Melbourne's Pony Bar Announces Lineup For Final Live Music Marathon

As previously reported, Melbourne’s beloved live music venue-come-late night institution Pony Bar will be closing its doors this December, but not before it saddles up for one final dash to the finish with a closing 24-hour live music marathon.

After 12 years of good old fashioned rock, roll, and 2am debauchery (with many, many fuzzy-headed day afters), Pony will be put to pasture on December 2nd and has planned a final show to “send the old fella off to stud in true Pony low-brow style!” as the venue itself puts it.

The venue previously teased that their last show, suitably dubbed The Last Ride At Pony, would be “an absolute monster of a show… so start working on your stamina and building up your riding callouses…trust us, you’re gonna need them.”

Tickets for The Last Ride At Pony are on sale today, along with the full lineup that will help bring the venue to the finish line in a characteristic blaze of glory. Performing from 2pm on Saturday December 1st, and running until Sunday the next day, will be DEAF WISH, THE ONYAS, THE THOD (in a special reunion show), WOLFPACK, YIS, EUPHORIACS, THE WHITE GOODS, TEENAGE MOTHERS, FATHOMS and “about 15 other amazing bands to be announced soon,” according the venue.

Tickets are of course limited, so to join in the “24 hours of Pony wrongness, for the very last time,” you’d better get in quick and start planning your stamina-building workout, your perfect hangover cure and/or your excuses for work on Monday morning.

Additionally, over at the venue’s Facebook page, they’ve put the call out to filmmakers and documentarians to “help us with putting together some footage to celebrate and document Pony’s journey,” as well as capturing the final live music marathon. Adding that they are “also seeking any footage people may have from gigs at Pony over the last 12 years.”

Jon Perring, one of Pony’s three owners, has already said of the venue’s closure, “[it was] essentially a business decision based on not being able to agree on a rental that would work for us to operate long term into the future.”

Perring, who also owns famous Melbourne live music venues such as The Tote, Bar Open and Yah Yah’s, managed to negotiate a new lease for Pony that should prove the continued existence of Melbourne’s infamous ‘Bermuda Triangle’ (named after the pronged set-up between late-night hotspots Pony, Cherry Bar in AC/DC Lane and Chinatown’s Ding Dong Lounge).

Camillo Ippoliti, owner of Revolver in Prahran and the CBD’s Cookie and Toff In Town, took up Pony’s lease, stating: “It is likely that after renovations live music will continue.” Ippoliti also possesses the lease to Pony’s neighbour, Bridie O’Reilly’s, noting that the two venues will continue to operate as separate, but complementary entities.

Still, the transformation of the venue will mean that its unlikely that live music lovers will get the same grungy, notorious venue it was before. Pony’s band booker Andy Moore put it best when he remarked: “Shit always got loose at Pony and I don’t think we’ll really see that happening again in Melbourne.”