s my line? - jobs in local music NEWS HELLO EVERYONE, Festival, The O2 Academy, The and welcome to back to the world Bullingdon, Truck Store and Fyrefly of Nightshift. photography. The amount raised You all know what’s been from thousands of people means the happening in the world, so there’s magazine is back and secure for at not much point going over it all least the next couple of years. again but fair to say live music, and So we can get to what we love grassroots live music in particular, most: championing new Oxford has been hit particularly hard by the artists, challenging them to be the Covid pandemic. Gigs were among best they can be, encouraging more the first things to be shut down people to support live music in the back in March 2020 and they’ve city and beyond and making sure been among the very last things to you know exactly what’s going be allowed back, while the festival on where and when with the most WHILE THE COVID PANDEMIC had a widespread impact on circuit has been decimated over the comprehensive local gig guide Oxford’s live music scene, it’s biggest casualty is The Wheatsheaf, last two summers. around. which has ceased to operate as a gig venue after decades of hosting shows. Oxford city centre now longer has a single regular grassroots So here is, hopefully, where we This won’t be a quick or easy task live music venue. The loss of the Wheatsheaf comes two years after the begin rebuilding. Oxford has lost though. It is going to be a very long closure of The Cellar and a year after losing The Oxford Deaf & Hard too many great music venues in and very hard road back to recovery of Hearing Centre in St Ebbes. recent times; with the closure for the local scene. Many people The venue, above the Wheatsheaf pub off Oxford’s High Street is now of The Wheatsheaf – despite remain understandably nervous an empty shell after its owners withdrew their planning application to the withdrawal of the planning about going back into gig venues. turn the room into student accommodation in the face of overwhelming application to turn it into flats – So many dedicated people have public opposition, and decided to leave it empty. Property developer Oxford city centre now no longer left the live music industry over the Glen de Unger, who owns much of the property between St Aldates has a single regular grassroots past 18 months, some permanently and Alfred Street, has apparently had the upstairs venue re-rated so venue, and despite the fact that so as the insecurity of their work was it can no longer operate as a business and can be left vacant until he many commercial properties in the laid bare. And we now have fewer reapplies to have it converted into flats. Over 1,000 people objected city centre are vacant, any chance of venues then we have in decades. to the original planning application. The downstairs Wheatsheaf pub a new gig venue opening any time Oxford, the city that has produced remains open. Meanwhile Oxford City Council have failed to respond soon looks remote. Where once we so many world-famous musicians, to attempts by local music activists to have the venue listed as an asset had The Cellar, The Wheatsheaf, will now struggle to host shows for of community value and a heritage asset. The Deaf & Hard of Hearing Centre the next generation of stars. Talking to Nightshift about the closure, Joal Shearing, who ran the and more now we have empty shells But we will live and work with venue for 20 years, said: “I would like to thank everyone who backed and the prospect of more student what we have for now and there the campaign and the masses who sent messages of love and support. accommodation. remain so, so many people who I’d especially like to big up Simon who managed the pub for over will give everything to regain what a decade. Without his vision and enthusiasm the venue would have For those who missed it, Nightshift we’ve lost. So, without banging closed a long time ago. I really hoped and wished the final outcome attempted to keep things ticking on any longer, or getting mawkish could have been different and the owners would have a change of over during the pandemic on social and sentimental, keep supporting heart but this wasn’t to be and the redevelopment of the Wheatsheaf media with regular news updates grassroots music. Get back out to unfortunately looks inevitable.” of local releases, virtual gigs and gigs when you are able to or feel other news, and then through July comfortable doing so, give new we ran a Crowdfunder campaign music a chance and get behind any FESTIVAL DATES. For those Thursday night shows. The show, with the aim of restarting the move to create new spaces for that that missed, them, rearranged presented by Rich Craven and Dave magazine in what will be ever- music to thrive in. dates for this summer’s cancelled Crabtree, features interviews with more straitened times. Globally festivals are: Truck Festival: local music stars as well as local nd th successful Oxford bands like Welcome back everyone. You 22 – 24 July 2022 at Hill Far, music past and present. Get in touch Radiohead, Foals, Supergrass, won’t find much has changed with Steventon. Info: truckfestival.com. at [email protected] th th Ride, Glass Animals, Swervedriver, Nightshift since we were last here; Cornbury Festival: 8 – 10 July Stornoway and Young Knives all even Doctor Shotover’s liver has 2022 at Great Tew Country Park. OXFORD CONTEMPORARY donated unique prizes, as did Truck survived. It’s great to be back. Info: cornburyfestival.com. MUSIC has two part-time job opportunities open for anyone BBC INTRODUCING IN interested in working in live music OXFORD, which has showcased promotion. They are looking for an local music every week throughout event co-ordinator and a marketing the pandemic, continues to provide co-ordinator. Both jobs are 16 a solid hour of new Oxford hours per week. Deadline for music, interviews and news every applications is the 6th September. Saturday night from8-9pm on DAB More info at www.ocmevents.org. and 95.2fm. The show, produced by Liz Green and presented by OXFORD GIGBOT provides a Dave Gilyeat, is available to stream regular Oxford gig listing update and download at bbc.co.uk. on Twitter (@oxgigbot), bringing you new gigs as soon as they are MELTING POT, on Get Radio, announced. They also provide a are looking to play more new free weekly listings email; just Oxford music on their fortnightly contact [email protected]. but it calls upon some of our favourites and is bolder with them: love, death, nature, technology, underdog empathy and a fear of what humans are capable of. Lyrics jump between varied subjects within the course of a single song rather than between songs to seem more anxiety inducing.” WHILE ALL GIGS WERE ON hold and the full August List band were unable to meet up over the course of the pandemic, Kerraleigh and Martin put their spare time to creative use, recording new songs under the name Squawk, a more stripped-back, garage-rock-tinged project. Martin: “That was a direct result of being in lockdown and getting Logic Pro. A fatal combination. We wanted to have a creative outlet during that time and I wanted to start learning how to mix, so it was a really fun exercise. We’ll definitely do it again as it’s all done THE AUGUST LIST follow-up to 2017’s ‘Ramshackle as the whole process of recording virtually apart from the singing, have been talking to Nightshift Tabernacle’, which featured that had begun back in 2018 anyway; so we can do it on a whim with about their new album. ‘Wax year’s Nightshift Number 1 track what’s a few more months! So, no real planning or thought. With Cat’, the band’s third full album, ‘Wilderness’ – before Covid-19 after the first lockdown we had ‘Wax Cat’ we’ve really tried to is released on the 3rd September on lockdown, but the pandemic a single session doing guitar and push what can be expected of our All Will Be Well Records. delayed its release until now. a couple of other small touches. sound, but we still haven’t used a The band, centred around “Everything was done when Covid We then spent the rest of 2020 breakbeat. There is an unreleased Kerraleigh and Martin Child, hit, apart from the bulk of lead with Roland Prytherch mixing in Squark track that has a breakbeat, had written and recorded the guitar parts,” says Kerraleigh; “it London, sending us tracks and so side projects let you mess around majority of the album – the wasn’t too bad having to wait a bit having files going backwards and to try stuff you wouldn’t normally.” forwards.” As well as continuing to write and “It’s musically more robust record together, the couple enjoyed than ‘Ramshackle Tabernacle’, the arrival of their first child continues Martin, explaining earlier this year – a happy event ‘Wax Cat’’s progression from its in difficult times, though one that predecessor; “we’re not afraid to means The August list are unlikely let tracks breathe more between to be hitting the road to promote lyrics.