The Mighty Mighty was a venue that defined a new approach to live music in the late 2000s - one that made a venue more sustainable by taking the focus away from the band, charging a low cover and creating an environment where people could watch the band if they chose, or socialise in a different zone from the band. The band didn’t take the door, the bar paid them a guarantee.
“We were very much conscious of not wanting to be a venue - a place where the tide came in and out with the bands, but a place that was about a community that bands or entertainers would come and be a part of,” says Sam Chapman who started the Mighty Mighty seven and a half years ago after also starting The Matterhorn downstairs. He said that in his time, hospitality in Wellington had always run on cycles, and the Mighty Mighty had far outlived the life span they had initially expected it to have.
Bob Log III performing in the early days of The Mighty Mighty. Photo: Mighty Mighty
The fate of live music venues was a talking point around the country as I recorded this series. Two weeks before I was scheduled to record interviews for the Mighty Mighty episode, the venue announced it was closing in late May. The timing was rough - fellow central Wellington venue Puppies had already announced it was closing around the same time, San Francisco Bath House was already closed for renovations, and had been struggling to rework a business model after Wellington City Council told the venue it had only half the capacity had previously believed.
On the other side of the country, event promoter Matthew Crawley says, The Mighty Mighty opened up communication between the Wellington and Auckland scenes.
“What you started to see was an Auckland band going down, borrowing gear off their support act in Wellington, and having a goodwill arrangement that when that band came to Auckland to headline a show, they’d support them or at least lend them their gear.”
While event-dependant venues like Bodega (Wellington) and The Kings Arms (Auckland) seemed to just get by on the bigger shows they held, and could feel awkward when a band couldn’t pull numbers of a hundred plus, The Mighty Mighty’s model seemed to signal the future, and bars around the country, such as Cassette Number Nine and The Golden Dawn in Auckland, and Goodbye Blue Monday in Christchurch opened and offered live music, but didn’t make it the sole focus of their bar.
On Saturday 24th May, 2014, the Mighty Mighty will close for good. But I spoke to the Mighty Mighty’s bar manager of seven and a half years, Sally Thompson, she told me she was tired of interviews in the press where she was expected to be negative. “Change isn’t bad, and we don’t want it to be sad, we want to be going out on a crazy rocket ride of awesomeness”.
Listen to the full interview here:
This content was brought to you with funding support from New Zealand On Air.
Cover photo by Rachel Brandon