painting the town red (city solidarity disco)
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you are currently reading the first edition of a new bid to chronicle the liverpool scene, from parties & players to the most prolific of punters.
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Red City Disco: on getting down with the activists
Next: 20/04/24 - Bridewell Studios, 21:00 (Zine Workshop @ 15:00)
‘‘I guess it could be quite a cheap night; it's nice - quite a house party kind of setup,’ says Theo Temple of Red City Disco when asked what draws people to the event.
‘And it's got an amazing sound system now,' he adds.
Since 2019, Red City has been intermittently throwing parties at Bridewell Studios in support of (predominantly) local organisations and causes.
In the organisers words: ‘the party's a fundraiser for stuff around work, housing, and migration. That's basically our thing - work, housing, migrations it’s quite a good catchall.’
***
Fund-raising nights seem to be growing across Liverpool, from Red City to Strike a Pose and Tories Can’t Dance, all recurring events plus the one-off events dedicated to single issues.
As venues struggle and shut down, the success of these nights and events asks some tough questions about the state of the music scene.
Chatting with bookers for some of the larger venues in the autumn, frustration with faltering ticket sales was palpable. The problem, one felt, was that people were no longer willing to take risks on smaller nights; vast events with widely-known headliners could still draw crowds because they were less of a risk at times when we’re all tightening the belt.
Expenses are spiralling across the board and nightlife is suffering. The Music Venues Alliance’s latest annual survey showed that 2 venues have closed and that 3 more could no longer be classified as grassroots music venues. At least two more venues have closed since.
But amidst this bleak outlook, fundraising events seem to be able to draw reasonably comfortable crowds.
‘I think it’s undeniable,’ Theo says when asked about how the fundraising element contributes to turnout, ‘it adds something like a kind of integrity capital, just like doing a fundraiser for something - it's a draw, let's call it a draw.’
And though that’s the purpose, it’s not the easiest to reconcile: ‘I think there's something there, isn't it? It's a bit icky.’
***
That complexity shapes the organisations that Red City typically fundraises for, often having a more activist leanings as opposed to charities.
The upcoming party is raising funds for, and awareness of, Palestine Action Liverpool and their direct action against the UK’s arms trade with Israel. Recent actions include blocking BAE Systems’ Samlesbury site and, on our doorstep, Teledyne CML in Bromborough, who supply weapons manufacturers, including BAE, components for F-35 warplanes ultimately supplied to the Israeli military.
Palestine Action was formed on the belief that democratic attempts at challenging the UK’s complicity with the Israeli occupation of Palestine have been ineffective; only direct action will have an impact. And they’ve had success, most recently with Kuehne+Nagel cutting ties with Elbit, Israel’s largest arms company, in the aftermath of a direct action campaign beginning in May 2023.
It’s fair to say that Red City has politics and activism at its core; in the words of its own music coordinator, ’I’m not really envisaging the party as a contribution to the music scene.’
(Author note: it obviously is a contributor to Liverpool's scene, even if music is not the driving force of the events.)
More broadly, it seems fundraising, or politically motivated, parties are making something of a comeback. In Liverpool alone, Red City is accompanied by Tories Can’t Dance and Strike a Pose, plus a myriad of one-off events.
Music, apparently, is political again.
***
‘All art is political’ has been a longstanding refrain amongst artsy-types, but throughout the 2010s it felt like such statements lost their teeth.
If anything, it felt like the once-radical statement was being used as a smokescreen to argue that really quite boring art was edgy and subversive when in fact it was just a self-portrait of some bloke from LA in sunnies. Oh and he’s flogging a line of sunglasses with Louis Vuitton, didn’t we say?
We’ve had a bit of a glut, really, of artists and musicians calling for revolution.
Art itself is not inherently radical, subversive, or counter-culture, though people like to buy into the idea while actually getting sanitised, commercialised knock-offs.
But recently, and this is a massive vibes-based statement, we’re seeing more overt politics in art and music making something of a comeback. Perhaps this is a response to the multiplying crises in this country, perhaps thanks to disillusionment with party and parliamentary politics, or perhaps something else entirely.
***
Red City taps into an older DIY approach to nightlife against a backdrop of growing commercialisation in the broader music industry.
‘When I was younger, I was part of that more DIY, punk-y kind of stuff’ he says of his early pathway into throwing leftist parties. But as property developments have changed the urban landscapes and (in the Baltic, for instance) strangled nightlife, and significantly reduced the venues or locations where any kind of grassroots or experimental music can take place.
‘99% of the problem is probably just the cost of real estate, that’s just it’ concludes the eminently sensible Theo.
Bridewell Studios, though, has worked with Red City since its beginnings in 2019, providing a space that's more conducive to the more radical, subversive character of the event. The location is a large part of how the organisers identify and introduce the event.
‘That’s kind of what people want, that intimacy, the sense of adventure in nightlife, isn’t it?’ Theo asks rhetorically before answering himself, ‘Yeah, just like it's more of a sense of adventure.’
It’s a different offering, a complimentary one in many ways, to more streamlined events in the wider scene, perhaps heralding a wider return to more DIY events and music that is unabashedly political.
***
Still, with the rising cost of living, many still can’t afford to take risks in the arts when they’ve got rent to pay. Low wages and high housing costs (especially) suppress that chance for many. No wonder, perhaps, music often feels more commercial; we’ve all got bills to pay. Bills that aren’t even comfortably covered by the day job.
Events like Red City do incredible work raising awareness of causes and activist groups and bringing people together, but equally, doing so puts intense pressure on people to dedicate their time and expertise to such events, which, even for the most motivated, can take a toll when making ends meet is tough enough as is.
While the money raised for their causes, Red City themselves are typically, if anything, losing money or rolling a debt on.
Tories Can’t Dance commits to paying artists fairly and believes that it’s a contributing factor to their ability to get people through the doors for unknown grassroots music.
‘This idea that your money is going somewhere,’ the organisers, James and Meg, reckon, ’you’ll leave knowing the artists are actually paid fairly for once and that the profits go to charity.’ They don’t pay themselves and have been left out of pocket before.
***
Across the board, but especially for grassroots music, there’s always that struggle to get people through the door and to dedicate their one night out to unknown music, a problem that only exacerbates with the rising cost of living.
‘It’s just so hard for people to pay to go to gigs now,’ says Meg. That prompted them to set ticket prices at £5 before finding that it was impossible to pay acts fairly and still have profits to donate.
‘So we sort of bumped up to £7, but even then we saw a bit of a drop-off and people coming, and now we've got these signs that are to say it's the price of the pint.’
Getting paid, though, comes with relentless accusations of selling out, of not being committed enough, or is generally treated with suspicion, as epitomised by Yard Act’s defensive We Make Hits (‘we're on the same wage, and we ain't afraid to get paid on stage’).
It’s a tough one to navigate, though Theo gives it a shot. There’s a ‘kind of cultural community amongst bands, they all play for barely anything and tour really fucking hard; it’s sort of an ethic of like, you play anywhere, you work really hard, you want to not work hard, you play hard.’
At the end of the day, the performers can’t afford to play for free, the cost of throwing a party gets ever higher and no one has money to go out. In short, we’re all fucked aren’t we?
But at least you can still get out and dance down at Bridewell Studios on Saturday thanks to the efforts of the excellent Red City folks and their bid to reinvigorate the DIY scene. That, in and of itself, will have you feeling more optimistic.
And in doing so, you’ll be supporting the very vital work Palestine Action is taking against Britain’s arms trade with the Israeli state.
See you there.
Get down on it:
18/04 – Maruja, The Shipping Forecast (Dice, Skiddle)
20/04 - Red City Disco, Bridewell Studios (OTD)
On repeat this week:
Así Se Baila La Cumbia (Policarpo Calle)
We Make Hits (Yard Act)
Mwala Aala Sada (Cheb Mami)
Black Dog / White Horse (BIG SPECIAL)
Absolutely love this 👏🏻