Feb 28 1993

Cornershop, Wheel, Jam Jar Jail

Fibber Magees (Anarchy Night Cafe)

Technically this isn’t a Hope gig but we arranged the accommodation and made the provision for Cornershop to play in the Anarchy Night Café. The band was looking to play Dublin on that date which was a Thursday. Rather than clashing with Anarchy Night café, which was getting regularly good crowds, we asked could they be put on the bill. This was readily agreed. The people behind the Anarchy Night Café had a similar motto to Hope: “We are not promoters, we are people – just like you”.

They went to a lot of our gigs so we knew they’d be keen on helping. Cornershop had been getting plenty of attention from the British music press, which was interesting from our point of view. We weren’t too used to dealing with bands that garnered such interest. All we knew about Cornershop was that they had a link to the Membranes. Our base line, though, was they weren’t on a major record label (at the time) so we were happy to help. The major label thing left us open time and again for criticism.

It grew and grew as people were questioning our activities. For me I felt I just didn’t want to deal with big record labels. Hope never signed a “contract” and never gave cast-iron guarantees. Sometimes we would have a good idea of how many people will go to the gig and would pass  that info on to the band. It was a nice level to deal with people.

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