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In the bowels of what was once one of Melbourne’s grungiest music venues, there’s an unusual smell.
A tackiness that used to jam tufts of hardened fibres in the grooves of your shoes is oddly absent, like a phantom limb, and the Corner Hotel’s Rod Smith invites a hesitant photographer to lie down and frame up on the carpet.
It’s fresh, clean – pleasant, even.
“This is the best time to lay down on it, mate,” says Smith, the venue’s general manager. “It’s brand spanking – it hasn’t been used yet.”
The band room’s carpet at the Corner was replaced last week, but it’s the same pattern it’s always been – a swirling gold on deep red, the hallmark of one of the Melbourne institution’s core tenets: consistency.
Over the past three decades, the music industry, and the habits of music fans, have radically shifted. But despite it all, the Corner survived. The question is, how?
“Swan Street has seen an enormous amount of change and gentrification, so we’ve had to keep up with that and move with it. But I don’t think what makes it tick has really changed,” says Smith, sitting in a booth beside the front bar.
“I know a lot of bands and tour managers, when they come to us, they know exactly what they’re going to get.”
The Corner (with its 800-person band room) is one of the few mid-tier venues left in Melbourne’s otherwise fragile live music ecosystem, in which it’s crucial venues of all sizes survive – lest the whole thing falls apart.
The latest casualties include Brunswick’s Stay Gold (420-odd capacity), which shuttered in June after an eight-year run, and Collingwood’s the Gasometer (350 capacity), which triggered a war of words with new management after its sale this time last year.
Music Victoria data reveals the problem isn’t going away, either, which spells trouble for up-and-coming musicians who rely on these smaller venues to pave the path to their success.
The organisation’s latest music venue audit found that while Victoria has some 2400 venues – more than any other Australian state – the number hosting weekly live shows has declined by almost 20 per cent since 2019, falling from 813 to 655 venues.
“Like a sporting oval develops elite athletes, venues like The Corner develop artists, audiences and the professionals who make the industry work,” Music Victoria chief executive Fiona Duncan says. “Once these spaces are lost, they are incredibly difficult to replace.”
The Corner lays claim to being a “springboard” to the likes of Australian acts such as Meg Washington, The Temper Trap, Sampa the Great and G Flip during their early days, as well as introducing international names like Leon Bridges, Idles and Fontaines D.C. to local audiences.
These mid-tier venues are equally vital to heritage bands, who retain solid fan bases but can’t necessarily sell out the likes of St Kilda’s Palais Theatre.
Pop punk band Bodyjar, which was the first to perform at the Corner on the venue’s opening night in December 1995, has since played there at least 50 times over the past three decades (as regulars, they’d be “in the top couple, for sure”, says Smith). On October 1, they’ll come full circle with a show to kick off a six-week lineup celebrating The Corner’s 30th birthday.
The full lineup, revealed this week, also includes Meg Washington, The Buoys, Kingswood and The Engine Room, as well as founding members of Hunters and Collectors.
“Without venues like that, the whole city misses out,” Bodyjar guitarist Tom Read says.
But while venues shutter under the strain of mounting costs, Melbourne’s music scene continues to shift and endure. Broadcaster and music journalist Jane Gazzo points to relatively new venues like Bell City Takeaway and Shotkickers in the city’s north-west as a sign of evolution.
“Back in the ’90s, Brunswick Street [in Fitzroy] and Richmond – there were venues open seven nights a week, and it cost three dollars to see three bands,” Gazzo says.
“Music is still as strong as ever, but it migrates to where the scene is, and at the moment, it’s in the inner-west.”
At The Corner, Gazzo says the venue knows its audience, and hasn’t succumbed to the likes of cover bands. “They haven’t messed with the formula,” she says.
And, at the heart of its identity are people like Georgie Martin, who started working at the venue two decades ago, aged 19, and now heads up its operations team.
She was here when staff weighed up barricading the door when Richmond won the 2017 AFL grand final, and police were forced to shut down Swan Street. She’s slipped a tea bag tag into a mug of whisky for an American blues artist, who wanted the audience to believe she was on the straight and narrow. She’s seen countless people fall in love and watch their idols on stage – and even seen a man climb through the roof to catch a show, only to be chased away by a kitchen hand with a broom.
The Corner has a lesson in longevity for each of the new players: consistency.
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