The Cherry Bar is pretty grungey. Lots of touring bands lob there after shows. Sone so unannounced gigs.
This was posted on Facebook.
Open Love Letter to Oasis.
Dear Liam and Noel,
I love you.
I am the owner and booker of Cherry Bar. We are a small late night live music dive bar that has somehow survived for over 25 years in Melbourne.
I like your band Oasis and have so much respect for you lads as a unique and dependable force of bona fide rock n roll attitude. However, I write to you today specifically to share my deep gratitude because you and your fans are the happy heavy drinking economic juggernaut that this city and my bar desperately needed.
Melbourne was the most Locked Down city in the world during Covid and the entire hospitality sector has been and remains devastated. My Mum was pretty happy when the City of Melbourne appointed me as the Chairman of the Night Time Advisory Committee during Covid, making me Australia’s first Night Mayor. True Story. So I speak to you as something of an expert when it comes to Melbourne’s damaged night time economy.
Our Governments and local Councils are ALL broke and inept. They are all talk and no action. Rather than assist small business operators they have just made things harder for us with hideous taxes, red tape and costs chasing money to address the debt they created and maintain their own inflated wages and fat pensions. I hate their guts. We all do.
The darkest hour is before the dawn, Melbourne and Cherry Bar needed a hero and who knew that it would come in the shape of a couple of “no f#cks given” Mancunian larrikins?!
This Winter was tough. The city is dead and dangerous. Young people don’t come out at night anymore and if they do they don’t spend any money and ping-pong between half a dozen different venues rather than sinking piss at one joint. Then…Oasis arrives.
We just had our biggest weekend and biggest week on record. We have been opening every night, from 2pm to 6am. On your first show date, last Friday, we took a week’s takings in one day. The vibe has been joyous and inspiring, but most importantly of all… your devoted fans have been sinking piss like absolute legends day and night. It’s been one gigantic piss head group hug and it’s saving the bars and pubs of Melbourne.
Thank you Noel and Liam. Thank you Oasis. No Government could ever plan an economic injection of this size and import. The people have been inspired to finally get up from their couches and get back on the piss and powder with smiles on their dials, love in their hearts and songs in their throats.
You need to know that you are an unlikely force of Good. God Save Oasis. I absolutely f#cking love you. All of Melbourne does.
Thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my black little heart,
James Young
Cherry Bar Owner/Booker
Err gratitude
😬
Could you imagine a night mayor or chair of the night time advisory committee in this country celebrating people getting “back on the piss and powder”? Got to love Australians’ attitudes. On a more serious note this proves what a serious injection mega-gigs give to our cities, which is one of the reasons we need to keep grass roots venues alive so that there are enough alive rock stars to fill the enormodromes in years to come.
In my (limited) experience, Oz music bars are, um, quite a lively experience, if the Railway Bar, Byron Bay is anything to go by. Not for the faint of heart or constitution.
They party hard at the Railway. Holiday destination too.
Happy for the Aussies.
That sounds truly awful, just like Ricky Hatton’s fights in Las Vegas did, and then you listen to Quoasis! I’d need more piss and powder than they were consuming to do that.
I saw a clip on YouTube of Hank Marvin joining Sir Clifford of Richard on stage in Perth (I think Hank lives there now). Did this have a similar effect on bars in Western Australia ?
Sales of communion wine were apparently the scale