70s map test

70s map

The seventies were a turning point, with hints of the future coming into focus even while the old dancehalls still lived on - at the Crystal Palace Bob Paris played music “for the more mature dancer” while at the Orange, Arthur Skelton’s orchestra played right through until 1980 (their approach little changed from when Skelton’s started at the Westhaven Cabaret in 1949). Yet changes were on the horizon.
The gradual easing of the alcohol laws saw the big breweries getting involved in the music business and taking an interest in how bands were booked at the bars that they supplied (they even started some of their own cover bands). At the beginning of the decade, this was hard on independent operators like Tommy Adderley - he tried to operate a private club, Grandpas, above his venue Granny’s so members could drink alcohol but was eventually busted and had to sell his house and car to cover the fines. In the end, the big venues to survive from this decade - like Mainstreet and the Gluepot - were ones that could serve booze legally.
At the same time, new genres of music were beginning to find a home on our shores - like punk, new wave, funk, and disco. A couple of years after Granpas was closed down, the spot was reopened as punk/new wave venue Zwines and bands from this scene also took over underutilised spots like Disco D’Ora’s. Funk acts switched between sister venues Cleopatras (in Panmure) and Alladin’s (next to the Civic).
At the start of the decade, the old Club A Go Go in Newmarket's Rialto Arcade was replaced by John’s Place, which advertised itself as a ‘discotheque’ (though it still had live acts) and a few years later you’d find Mon Desir listing one of its disc jockeys alongside the band on its ad. This all laid the groundwork for the explosion of disco clubs that would peak in 1978, showing that a crowd could just as easily dance to a vinyl record as they could to a live band. Gay club, Backstage, took this to the limit by eschewing the hits of the day in favour of any song that could make the crowd move - a notion that eventually gave rise to club culture in the late 1980s.
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