Features

This Thursday sees what’s billed as the final ever Rockfeedback Basement night at London’s Buffalo Bar.

The chances are you’ve never heard of The Basement, a monthly club night that’s been running since the dawn of the new London scene (or 24^th October 2002, to be precise), but what you might recognise is some of the bands who have played the tastemaker events over the years. From Ed Harcourt, The Rain Band, Electric Soft Parade and The Futureheads to The Zutons, The Kooks, Metronomy, Foals and Noah and the Whale, the club has showcased some of the real upcoming talent that the UK has had to offer since 2002.

The myths and history of The Basement are too often entwined, but it was there that The Libertines have been said to reunite, Transgressive Records might have been sparked, and where Ed Harcourt definitely once gave Rockfeedback founder Toby L a wedgie before playing an intimate and stunning set just days after selling out London’s Koko.

Ed returns to play the final night, alongside Jeremy Warmsley and Munch Munch thus ending a very important chapter in UK music. It’s no secret that despite the best efforts of an excitable nation, 2008 has not been the best year for new UK music with no bands breaking through, and a sense of the market being saturated by too much heartless indie pop via Scouting for Girls, The Wombats, et al, maybe the timing of The Basement’s closure is appropriate.

It’s certainly not the end of Rockfeedback though, even as far as live music goes. The kids will still be running a monthly night at the Monarch in Camden, a bigger night featuring bands not just of the fresh variety, but some names that might already be popping onto the radar. Bands like Black Kids, Pete and the Pirates, The All New Adventures of Us, Esser… y’know, that kinda thing. And Red Stripe can still often found down on the front row, throwing shapes or whatever it is one does at such events these days.

Rockfeedback isn’t just another London club night for people with pulse-invading fingers though, its online music magazine has been growing since its makeover last year and Toby L and co will be back soon with a third series of the highly acclaimed Channel 4 and MTV2 music show. Featuring live music, intimate interviews and presenters drinking bull spunk, it’s a completely amorous look at new music. Rockfeedback really is a place for real music fans, musos and anybody looking for the next big thing from people with a new view on the music they love. Not that anybody at Rockfeedback would ever make such luridly pretentious claims. Of course.