The Cellar: Highlights of 18 noisy - and sweaty - years at iconic Oxford music venue

After a difficult few months which saw staff, supporters, musicians and this newspaper unite to fight plans by the building’s owners to close it down, it looks like The Cellar is here to stay.

Tim Hopkins, manager of the Frewin Court venue, is in the process of negotiating a new lease, a major refurbishment is planned, and, having turned 18, the club is now old enough to have a drink.

We celebrate with some snapshots of the best moments so far, and ask some of the people who have made this iconic subterranean venue what it is, by asking them for their best moments...

THOMAS DARTNALL – aka ‘House of Lords’ of Oxford band Young Knives

It’s mostly a bit of a blur but I remember an early gig of ours where we got everyone to do primal screaming and sing random space harmonies in the dark. We also handed a toy guitar to an audience member who then gave the greatest mime guitar performance I have ever seen, completed with Jimi Hendrix style guitar destruction. I don’t know if this was a good or a bad gig, but The Cellar has always been a good space for just trying stuff out in a creative supportive environment.

JIMMY HETHERINGTON – Sound Engineer

One of my old bands ‘Why’ was the first live band at The Cellar. I had to route a Yamaha four-track recorder through the DJ mixer so we could have vocal mics. It was sound engineering before I was a sound engineer. That was a messy night.

RONAN MUNRO – Editor Nightshift

My favourite moment ever down there was seeing Young Knives for the first time. They were still called Ponyclub back then and had only recently moved to town.

Me and my cousin Steve, my regular gigging partner, used to have a standing joke any time we saw a particularly bad or boring band we would bet each other a pint if they suddenly played a Throbbing Gristle cover.

Obviously it never happened, but while watching Ponyclub, who were brilliant and very slightly weird, they stopped half way through Easy Peesy and launched into Throbbing Gristle’s Subhuman. It was just astonishing, totally knocked our socks off.

They’re still one of my favourite Oxford bands ever and I’ve seen them dozens of times since but that first show will always stick with me.

My other one would be from when it was still The Dolly and Gary Numan’s old backing band played down there under the name Rock Museum and we ended up terrifying them with our exuberance. Brian Briggs’ rambling monologue at an early Stornoway show about what eats wasps was pretty funny and endeared me to the band enormously from the off.

DAVE CHARRIS – Promoter, Freerange club night

The best moment was DJ EZ headlining Freerange 2011. It was a personal favourite for me, being a huge EZ fan since the emergence of the UK Garage scene in the late 90s.

To have him not only headlining for my own event, but to also have the pleasure of seeing him perform in such an intimate venue was one of the highlights of my entire time promoting music events. EZ has reached new heights in the last few years and can only be seen headlining festival stages and huge capacity venues, so this was super special to witness.

Another highlight was raising money for Project APE 2009, helping a charity project run by a team of nice students to fund raise, design and build an adventure playground for an orphanage in Tanzania.

With our entire team working free of charge and our DJs volunteering to perform for no fee, we donated all profits to the charity – a grand total of £1,160 and the final bit they needed to reach their target.

The playground was built in October 2009 and the best thing about all of this was seeing the photos of the orphans playing on the equipment with big smiles on their faces.

COUNT SKYLARKIN’ – aka Aidan Larkin – of Skylarkin’ Soundsystem

The relaunched Cellar actually first opened its doors the same weekend I visited Oxford for the first time, so it feels like we’ve grown up together in a way. Although I didn’t tend to make it down those hallowed steps too much for those first few years – Cowley Road was always my spot. But one Sunday night in late 2004 my friend Nav and I went looking for a party and The Cellar certainly provided one in the shape of Addis Ababa Sound at Sunday Roast.

Addis were (still are) one of Oxford’s real foundation reggae soundsystems. Danny Whitaker, Johnny Roots, Tyrone Glasgow and Gary Constant have got tunes to burn.

Then there were those two nights with Dawn Penn in February 2011.

One of the less financially-sound decisions I ever made as a promoter was to book the multi-platinum, multi-award-winning Jamaican singer and pair her with Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s backing band in a venue so small it was always going to be impossible to break-even, then add a second (further loss-making) night due to overwhelming public demand! I have no regrets though, the place was bouncing and a few hundred people squeezed in and got the show of their lives. Dawn loved it, too.

When The Zodiac called its last ever lock-in in 2007, The Cellar was the obvious place to move my monthly Oxford operation, and it’s been home ever since. Nights with the likes of Mungo’s Hi-Fi and Massive Attack’s Daddy G are the stuff of more recent legend. But any time we ever had DJ Derek in the building the place was roadblock.

His show in January 2013 sticks in my mind as it was the night before my wedding, and Derek was already in full flow when I arrived – playing I’m Getting Married In The Morning by Yellowman, which he quickly followed with I’m Getting Divorced... by the same artist as soon as he saw me enter the booth.

That was Derek: a big tune, a joke or a put-down for every occasion. The Cellar misses him.

DEEP COVER’s Simon Devenport

In many senses, for us at Deep Cover, club manager Tim Hopkins is an odd godfather figure. When he gave us the green light to start running events at The Cellar in 2013, our baby was born. We even went back and forth on names for the sprat.

That same child is now over four years old - terrible twos and tiresome threes behind us - and it’s now almost starting to look a bit grown up.

In March, The Cellar delivered an unforgettable night of local music when YK & Eaz and their huge, raucous Oxford fanbase packed out the venue in true 8 Mile style.

It was almost impossible to move for excitable young hip-hop fans showing love for their true local heroes, and two of the most exciting new voices to emerge from the Oxford scene in years.

JAMES CUNNING – promoter Divine Schism

A highlight was hearing Jeffrey Lewis bring his astute world musings to town on a packed out Sunday night in June, 2014. We were treated to a great, meandering set-list from his many lo-fi and scuzzy albums with the highlight being a then-new song Support Tours with the New York City three-piece singing the praises of being a support band and dedicating it to local support, The Cooling Pearls.

The song has since been released on their most recent album Manhattan and continues to be dedicated to local support slots.

A self-depreciating and high calibre act, they appreciate the small details that go into shows at this level and this highlights that, with the Cellar being a big part of the journey for bands.

Then there was Maiians! We’d booked most of their shows in Oxford since they started, and when they announced they were going their separate ways we knew we had to do one last knees-up.

They’d just released their debut album, and they played it in their entirety to a sold-out crowd in a venue they’ve since described as their ‘home turf’.

Indeed, only seven months previously they’d headlined one of the Independent Venue Week gigs at the Cellar. It ended up being quite emotional in the end, but now the dust has settled we can reveal we’re bringing them back for one more, on December 22 for our Christmas Party.

JACK RICHENS , DJ and blogger

The Cellar’s air conditioning was never capable of cooling the club but it became legendary on the DJ circuit. When the right tunes were played rowdy crowds would bang on the metal air shafts to signal their appreciation. Every DJ who played there wanted to hear that sound, it meant you were doing your job right.

One night, someone played a particular great remix and the whole thing just fell to pieces.

Who knew you could get so sentimental about a broken air con unit?