Our plan, through this ground-breaking initiative, is to raise enough capital through donations so that the save the 100 club campaign can buy the name, the rights, the goodwill and the fixtures & fittings from the present owner and take over ownership of the club.
The people who donated will become "members of the 100 Club" and will be invited to have their say on major decisions that the board of Trustees make. The club would be run as a NOT FOR PROFIT organisation and therefore would be eligible for government funding such as from the Lottery Fund and the Heritage Fund. The trustees will also be applying for heritage status for the club which would secure its long-term future.
The club, as we all know, is steeped in musical history but let's not forget that it is also about the future of live music in London. All the small venues are shutting and soon there will be nowhere for emerging bands to play. So what will happen? The bands will stop being formed and we will be left with a karaoke generation. We can't let that happen. We aim to allow new bands the chance to thrive in a renewed 100 Club that will, once again, be the place where musical careers are made.
We are in this because we care about the club and want to preserve it so that future generations can appreciate it as we have done. If a well known venue sponsor such as O2 comes along and buys the club and it stays open we would all be happy with that. In the worst-case scenario, the 100 Club becomes a storage space for a large high street shop and no one ever again gets to feel the history that seeps out of its walls and floors. That is what we are fighting against.
Help to preserve the past by saving the future.
Statement from Bobby Gillespie (Primal Scream)
When Primal Scream played there in 2006 it was a lifetime ambition realised. We first heard of the 100 Club while reading about the Punk Festival in 1976. I think Malcolm McClaren and Ron Watts put it on, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, and the very first performances by Subway Sect & Siouxsie & The Banshees (with Sid Vicious on drums) who played one song- 'The Lord's Prayer' To us teenage punks this was legendary stuff. I had a bootleg tape of the Pistols at The 100 Club that I used to listen to when i was 16. Filling my head with dreams. We formed our band because of punk rock and reading about The Banshees getting up onstage without any prior experience as musicians at that festival and becoming a band in the process.
When it comes to rock and roll, The 100 Club is the best room in London. No contest. No other venue comes close.
Rock and roll was created in small, sweaty clubs, that's where the music sounds best, it doesn't translate well to the big arenas as the band and audience are too distant from each other. It's all smoke and mirrors, any fool can put on a spectacular show to hide behind. And many do. At the 100 Club there is nowhere to hide, you've got to have the chops to deliver, you've got to mean it, there's no room for fakes, You've got to be good to play there and carry it off. Trial by fire.
Music is no longer underground anymore. Everything is bought and sold over and over again. Commodified. Dead. It's all Carling Academy's and HMV Apollos and 02 Arenas, Corporate, unfeeling, distant. Places as void of atmosphere and rock and roll history as shopping malls or airports.
There's less and less independently run clubs where young bands and new music can grow and become a life-changing cultural force like The Rolling Stones & The Sex Pistols did, both bands having started out playing at the 100 club.
That's why it's important to keep The 100 Club open. It would be a tragedy for British music if it disappears, It has as much cultural value as any art gallery or museum. It's a living place of history. Don't let it die.
