Stemming from last week’s double blow loss of two Melbourne live music venues, Australia’s music news hasn’t been entirely rosey.
We’ve had a tour postponed, bands dropping off the Soundwave 2014 lineup and an entire festival has in fact fully folded. We are really in need of win, and that’s exactly what the Great Britain Hotel has got for you.
After taking to the Richmond live music venue’s official Facebook page last week, the Great Britain Hotel publicans Chris and Penny Hodges confirmed they would not be managing the Church St. favourite post-June, leaving a bleak, giant question mark hovering over the future existence of live music at the Melbourne drinking hole.
However, in a recent turn of events, there has been a saving grace for The Great Britain Hotel – at the giant hands the Melbourne Venue Company.
The Great Britain will be “changing management but it won’t be changing anything else,” according to a media release issued by operators on Monday, emphasising that “live music will remain integral to the pub and the new owners will continue to foster Melbourne music’s up-and-comers as it is widely renowned and admired for.” The Great Britain will be “changing management but it won’t be changing anything else…”
“Why mess up a good thing?” is the rhetorical question Melbourne Venue Company CEO Michael Thiele asked in reference to the Great Brtiain’s live music legacy, with the change in management coming in July but that the hotel will remain otherwise “business as usual.”
Thiele confirmed via the press statement, “we understand the beauty of a historic pub with character and we are not about to mess with that.” The only alteration the fresh management intend on making is an improvement to the bathrooms. (And hey, what’s wrong with that?)
For those unaware of the Melbourne Venue Company, they’re the management hands of a long list of pubs and bars, including Prahran’s College Lawn, Fitzroy’s Perseverance and The Provincial, along with the recently relaunched Duke of Wellington in the CBD.
After the influx of tributes and salty tears poured due to the impending closure of the Richmond staple, hopefully the venue will never fall under such familiar uncertainty again.
With the management handover to take place in July, Melbourne and Australia at large have dodged a bullet in this onslaught of local music venue closures.
Despite live music fans raising their hands in jubilation from the news of the Victorian Government’s coveted ‘Agent of Change’ planning principle, aimed to protect venues from noise-complaints, being implemented, the Melbourne live music scene has had an unhealthy number of threats to its iconic live music venues.
Yesterday, news broke that iconic St Kilda pub, The Espy, had been put on the market for sale. Believed to be Australia’s longest running live music venue – at around 135 years of operation – the 1,752-capacity, 3am licensed hotel is being advertised as a “rare opportunity” on its online property listing.
Meanwhile, The Palace Theatre has once again come under threat from property developers after new, scaled back plans to raze the live music venue in favour of constructing a multi-million hotel and apartment complex have been submitted to City of Melbourne for approval, bypassing the Planning Minister’s office.
