Trawling the Derby Hall’s archives
I spent a good few hours today searching through the archives at The Met in Bury with my brother Andy, looking for anything related to the Gigs Live Music Club.
Andy took over running Gigs when I moved to Oldham, although I was still involved for a good few years. He also worked front of house at the Derby Hall for a few years – and I welcomed the second pair of eyes. Nick Smale, who works for The Met and whose duties include looking after the archive, was on hand to help – and he’d thoughtfully dug out the most relevant material in advance.
The Derby Hall as it is today. Photo by Chris Payne, courtesy of The Met.
Nick had warned us that material in the archives from that time was somewhat thin on the ground, so our expectations were low and we were quite prepared to find nothing.
While we didn’t strike an unexpectedly rich seam, we did find a lot more than we could have hoped for. We found evidence of around another ten Gigs Live Music Club events (there was also evidence of the nights we already had pinned down), but what we found was excellent.
A couple of good ones: a newspaper story reporting on the club starting (sadly this is undated, so a trip to Bury Library to spend time with the Bury Times archives on microfiche will be in order), and also evidence that the club was running as late as 1987.
“Regular music nights are to start at the Derby Hall, Bury, and a new club begins tonight with a mystery band. Musicians and those interested in helping fund the club are meeting at 7 o’clock this evening to plan the regular nights which will begin in January. At 8.30 pm the entertainment starts with a band specially booked. The club should become a showcase for local talent as well as eventually bringing star names to Bury.”
What I find especially interesting is the nature of memory – how poor it can be, how malleable it can be, and how unreliable it can be. My memory was that I had little involvement in the club after maybe 1982, because I'd married and moved to Oldham. But looking at those events brought back memories of helping out, so I was still involved at least in some ways now and again. In 1985 I organised ‘Gigs Aid’, a rock disco to raise money for Live Aid.
By 1985–1987, Gigs Live Music Club wasn’t running every week – it ran shorter seasons of a few dates. This would be partly due to the availability of volunteers (as anyone who works for a volunteer organisation knows, helping hands can be thin on the ground and eventually goodwill always runs out), but also there were fewer bands performing locally. Everything has its day. That said, Dave Naylor, who took over running what had been the Gigs Live Music Club from Andy, continued booking performers in the same vein, albeit increasingly under the Derby Hall name.
All of the material gathered will be folded into the book and will add to the growing record of events, helping me flesh out the history of the club.
