History is currently being re-written....

Three years & three bars in the life of The Social:

What were we thinking? Or The Plan Back then, in 1999, our plan was pretty simple. We were stuck. We had nowhere to drink, nowhere to call home from home. We had spent the last few years running club nights, spending every Saturday night on the dancefloors and in the corridors of Turnmills in London’s then quiet Clerkenwell area. Then spending every weekday in the recovery position, moving from shit house pub to crappy lifeless bar. Nowhere seemed to play any decent music, every pub was either a pit or had been buffed up with all the same details that every gastro pub in London had, down to the Moby CD soundtrack. After one drunken evening back at the Heavenly office too many, we decided the only way we would ever stop complaining about how crap everything was in town was if we built our own place. Six months, a lot of head scratching and a whole bunch of drinking later and the first Social was up and running and ready for action. The initial plan was to roll out Socials all round the country, replicating what we were doing in London on a local level all round Britain. After opening the first bar, we set our sights to Nottingham where the second Social opening in December 1999.Since then, partly due to the workload that has come with the continued rise of Heavenly recordings and partly due to a high level of perfectionism by all involved (ok, we are lazy), there has only been one more Social opened, also in London (Islington).

Also, as ideas have developed, we have realised that the concept of a Social bar has to change to suit its environment, hence all three bars look and feel completely different whilst still retaining some of the same features and all of the same spirit.A couple of other Social based ideas are currently being bashed about in development, due for opening in 2003.

5 Little Portland Street, London, W1
Heavenly opened the first Social bar opened in June 1999. After running the Heavenly label for nearly a decade and the Heavenly Social club nights for over four years, the decision was made to build a bar that reflected where we all were at that time – somewhere where you could sit back, relax and get pissed up but could also go crackers if the mood took you. The design of the building reflects that – the upstairs has a feel somewhere between a New York speakeasy and a Swedish sauna while the downstairs appears at first to have taken it’s main influences from NCP car parks the length and breadth of the UK. The upstairs would try to keep a grip on sanity; the downstairs would be a wipe clean blank canvas for whatever was thrown at it.

Three years after opening, the bar continues to grow in stature, moving from strength to strength week by week. Since opening its doors, it has played host to live acoustic music and full on party rockin’ DJ sets by the likes of:

The Chemical Brothers, The Avalanches, Super Furry Animals, Doves, Beth Orton, Richard Fearless, Badly Drawn Boy, Starsailor, Don Letts, Ed Harcourt, Saint Etienne, Andrew Weatherall, The Droyds, Shack, Stuart Paterson/Deviant, The Admiralty Club, Primal Scream, Horace Andy, Soul Jazz Sound System.

There are literally hundreds more team players from the last few years, no offence to anyone not mentioned here. The Social won the Time Out magazine award for Best DJ Bar of 2002.

Semi-Interesting Social Fact
The Social W1 was designed by the shit hot architects practice Adjaye and Russell – David Adjaye can regularly be seen on the telly talking about modern architecture and the like. Early interest in the bar was divided pretty evenly (and very weirdly) between heavy drinking music fans and chin stroking architecture journalists who seemed disgusted at the fact that people were drinking heavily in such a beautiful modernist space. Sadly for us, they all buggered off. Now it’s just full of pissheads.

Arlington Square, London, N1
An altogether more relaxed option than its central London sister bar, the Arlington Square Social is a classic British pub complete with oak panelling, lovingly prepared food and a loyal crowd of locals who prop up the bars and take to the decks on an occasional basis. Opening in June 2001, The Social N1’s emphasis was on food rather than dancing. Previously, the height of culinary excellence had been a mean cheese and ham toastie in the W1 bar. With a chef poached from the Quality Chop House, we aimed to do good, affordable British food. The Social N1 was nominated for Gastro Pub Of The Year at the Time Out Awards, 2002.

The Social N1 has a handful of ‘nights’ over the week, including the now legendary Bugged Out: Chilled Out sessions and BBC London’s Johnny Chandler’s (near legendary) Up Yours pub quiz nights. Although much more laid back than it’s W1 sister bar, days and nights have been known to blur together to a soundtrack of everything from lonely soul ballads to bleached out acid house music.

Semi-Interesting Social Fact
The opening night at the Arlington Square Social ended with The Strokes getting into a scrap with a then Heavenly affiliated DJ. It was very funny at the time but ended up with us losing an hour off our opening times. Oh well. Actually, what am I on about, it’s still funny.

23 Pelham Street, Nottingham
The second Social bar opened in December 1999 and immediately begun to function as a properly working gig venue. The Social has played host to, amongst many others, some of the first UK gigs by: The Vines, Starsailor, The Strokes, The White Stripes, Doves, Nada Surf, Lemon Jelly

The second Social to open was born out of the fact that our first ever out
of town engagements all happened in Nottingham clubs, from Deluxe to the
Essence to the Bomb, we always seemed to end up on insanity party nights up
North. It was the logical conclusion to open the bar up there.

In 2002, we played host to many of the events at the Radio One Live In Nottingham Events, including broadcasts for The Breezeblock, The Blue Room and Giles Peterson’s show.

Semi-Interesting Social Fact
The resident DJ at the Nottingham Social is the Reverend Car Bootleg, a man of the cloth who plays psychedelic music from every era and always comes out done up as a Vicar. He is ace.