UPDATE 19/04/18: The Basement has been saved, sort-of
Live music lovers armed with ukuleles and mirror balls will march on NSW Parliament House this Thursday afternoon in a bid to #savethebasement.
They’re putting the call out to punters across the city to join the crusade to rescue Sydney’s oldest licensed live music venue space from certain death.
ICYMI: following initial reports that The Basement would be shutting its doors and transformed into office spaces, the venue’s management clarified that they’re actually planning to relocate the so-called “beating heart of Sydney’s live music scene” to new premises, saying “it doesn’t make sense for us to continue in the current space”.
But the Labor Loves Live Music division and a number of key players in the Sydney music scene don’t want to see the iconic space lost to future generations of music fans, and have issued a call to arms for others to join the fight to safeguard the premises at 7 Macquarie Place as a live music venue.
They’ll be convening at 3.30pm this Thursday, 12th April, outside Parliament House on Macquarie Street, before heading inside to the gallery in the Legislative Council to make a statement to the Upper House, calling on property managers AMP Capital to “save The Basement premises as a live music venue”.
“This is intended to be a non-partisan message that reflects the strong community feeling around the loss of this iconic Sydney venue,” reads a press statement from organisers the Live Music Office and former Basement promoter/musician, Danny Felix.
Participants are encouraged to bring mirror balls and ukes, intended to “symbolise the serious issues the music industry is facing across NSW”.
It comes after a parliamentary inquiry into the state’s music industry shone a light on the cooked array of “archaic regulatory conditions” and “red tape” decimating Sydney’s live music industry, with catalogued incidents including a Marrickville live music lounge being locked in a row with police over whether they were permitted to have a mirror ball up, and a group of elderly ukulele players being turfed from a Hunter bowling club over a single noise complaint lodged at 5.30pm on a Monday.
You can RSVP to the #savethebasement rally’s official Facebook event right here.
