For my 50th Blog entry I return to Nottingham. While in attendance at my first Hockley Hustle on 17/06/07 I caught a couple of bands in Dogma. Hockley was a suburb in the centre of town with a swathe of venues within its boundaries. The venue was located on Byard Lane and had three floors with a main ground floor bar and a restaurant located upstairs. The music stage was in the nightclub setting downstairs.
I have always found venues such as this metallic sparsely populated basement nightclub layout to be in stark contrast to a daytime gig, especially on a sunny June day.
I don’t recall the first band Arias Ashes, but the second band Dust Collectors were a peculiar seven piece infused with Victorian jazz influences.
The venue closed in 2014 following a stabbing and reopened as a Tapas restaurant called Barasca.
Lee Rosy’s Tea Café was situated on Broad Street. As it was a little café its musical direction was strictly in the acoustic mode. I visited there twice, the first witnessing Ying and Herbidaceous in June 2007.
My other attendance was to see Alun Parry at the 2009 Hustle. He was a traditional folk singer with a social conscious streak in the mould of Woody Guthrie. He was also a community music festival organiser and resided in Liverpool.
The physical café closed in 2018 but the business is still alive and kicking as an online entity.
On my second Hustle in 2009, we visited Browns on the corner of Park Row and East Street Circus. It was a rather pretentious brasserie and a bar where the bands were playing. First up were Tasty Morsels with their melancholic keyboard tinged vibe.
We also witnessed Free Control and The Amber Herd. We only caught the final two tracks of the latter, but they had a promising presence about them complimented by lead singer Neil Beard’s soothing vocals. They were at that stage obtaining some decent support slots with The Delays and That Petrol Emotion and appear to be still active.
Escucha on Fletcher Gate was another plush late-night bar and we saw the five-piece Matt Chandler Band who sat strictly in the jazz mode and was a bit too sleepy loungecore for me. Matt Chandler was originally from Derby and appears to be quite renowned in his genre playing regular London gigs and working with luminaries such as Youth from Killing Joke and Polystyrene from X Ray Spex. The venue now appears to be closed.
Situated right next to Broadway cinema on Broad Street is Shaw’s, a small tapas restaurant and bar. We saw a Nottingham soul singer called Natalie Duncan. A couple of years later she appeared on Jools Holland alongside Muse who she must have impressed to the extent that they asked her to appear in the support slot on their upcoming tour.
At the tail end of the 2009 Hustle we were heading back up Pelham Street towards the tram stop when we heard a cacophonous racket emanating from an upcoming shop doorway. We soon discovered it was the delightfully named local band Ocean Bottom Nightmare who were kicking up the racket in one of the oddest venues I have ever encountered. They were ensconced in a retail unit called 28 Barbers with props such as clippers and trimmers in view behind the drum kit. It was a bracing unusual end to the festival!
