The Pop Corporation

When Outkast accepted their Rock N Roll Hall of Fame award, Andre 3000 held the microphone and said a simple, but powerful phrase: “Great things start in little rooms. We started in a little room”.

Let’s look at that.

See, we constantly hear about some cultural stasis and how everything isn’t as good as it used to be. Every generation hears this, and new Old Heads are born, decrying what’s happening now and putting a rosy tint over what things used to be like. Sure, some periods of time are harder than others, but if music and culture has taught us anything, it’s that good things are always happening – it is more a case of commentators and loud voices letting on that they no longer know where to look.

While hopelessly out-of-touch people look to Dubai, while wealthy brands pile-on each other in Berlin, and regionally, hipster-capitalists arbitrarily choose places to be The Next Big Thing, like we’ve seen with the hideous ‘Stockport Is The New Berlin’ schtick around Greater Manchester, the real meat-and-potatoes of new and emerging scenes is happening in places that don’t get any press – precisely because they’re happening in small rooms.

Looking at Manchester, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that club life is all about the omnipresent marketing campaigns from the Warehouse Project, and the cool kids are all dancing at the White Hotel. However, the big energy is actually coming from the kids who have turned a Joseph Holt’s old man boozer into a all-welcoming, good vibes raves spot.

By day, its The Derby Brewery Arms – a pub having a wake for the death of dear old Arthur – by the weekend, it becomes TheDBA, one of the most progressive and fun spots in the city. And beyond that, students are repurposing spaces and turning them into sweaty party dens, having the time of it each weekend while older people looking the other way, simply stare at WHP lineups and say that the scene is dead, not knowing what the next generation are up to.

This is the same all over the country, and it’s easy to only keep tabs on what’s going on in the major cities like Manchester, Liverpool, London, Birmingham, Belfast, Glasgow, Leeds and the rest. Of course, with their student populations, there’s loads going on there if you know where to look and who to ask – but the real heartbeat of the scene is found even further afield, with inventive, inclusive nights being put on for a handful of people in the satellite towns of the major conurbations.

As rent and pint prices skyrocket in big cities, the kids are not sufficiently draw to the supposed bright lights when they can get weird in the moors and function rooms of deserted working men’s clubs and the like, North and South.

And there’s little point scouring the internet for information like this – AI isn’t able to penetrate scruffy little rooms where people actually go out – the kids it seems, are opting for some privacy and not sharing every aspect of their lives online, so aren’t sharing what they’ve documented for all and sundry to see – it’s a nightmare for the posers, you have to assume.

People will ask where the next superstar is coming from, like superstars don’t always emerge every decade without fail – no generation is special in terms of making stars – but the next legend is currently making their first steps in the same places that the old ones did – small rooms.

Look at the rise of Turnstile and you see quite clearly the embodiment of Small Room Mentality, as they carry the torch from sweaty hardcore gig, to being arena-sized. Nirvana had it. The Wu Tang have it. The Chemical Brothers have it. Kendrick has it. Jack White has it. The Arctic Monkeys have it. Young Thug has it. Missy Elliott has it. Tyler The Creator has it. Way back when, when these genre defining artists started off, no pop-cultural forecaster would have ever seen what was possible when they played those small rooms.

And that’s the whole point of this – whether you’re in those small rooms or not, it’s the recognising of them that is so important. It’s the support of the existence of small rooms. It’s the chucking a couple of quid having a pint in a pub that puts bands on that helps. The ecosystem of music is a fragile one, but one that just won’t die, regardless of how many landlords build condensation-filled prefab flats next to the very culture they used in the brochures to sell the vibrant neighbourhood, they end up complaining about.

It’s not just music either. It’s theatre, it’s sports, it’s politics, it’s cooking, it’s writing, it’s co-operatives – everything starts in small rooms.

If you don’t have the money to support small rooms, you have the ability to at least celebrate them. Share the places you’d like to be on those cursed apps. Yell about the band who can’t afford to play where you live in the hope they will. What emerges when we support small things and small rooms gives back to the culture. If the apps are designed to make us lonely, then it is our duty to build our own communities – that’s exactly what’s happening in the small rooms that gave us the likes of Outkast and the rest.

Don’t fall for the idea that everything is worse than it used to be, unless you’re happy to only use your weight to submit to the sponsored posts and marketing budgets.

Long live the small room.