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Musicians Night Special – The 100 Club

  • Date: 29/09/2014
  • Time:20:00
  • Location: The New Adelphi Club
  • Venue: Musicians Night Special with Special Guests - Free
  •  Free

The 100 Club

A special musicians night featuring local artists who have performed over 100 times over the past 30 years at the Monday’s Adelphi Musicians Night. Expect to see the likes of Matt Hogg, Matt Edible, possibly Santas Buggerboyz and many others. Come along and watch some of Hull’s finest and have a go yourself, three songs, poems, readings, rants or dances, the stage is yours.

What About Tuesday Morning? Memoirs of an open mic night.
By Matt Hogg.

Monday Night Musicians Night at The Adelphi Club is the longest open mic night there has ever been in the City of Hull. Probably in Yorkshire. During the early 80s when it began, there weren’t many open Mic nights. In fact they are a recent phenomena and have had a resurgence during the naughties. The Adelphi musician’s night spurned most of the other wannabes across the whole city for the following three decades. But nothing really compares or is as copacetic.

It was started by a drunken exchange between a spasmodic, jumbled set of musicians, including me, and the owner Paul Jackson as a way of filling the somewhat less than in vogue Monday night slot. I think the fantasy of the night was a mixture of the album cover of Tom Waits Closing Time and some monstrous, debauching Parliament Funkadelic jam session. It was in vogue to humiliate the word jam during the 80s but even the modish student bands had to “jam” to realise their creations.

To start with there was no real sound system, we cobbled something together from the 1950s and when it broke we played acoustically. Over the years some stand out nights have been when Fran Healy, of Travis fame, specifically came to town a night early before a “real” performance, so he could borrow a guitar and play the musicians night because he so loved the atmosphere. Or when the visiting Texans Timbuckthree came to perform their current hit ‘futures so bright (I gotta wear shades)’. How portentous they were.

But forget the famous or successful. I specifically remember hearing the best female vocalist I have ever heard there one night. She was called Harriet. That’s all I know. The song was beautiful. One song. Then she left Hull never to perform again. Or the time I saw a massive Rasputin type of bloke, as part of his performance, smash a bottle of tomato ketchup on the floor and roll around in it. Until Paul told him to stop it. Which he did. I think he might have even apologised. Everything from the audaciously avant-garde to the painfully shy. All are welcome to perform their 3 songs, poems, rants, dances, illusions or falling over. Whatever your attempt or talent.

This was a shambolic night created in the Libertines’ heads two decades before the band existed. No one wanted to go on first. The sound could be terrible. It ran over sometimes until the early hours (Paul used to put a sort of ear splitting assault alarm over the speakers to clear the building). I’m not sure there was ever a sober performance, not by me. Bands were leveled, born and honed. Musicians would compete to audiences of 1 or 200 and everywhere in between. Friends and future brides/husbands were found. Seriously. People from all over the world came. All cultures. And very few fights. After parties were the norm. It was a homegrown, shameless affair, an uncontrolled thing of magnificence. The mad, the bad and the out of tune, also the indisputably brilliant. And it’s still going.

And back then, some of us had to get up on Tuesday morning.