Joe Dougan, director of Shine Promotions, explains how believes Belfast's biggest club night grew stale from a lack of competition, and what saved it.
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00:00It's interesting, I think any pragmatic operator that works in this line of work would want there to be a, what's the word, a pipeline of new people coming through with decent ideas because I'm 41, I don't go clubbing very often now, and it's possible that maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, so I need to speak to people that do, younger people that understand the scene and that they're, you know, showing up on the scene.
00:30And I understand audiences, dance music is such a, and especially the underground part, you know, it doesn't, the concert industry makes sense, it's like how many strings has this guy got, how many albums has he sold, that's how many concert tickets he's worth.
00:47With techno and house music, it's just not the same, it's more ethereal, but I suppose from my point of view, I think that that ecosystem is, and especially things like what Timmy is doing and David Holt is doing, quite a lot of brilliant independent promoters, like the Schmutz guys, and even obviously Sarah McBriar at ABA Festival.
01:13I could be completely sure that Sarah especially has given us a run for our money a lot over the years and made us better at what we do, and when you see scenes that have this just monolith that is in the middle of it, then, you know, or maybe people perceive to be a monolith because they don't see the struggle that goes on behind closed doors to keep the doors open and employ staff and all this stuff, but it's not good.
01:39I don't think it's good. I don't think it's good for growth. By the time we'd finished up in Mandela Hall, 2018 or something like that, I think what we were doing was pretty stale with Shine, if I'm honest, and it was because we'd had a relatively easy run for a few years and we didn't have to think about what the next big act was because there was, you know, do you know what I mean?
02:04We've had this conversation as well. I mean, I think, you know, I grew up in a time where, you know, you started to see the impact of the super club. You know, it was bigger and bigger venues. You know, I went to Gate Crusher in the Millennium and see, looking back at it, I think I bloody wish I hadn't because it was 120 quid and it was a nightmare. 25,000 people in one tent. It was awful.
02:23You know, and I look back, I found a recording from Space and Telemetry for the same night. It was a tenor and that's how they advertise it. We're still a tenor in.
02:33I do think that, you know, it had got to the point, like New Year's Eve is not the thing it used to be. And I think it edits itself in a lot of ways.
02:41I think the Millennium was a thing.
02:45You know, you go out on New Year's Eve now and it's double time in a taxi and the staff are double time. The tickets got to be double the price, all of this stuff.
02:53But one other point I was going to say, the thing that came after the Mandela Hall for Shine at that time was the Telegraph building.
03:01We've been in there since 2017 and we didn't have any choice but to get better when we had it in there because the risk was so much higher.
03:11You could go in there, sell 1,000 tickets and lose 30,000, 40,000 pounds in a night. Three or four of those in a row and we're all looking for a job.
03:21So we had to get better and it helped, I think, bring in new acts that maybe we hadn't thought of before and it gave it a little bit more shape.
03:32But probably what we didn't see was happening at that time is that there was a pivot all over, certainly the UK, to start using more improvised spaces for that kind of entertainment.
03:42For live music as well, it's been very good for concerts, but if you look at the Depot in Manchester or the Printworks in London or the SWG3 in Glasgow,
03:52Liverpool has the Blackstone Street Warehouse, there's one in every city now, or more than one, and they're good.
03:59In the same way as we use the Ulster Sports Club for a lot of dance music stuff now as well, because as Timmy said, it's sort of things like your living room and a house party and it's fun.