The Horrors’ JD Roots gig, Southend Chinnerys

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The Horrors played a hometown show at small venue Southend Chinnerys last night (May 9th).

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The band told NME that the 400 capacity venue holds a lot of happy memories for them, including sneaking inside to see Blur when they were teenagers. Bassist Rhys Webb said: “We went to see Blur and Sleeper at Chinnerys, and Primal Scream, too – we had to sneak in because we were underage, and got right up to the stage for a couple of songs before getting chucked out…”

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Rhys Webb spoke out about the importance of small venues, saying: “The larger the room the less atmosphere you can get, they turn into leisure centres. It’s especially important for new bands, because they still need to do that, even with smaller crowds.”

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He added: “You can’t get the same intimacy when you make the room a little bit bigger and the ceiling a bit higher. Small venues are where the exciting stuff happens, you’ve got to have those places for bands to start.”

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He named his favourite small venue as The Buffalo Bar in North London. “One of the venues I really like is the Buffalo Bar in London where we do our Cave club there every month. It’s fantastic, we’ve had Toy, Ipso Facto play some of their first shows there and me and Joe [Horrors drummer] have played there with various people. You can’t beat having the audience right there in front of you.”

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The small venue was a change for the band, who have just come back from supporting Florence & The Machine on tour.

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The Horrors are set to continue their ‘Skying’ tour throughout May, finishing at London’s Brixton Academy on the 25th.

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Also part of the JD Roots search for Britain’s Best Small Venue, The Cribs play Wakefield’s Theater Royal on May 16th.

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