Times were good, She never thought about the future, she just did what she would

Friday 4 July – The York music scene is in crisis. Melodramatic? Well maybe. It all started to go wrong 3-4 years when York's premier venue, The Barbican, closed. We were no longer able to host the big names in music and the situation is no better today. Tim Hornsby and Michelle Hodgen at Fibbers kept the flag flying for us, but even they stalled on 13 August 1997, the day before celebrating the tenth anniversary of the York live music bar. Barfly came to the rescue and Tim and Michelle stayed on managing the venue which continued to benefit from their contacts, enthusiasm and uncanny knack of spotting a potential good gig.

In June of this year it seemed as if things were actually going to get a whole lot better. Tim and Michelle had bought the old Stonebow Snooker Club and were planning to open a 500 capacity music venue called The Duchess. The opening was first delayed from mid-June until 3 July, and then, the bombshell. Barfly had retained a top legal team to try and prevent The Duchess from opening. A full enquiry will now be taking place on Thursday 17 July and all the booked gigs are now in jeopardy. Tim has Temporary Event Notices for, I think, Saturday's gig and Friday's sell-out with Shed 7 and Chris Helme. After that? Well it all depends on the outcome of the enquiry. There was a post on the Duchess website to solicit support but even that has now been taken down following receipt of a solicitor's letter.

It might be legal but it seems terribly heavy-handed of Barfly to be acting in this way. There is plenty of room for both venues in the city and I for one would be perfectly happy supporting both venues in the future. I don’t want my choice to be restricted by a big corporation.

The Duchess has a page on FaceBook where you can register as a friend, and you can always email Tim with your support.

So that's what's going on, but what is the venue actually like? A and I were there for the, delayed, opening night on Friday 4 July. Access was via a nondescript door set into the side of the Stonebow building and you we descended into the venue proper. There are two bars. The first is in a quiet-ish, chill out area with tables and chairs and a flat screen showing the stage. Through an arch-way and you enter the main area. Off to the right is another area of chairs and comfy sofas, ahead and to the right are the toilets, straight ahead is the second bar, and ahead and left is the stage. There are also little nooks and crannies with table football and quiz machines. The stage itself looks about the same width as that at Fibbers, maybe a bit deeper. The staff are familiar faces and we received warm welcomes at both bars.

The line-up tonight was a bunch of bands that we'd never heard off. This was a charity gig for Mike J, a bloke that has supported local bands above and beyond the call of duty, producing DVDs and generally just being a solid geezer. A selection of local bands decided to get together as a bit of a "thank you", but Mike wanted all the profits to go to charity. Top bloke.

I arrived just after 8 o'clock and a bit adrift and too late to catch the first band, the Gilligans. Sorry chaps. The second band were Fist Full Of Yen (in reference, I guess, to the film Kentucky Fried Movie which contains a short film spoofing Enter the Dragon which is titled <>A Fistful of Yen, instead of ...Dollars). The band consists of Kirk Barley (bass and vocals), Laurie Caudwell (drums, backing vocals), and Oliver Pitt (guitar), their combined age was probably less that mine. As the front man was the bass player, they had a very bass-led sound. The songs seemed at first to be broken and disharmonious, a bit like Philip Glass plays indie. As I listened harder they were actually using an incredible number of time signature changes and were a pop version of Mastodon or Porcupine Tree. Not my tea of Yorkshire tea, but I could certainly appreciate their musical skills.

By this time A had acquired a set of ear defenders, it certainly was loud, but then we were quite close to the stage. Next up were Dinosaur Pile-up billed as the lo-fi indie pop project of Matt Bigland from Leeds who plays lead guitar and sings. Drum and bass were provided by either 2 Toms or a Tom and Steve. I'm not sure which. Sorry guys. Vocally, Matt sounds like Caleb Followill of The Kings Of Leon. Musically the band have a Nirvana grungy sound. I liked these.

The last band were Hot Recruit who consist of Luke Beddows (vocals), Alec Wright (bass), Dave Rax (drums), and Tom Warden (guitar). I think that Luke had brought his own little fan club with him as there was a little knot of 4-5 guys, arms around each other's shoulders, jumping up and down and singing along. After a couple of songs the power to the stage died. The bars and some other areas remained lit so I assume it was a fuse-type problem. After about 5-10 minutes power was restored and the band played on. Like so many indie bands, they played like The Jam on speed although I have to confess that they managed to incorporate some terrace-chant choruses that most of the crowd seemed know.

Overall I was extremely impressed by the venue itself. The evening was great value, £4 entrance fee and there was at least one band that I would certainly like to see again.

On leaving The Duchess we stopped off at the Old White Swan where a band had been playing, not sure who, but they were just packing away so we continued on our travels and stopped off for a final beer at The Roman Bath. I couldn't make out who had been playing and we only caught half of their final song. We were both a bit down about the whole Duchess scenario. Oh well, roll on the enquiry and I really hope that it's good news for Tim and Michelle.