Melbourne music lovers have been looking for a late night music fix ever since the closure of Pony Bar recently, the beloved late-night/early morning institution put to pasture after 12 years of debauchery with ‘The Last Ride’, a scintillating 24-hour marathon of gigs that took place at the start of the month to celebrate the venues tradition of scintillating 2am shows (and many, many bleary-eyed morning afters).
Punters looking to fulfil that late-night vibe may find solace in the news that the recently revived Public Bar is extending its hours until 7am in the morning.
Though not quite replacing Pony with providing gigs for the extremely nocturnal with 2am gigs, (“we’re not trying to be pony 2” as they put it) The Public bar are still providing a late-night alternative with bands going through to midnight or later, with DJs and drinks taking over for the early AM hours of the site, secreted away in North Melbourne’s Victoria Street.
The venue’s Facebook page recently confirmed that they’ve extended its opening hours on Friday and Saturday night to 7am “from now on.”
Kicking off last weekend with a bill featuring Sydney’s Firearms, WA band Leeches, and Melbourne act Street Fangs, with a statement from The Public Bar adding that:
As of Friday 14th December every Friday night and every Saturday night we’ll be open until 7am for all you lovely fuc… folks that wanna keep going until daylight. Be nice and don’t be idiots and we’ll all have a whale of a time. Got some great DJs coming up so we wanna see everyone having a good time!”
It’s the latest in a string of great fortune for the Melbourne venue, which originally closed its doors at the tail-end of last year after 18 years of supporting the music scene, but was resurrected this past October by the owners of fellow live music hot spot, Fitzroy’s Old Bar.
Co-owner Liam Matthews stated at the time that, “we hope to have live music every day that we trade – same at The Old Bar.” The new 7am curfew brings them ever closer to that ideal, and the best part is that Matthews and the new proprietors hold a 15-year lease on the pub. “We’ll be open until 7am [every weekend]… Be nice and don’t be idiots and we’ll all have a whale of a time.”
The extended early morning hours for the Public Bar is the latest in a series of positive turns for Melbourne live music scene, including a swathe of new band rooms and venues springing up in recent months.
In the inner-north, Fitzroy’s The Rochester kick-started a new 150 capacity upstairs band room, including Level 2 opening just up the road from The Northcote Social Club, and Sydney Road’s eccentrically named The Rare And Reclusive, Oft Neglected, Lesser Spotted Mallard now hosting live music events.
Further out Steve Kingi, a Melbourne music heavyweight and previous band booker for The Price Of Wales, has set about bringing the Old Moorabbin Town Hall to its former glory as a live entertainment venue.
Then there was the successful pop-up venues from open air cinema Shadow Electric introducing a live “music salon” to their 2013 program – featuring winning double bills from Brous & Kira Puru and The Bruise, Harmony and Teeth & Tongue, and Collarbones with World Ends Press – while a derelict ‘bomb site’ in the CBD was converted into ‘Where?House’, the festival hub for Melbourne Music Week; which reported a record-breaking tripling of its attendance from last year’s event – once again showing that given the opportunity, Melbourne loves supporting live music.
