Drinks had been served from the makeshift bar and, for sure, they had been flowing freely by the time author and guest speaker David Keenan took to the microphone to deliver his impassioned speech at novelist Richard Milward’s chaotic book launch upstairs in an abandoned New Look in Middlesbrough back in July. “What the fuck is this?” he bellowed in his rough Glaswegian brogue, “the back entrance to Farmfoods? THE UNDERGROUND IS REAL!”
As the crowd cheered, penned in amongst the old clothes rails of the old storeroom, local art collective The Word hung paper crowns and flowers on everyone leaving the stage while a who’s who of local creatives mingled as a scene was born, nay, validated. Artist Eugene Schlumberger, White Rabbit’s Lee Brackstone, the guys from Press On Vinyl and Avalanche Party were all there. But most of all, where there might have been a smattering of people in attendance a couple of months earlier, now 200 people were crammed inside the sweltering venue to witness, amongst the readings, performance art and spoken word, two sets of anarchic indie-rap from a suitably under rehearsed The Danny Kebabs plus a stripped back Avalanche Party set, who were test driving tracks from their upcoming second album.
Readers will have probably already heard of Teesside issues based punk collective Benefits (unwilling but de facto heads of the scene), some may also be aware of Industrial Coast’s seminal experimental noise nights, A Monday Night In Middlesbrough – the joke was always nobody could make a Monday night work while many have also previously tried to create a successful noise night, now Industrial Coast have done both – and others will certainly know about Press On Vinyl’s mission to reimagine vinyl production for independent artists one ethically produced record at a time.
However, there is also a myriad of other art and music-based happenings, anywhere and everywhere, in the town. After the closure of the popular Base Camp venue and the revered Westgarth Social Club, within a few weeks of each other earlier this year, there was an initial clamour to find similar venues with a raised stage and a proper bar, but what many didn’t realise at first was that you don’t need those things you just need space, and a desire to create.
Like an echo of the area’s industrial past and fired by the current cultural vandalism that has left nearby South Gare looking like a scene from Star Wars (while sewage is being pumped into the area’s best surfing waters at Saltburn) a fertile socio-political soil has formed. A further unexplained marine die-off along the same piece of coastline has been linked to the dredging of the River Tees led by the controversial Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) who have been clocking up column inches in Private Eye no less. Young people in the region have plenty to be frustrated and angry about and like all good scenes the counterculture underground, with no regular venues and very little money, is built on this ire and desire, and around such unlikely spaces as a disused carpet factory (art curator Liam Slevin’s The Auxiliary), the abandoned New Look (Bobby Benjamin and Stephen Irving’s Pineapple Black Arts) and an old engravers (Café Etch). Even the OG of the scene, a run-down but repurposed terraced house on popular Baker Street, Disgraceland, has seen something of a renaissance in the last few months.
Disgraceland’s graffitied interior, influenced by patron Jane Jorgensen’s love of the Berlin squat scene, has recently provided the Instagrammable backdrop for seminal New York no wavers Ut while the venue has also been hosting open deck evenings, Bobby Benjamin’s Baby Picasso nights (early supporters of Benefits) as well as some very DIY new music nights and old-school raves. Disgraceland is to be properly seen to be believed. In September the venue will host Sigma Studio’s SURGE night including a DJ set by experimental house DJ Abby Harris, herself no stranger to the A Monday Night In Middlesbrough line-up.
In August The Auxiliary had hosted a similarly DIY rhymer event that was switched from Pineapple Black at the last minute, partly because Pineapple Black’s Summer Arts Show was going on at the same time, and partly to accommodate one of the off-the-books after-parties that have suddenly become the places to be for those in the know, rather than the small private house get-togethers for the privileged few. Upstairs in The Auxiliary the rhymer night showcased an amalgamation of rap and spoken word (and their various sub-genres) where artists, including 97Renn and Spini, were given 15-minute turns to impress, an updated version of the cipher nights of the 00s. In adversity things have become more inclusive, as more things close more things open up.
While nearby Stockton continues to provide admirably for more traditional and organised live programming, and mentions should be made for Tees Music Alliance and NE Volume Music Bar, in Middlesbrough something new and unique is happening, it is happening now and it isn’t just guys with guitars. Another spoken word night, Gobful, is a regular event that has floated between venues such as Bloom, TSOne and the Westgarth, as if on a whim, but has seemingly now settled in its spiritual digs, the not-for-profit ‘home of unpopular music’ Toft House. Host Gareth The Poet is now even getting his name onto some trad music line-ups throughout the area as his own popularity grows. Elsewhere, record label and party collective SYNRG is another pie with an Abby Harris finger in it, also with connections to Pineapple Black and Disgraceland, as well as venues in nearby Guisborough, where they specialise in indoor and outdoor sound systems, all-nighters and house parties with an anything goes vibe.
Other artist names to look out for before the year end in Middlesbrough might be 18-year old Sisi, who has already performed at Reading & Leeds Festival on the BBC Introducing stage, with her contemporary mix of Afropop and garage, MC Banks (Makina is still going strong round these parts!) and KK Junker who is another local name dismantling anything with a beat into something more molecular and primal.
But, as always with these things, everything exists on a knife edge. There are already threats to funding and pushback against how these proto venues operate. While they benefit from cheap rates the local council has a history of knuckling down financially on anything it deems to be successful. The deft monetising of the hugely successful Orange Pip Market, also on Baker Street, is just one example, while Pineapple Black has been on a rolling lease since its inception in 2018, if only the new Labour mayor of Middlesbrough at present seems a lot more accommodating.
However, let’s leave the last word to Richard Milward, “[There is] an eagerness to hand these buildings over to anyone willing and able to turn them into art spaces and venues so, there is opportunity here as well as dereliction. You get true diversity and equality in these places, you need your little unruly Cabaret Voltaires where the spirit of freedom and off-it-ness is celebrated, thoroughly encouraged, and not sanitised in the slightest. These venues are proof that you can make things happen yourself.” Amen to that.
