from Today’s Guardian – the new government licensing rules for live music are set to halve the number of gigs taking place in Britain
“The Licensing Act 2003 was intended to make it easier and more economical for pubs and other small venues to apply for the necessary paperwork. But it also requires some small venues that did not previously need licences to apply for them for the first time.”
Come on, venue owners, get your finger out! For us gig-goers, and gig players, we need to be making sure that venues keep going with live music. The scene does seem to have been improving a little of late, so it’d be a real shame to see that tail off. Maybe they should make the forms downloadable, so we can carry them around and hand them to venue owners?