25 Years of Offbeat

2 25 5 y yeeaarrs s o of f

a an n o orraal l h hiissttoorry y

early days 1984-87

In the autumn of 1984, a group of friends, disillusioned by the conservative range of most student discos at Warwick yet inspired by the eclectic range of music they were hearing on the John Peel show and events such as The Smiths’ gig at Warwick Arts Centre (in June 1983, a matter of weeks after their first single came out), decided to get together and start their own society to fill the gap. The first disco takes place that term in a venue at the top of the Students’ Union, then known as The Elephant’s Nest…

ADAM KING (Offbeat member 1984‐85 and president 1985‐86): The founding fathers, and mother, were Jagdish Patel (or Dougie, as he was known), Mark Oxley and Mandy Groom. Myself and Simon Bernstein were also heavily involved, mainly in the heavy lifting department. Dougie and Mark were the main DJs. Mandy, I think, came up with the name, and her profoundly uncomfortable Citroën 2CV carried the records back and forth from Leamington.

The second reason was to be able to get our sticky paws on a minibus so we could organize trips to gigs. As far as I can remember we only got round to organizing two, both at Leicester Uni or Poly: R.E.M. and Billy Mackenzie. We also put on a gig ourselves at Warwick by Slab! whose singer, Steve Dray, was at Warwick when we were there or at least he was hanging around there after graduating.

ADAM KING: It was essentially founded as a place where Doug and Mark could play music that they liked, play it loud and play it in the company of their friends. Their tastes were magnificently eclectic and ranged from mainstream rock to the most obscure World music and everything in between. Stuff that no conventional Warwick disco, in the era of 'Thriller' and during the regrettable ascendancy of Kid Creole, would touch. There were occasions during their first event that they were loudly booed, but then they gave Simon and I our own slots, so we shut up.

MARK OXLEY (founding co‐president, 1984‐85): There were two main motivations for starting the society. First, at that time there wasn't much of a choice as far as being able to strut your stuff to some decent music at the university was concerned. If I remember there was the usual type of disco offering your bog standard fare of the time, and there was something along the lines of an alternative music society. The existence of this latter led to some heated opposition from the President of Entertainments or whatever his title was as he accused us of being more or less the same as the alternative society, or mutton dressed up as lamb or something like that. But quite frankly dancing along to the likes of Clock DVA, You've Got Foetus on Your Breath, 23 Skidoo and their ilk was a bit beyond Dougie and myself. We wanted to do a disco where the music was eclectic but always danceable.

Offbeat did around two or three nights per term. Momentum gradually built during the year and by its end we were getting a dedicated, if modest, following. Gates were respectable, but not spectacular. Mark and Dougie’s philosophy was that if a record was good, then people would dance to it. As quickly as they could fill a dance floor, they could empty it. And not care. They were almost heroic in their indifference to audience reaction. It was one of their many admirable qualities.

In response to the booking of largely crap bands on campus – this was year when Lanchester Poly [latterly known as Coventry University] ruled in that sphere – the boys booked, in the late autumn of 1984, a trip to see a small, but not yet very popular beat combo, R.E.M., at Leicester University. It may not seem much to relate now, but then it was a characteristically imaginative and enterprising thing of them to do. For some reason, which must have sense then, though it makes little sense now, every event ended with the playing of R.E.M.’s ‘Don't Go Back to Rockville’.

In 1985/86 the others had graduated. I was still a post‐graduate and the boys allowed me to continue using the

name, so myself, Debbie MacDonald, Simon Rosenberg, and a few other children of John Peel, continued the pattern of the previous year. We didn't have elected officials or titles like President etc, given our lefty bias, because if we had mine would have probably been 'bloke who tries to prevent the record boxes from falling off the bus seat on the way from/to Coventry'. The new collective turned Offbeat into a vehicle for music that we loved, predominantly indie music, with jingly jangly guitars to the fore. It was more mainstream, in many ways, than the previous year, but even so there was still only a minority following among the student population. Mostly we used what was then called the Elephant's Nest ‐ the room right and the top of the building, anyway ‐ as the venue. We got full houses for every event, including one with a band called Mighty Mighty, currently residing in the where are they now file.

fact there was always a healthy balance after every event. I left in 1986 and Simon, Debbie and co continued to run it as a flourishing concern. Clearly Offbeat continued to flourish and never faded out. Mark, Dougie and Simon will be pleased to hear that.

SIMON ROSENBERG (Co‐president 1986‐88): I became involved in 1985 while Adam and his future wife Debbie McDonald/King ran it and then I was President in 1986, and jointly with Gabriel Sterne in 1987. Actually you call us Presidents but we were more of a left wing cooperative built on love and mutual understanding and Gramsci's third edict, except Debbie always wanted to play obscure stuff while Gabe and I understood the value of the crowd on the dancefloor. We ended up falling out over Debbie playing Test Department And The South Wales Miners Choir at 11:50 just after we finally got the 6 people to dance to Velocity Girl (which I would say is my ultimate Offbeat song along with Bigmouth Strikes Again) – and the ethics of being given 50 quid by the Student Union to spend on records. Where are those Wedding Present 12 inches now?

SIMON ROSENBERG (Co‐president, 1985‐88): Our Offbeat was right in the middle of the 80s, still drunk on that punk and more importantly post‐punk DIY ethic. It was all about being different and standing out from the mainstream. To this day, I still have never heard a Led Zeppelin record, preferring some 2 minute, 1 chord energy rush. I'm thinking Dead Kennedys for some reason.

We were indie. But indie really meant independent. It wasn't a genre, it was a way of life. It was off beat! So we had an unspoken duty to ‐ in the words of our 1988 favourite, That Petrol Emotion's ‘Big Decision’ ‐ Educate, Agitate, Organise!

We were forever educating campus beyond Michael Jackson and Wham! by playing obscure jewels like Mighty Mighty who we liked so much we booked them as our first band. Whether the 5 people who were in attendance at Ele's Nest on a cold November evening in 1985 appreciated this, I cannot say.

ADAM KING: There was lots of good music to play and the dance floors were always full. I know that it wasn’t me that got the Wedding Present twelve inches. I also know that every Offbeat we did was great fun. I once got to play the full version of The Wild Swans’ 'Revolutionary Spirit' and got to say into the microphone "fades in", a la Peely, at the beginning of the record. We never lost money, in

As far as the agitation bit went, we were all (and still are) as far as I know into all the left‐wing causes of the day ‐ Anti‐Apartheid, Amnesty, Trade Union fights ‐ and so we came up with this brilliant idea of holding benefit gigs and then asking bands to play for free. This allowed us to approach some of the major names of the day, none of whom, I'm afraid to say ever made it big – which to me symbolizes the futility or importance of what we were doing. But you can't imagine what a big deal it was for us to get a reply from the Woodentops’ manager to our request for a benefit gig.

We were organised, no doubt. Going around campus delivering information to every Offbeat member about our next Offbeat night. Such dedication, such a lot of time on our hands. No Facebook groups. No internet.

We also came up with brilliant ideas for marketing to promote our nights and our gigs – though we never called it that but I know what it is now I'm a proper grown‐up. My genius idea was to put posters up in places you weren't allowed to but places that I knew everyone we cared about would see them over the 2 hours or so the poster would be up. I loved the thrill of standing in the library lift and then suddenly sticking my poster on the wall while everyone stared at me. And it worked, our membership increased and our nights started to sell out.

And then of course there was the music. In my time 1985‐88, it was mainly jingly jangly guitar – ‘Velocity Girl’ (Primal Scream), the Mighty Lemon Drops, ‘Like an Angel’, The Weather Prophets ‐ early Creation, you know. The Smiths obviously. New Order. And in those early years, stuff from our adolescence like Teardrop Explodes, Buzzcocks and Echo Beach by Martha and the Muffins.

Then in 1987, just as we had gone from 10‐people nights to selling out every evening, the more left‐leaning amongst us wanted to play more hip‐hop and house and for a while I knew all the words to Eric B and Rakim's ‘Paid in Full’ just as I knew Teenage Kicks. However, for reasons I still don't get, no one would dance to the hip‐hop/house stuff and we would fill the floor with ‘Big Mouth Strikes Again’ and empty it with Pump up the Volume.

the dance wars

1988-90

Although eclecticism had always been one of the society’s defining features, not everyone the indie‐dance divide an easy one to straddle – as evidenced by some rather trenchant comments from both sides of the in Norman Tebbit, a fanzine (with free flexidisc, featuring tracks from Atom Spies and The Davidsons) published by the exec in early 1988.

This I think is the saddest thing because the best thing about music is the mixture of styles and genres (cue Happy Mondays/Stone Roses era) and I find it so boring and dull these days to listen to bands that sound like we played them at Offbeat in 1986. Sorry Franz Ferdinand, the Cribs, the Kings of Leon and 1000 others.

Everyone says that music was best when they were young. I was just fortunate to be young in a great and truly creative era.

Offbeat’s discos at the time often featured live bands, both national (such as Felt) and homegrown –notably The Candy Theives, featuring occasional Offbeat DJ Pete Fijalkowski. Shortly afterwards, as Adorable they would find themselves signed to Creation and gracing the indie charts with the likes of Sunshine Smile –and returning to play a packed‐out Cooler once they’d made it big.

Meanwhile The Elephant’s Nest becomes Zippy’s in tribute to John ’Zippy’ Gaze, a former TSG crew member who tragically died in a car accident around this time.

GABRIEL STERNE (president 1987‐1988): The fanzine was a fantastic piece of cutting edge social commentary coupled with the cream of indie extravaganza. It was called Norman Tebbit for some ironical reason and following a mention on John Peel, we even sold about 13 copies nationally.

NICK EDSER (exec member 1987‐1990): When I arrived in '87 Offbeat was quite a small society because its aim of playing both indie and dance music was, at the time, seen as quite radical. I remember DJing in my first term and the only bands you could get people to dance to were the 'big’ 80s indie bands ‐ The Smiths, New Order, The Cure etc. Fortunately a year or so later the Madchester scene happened and suddenly people were a lot more open minded about what they would dance to. Offbeat reaped the benefit and suddenly became the biggest Arts Fed club on campus.

Above: Obscure – us? A selection of top 7s from a poster for an Offbeat disco in October 1987

A collection of pages from the 1988 Offbeat fanzine Norman Tebbit. Thanks to Dick Smith.

The music was still 90‐95% indie (or was that just me?), but I remember the likes of De La Soul and Public Enemy being incredibly popular as well. There did appear to be a big divide though in the 80s in that if you liked guitars it was practically illegal to like anything with a dance beat. The rise of the Stone Roses, Mondays and Primal Scream's 'Loaded' helped to overcome this in the late 80s. One thing though, we were never goth ‐ I remember taking great delight in turning down requests to play Fields of the Nephilim tracks.

As I remember, we used to allocate discos to groups of 2 or 3 people and it was up to them to design the posters and DJ on the night. There was also the odd Offbeat‐organised trip to Birmingham to see gigs. I have fond memories of Offbeat as it was good fun and I made some good friends through it as well. It's nice to know it's still going.

CLAIRE HUNGATE (President 1988‐90): It must have been in my first term at Warwick that I stumbled upon Offbeat. My friend Sonia was visiting from Manchester Poly and I was keen to show hermy campus University was cool too (it wasn’t really though was it?!).

I couldn’t believe there was a place that played the music I loved (well some of it – there were also playing some pretty off the wall stuff I wasn’t familiar with as I remember): The Smiths, James, The Wedding Pr esent, New Order, The Housemartins, The Fall. But they also played Trouble Funk and Public Enemy and that really won me over. I’m not sure I’d been anywhere before where that variety of music was played. I guess we got chatting with Simon and Gabriel and as they were in their final year and wanting to concentrate more on their finals they wanted some new recruits to take the helm. They didn’t realise that Sonia wasn’t a student at Warwick but in the heat of the

musical moment it didn’t seem to matter.

I can’t exactly remember the course of events that led to myself, Pete Fallen, Matt Crane, Peter Fijalkowski et al running our first club night (didn’t we call them discos then?) I’m not sure how we ever mixed any records as I’m sure we were always fairly drunk. We did dance to our own records a lot though. We’d each take a slot –perhaps we DJed in pairs I’m not really sure. But it was always very good hearted and non competitive. We all danced to the other’s records, though we may have made an exception for Pete’s Psychedelic Furs B‐sides.

The nights were hugely well attended – they sold out as I remember, up in Zippy’s. We made a profit and used the money to buy records – I confess to occasionally finding the odd 7” with Offbeat scrawled across it in felt tip in my record case even now. We also made the Norman Tebbit fanzine –I’m pretty sure Simon and Gabriel were pretty involved in that so it must have been early on. There is a mortifyingly badly written article about hip hop in there written by me – I can’t read it now – it’s truly terrible. Just as well I never made it as a journalist. I visited Manchester regularly and took copies to Piccadilly Records there – they sold out of the first batch I took them –amazing really!

Nick Edser was also an Offbeat regular and would DJ too. He lived at Westwood where I also lived and we’d check each other’s record collections out in true sad style –he was from Crewe and had some great stuff! He also wore a blue indie anorak around campus, as did Pete Fallen. Johnny Sharp/Cigarettes was an Offbeat regular and organiser, as was Leigh Ashton and Kate and Debbie (whose surnames I forget – forgive

me!). There were others but try as I might I can’t recall names.

We organised some gigs too – I remember one with a band called The Company of Cowards (had a great single called 18 Again) who I met when they supported James once, perhaps The Davidsons played too. I believe it was outside – a mini festival if you will. We also did a couple of fundraising nights for Third World First [the society later known as People & Planet] as an Offbeat night was a guaranteed sell out.

Late ‘80s student band Hayfoot Strawfoot practice in Zippy’s, featuring Johnny Cigarettes on guitar/vocals. (Note the original position of the DJ booth)

I believe I may have sported some gruesome Joe Bloggs flares bought from Affleck’s Palace in Manchester. We also wore beads for a while –that was a Stone Roses thing! When Sally Cinnamon came out and the first Stone Roses album came out, that really dominated our Offbeat sets. We also loved My Bloody Valentine, James, The Smiths, Mighty Mighty, The Soup Dragons, The Bodines, Orange Juice, Inspiral Carpets, Age of Chance (Kiss), Ciccone Youth (Into the Groove). We also played a lot of dance music: Trouble Funk, Public Enemy, M.A.R.R.S., ‘Jack Your Body’, Coldcut, Bomb the Bass, Cookie Crew, Salt’n;Pepa, James Brown, some rare groove maybe or northern soul –nothing very cutting edge but we tried to keep the mix. The Bhundu Boys was the extent of our ‘world music’ I believe. A bit of reggae –Barrington Levy and ‘Young Gifted and Black’. Last track of the night was usually ‘Pigbag’.

I have hazy memories now, but I think as indie rock became more mainstream, the dance stuff became less popular and me, Matt and Pete were accused of playing too much dance stuff – or perhaps we wanted to play more. Either way, we were unelected and Nick, Johnny and perhaps Leigh were keen to have elections and let the membership dictate the music a bit more. Fair

enough really (and I may have played The Reynolds Girls once which probably didn’t help my case) but we decided to stand down rather than accept the indignity of a democratic election and a sure defeat! Offbeat continued strongly under Nick and Johnny as I remember. I’m sure we got over our music differences eventually but there were some tense moments in Harvey’s bar around that time and some heated meetings.

Anyway, good times, fondly remembered (if a little vaguely).

PETE FALLEN (exec member 1988‐90): I was one of Claire's record box carriers and general slave in those heady 18 months from 1988 until we all suddenly realised that you don't get degree marks because of the ever so hip record collections you had... Ho hum.

It was a heady time for Offbeat generally, with a strong set of bands on campus, which included the nascent Adorable ‐ Pete Fij of course clumsily DJing and holding down front man duties in the best band to start with an 'A' to ever make its way out of Coventry and move to London a soon as humanly possible.

The music got turned down for glass collection at last orders (1120), and we were all back home in bed (off campus, naturally) by 0100 at the very latest. When I first started going, the whole thing was in tribute to the type of music Peel played at the time ‐ so that meant everything that got people moving, basically.

JOHNNY SHARP (member 1988‐91, president 1990‐91): I don’t remember the conflict over musical policy being a ‘war’ as such… more of a bloodless coup. No one explicitly

fell out as I remember it – they just bitched behind each other’s backs, as is the civilised way. No‐one’s flares got cut up, or Paris Angels 12”s scratched.

I only dimly recall hearing about Claire, Matt and Pete ‘resigning’, but maybe that’s how it happened. Then again, I don’t remember anyone ever being officially elected to any position in the ‘organisation’. Anarchy in the UK or what?

Either way, it was a classic case of progressives versus pragmatists, as Lenin himself would surely have seen it had he been born in a different country 100 years later and always had a dance element to his music.

In hindsight, maybe Claire and friends were probably closer to the original Offbeat ethos, in the sense that, in classic indie band style, they played what they played for themselves, and if anyone else liked it, that was a bonus. I should also offer enduring respect to Claire for bravely sporting a spectacular pair of flares that could have housed a small family of marsupials.

Maybe me, Leigh, Nick, Matt and co got slightly swept up in the bonus part of the equation, quite liked being popular, and were keen to give people what they wanted.

But it’s a brave, and probably arrogant, individual, who can see a floor full of people dancing to The Soup Dragons and decide they need to be educated in the more challenging works of Throbbing Gristle and A:Grumh.

I’m exaggerating, of course –none of us would ever have played the Soup Dragons post ‘Hang Ten’.

the cigarettes years 1990-92

The Offbeat reins are seized by the triumvirate of Jonny Sharp (nee Cigarettes, soon to become a writer for the NME, and subsequently Q, Mojo and The Guardian), Leigh Ashton and Matt Common. The society becomes more recognisable as the Offbeat of today – solidly ‘indie’ and with a more irreverent edge, as evidenced by the exec’s wonderfully scrappy 1991 fanzine ‘More Seriouser Issues’, which took its title from a Betty Boo lyric…

ALEX BAKER (member 1989‐92): I remember going to a freshers’ meeting in '89 and a few serious chaps bemoaning the failure of the Smiths to be a floor filler any longer. Lots of Madchester records at the time, quite a good era the late ‘80s for indie stuff ‐ lots of My Bloody Valentine, House of Love, Spacemen 3, Mudhoney, Sonic Youth etc. Quite a lot of rap as well ‐ mostly Public Enemy. Some shockers got regular play as well ‐ the clincher must surely be LSD by Northside, ‘Unbelievable’ by EMF and anything by the Soup Dragons.

I remember a few bands. John Sharp (Johnny Cigarettes), James (Jimmy 7 Up) Shumann and a chap called Peter Pop had a band called Hayfoot Strawfoot. They used to do a great cover of Gang of Four's I Found That Essence Rare. I'm sure I remember the first Adorable gig in the upstairs bar there ‐ they were called Candy Thieves at the time. Other gigs I recall are Family Cat, Kitchens of Distinction and a fantastic Coventry band called the Fat Controllers. I still have a stack of demos and live stuff somewhere. They were all set for doing rather well and then sadly split up. They were starting to get big crowds and some great reviews as well. Lead singer was called Cath, would have done Russian History '89 as I remember being in

Pages from the 1991 Offbeat fanzine More Seriouser Issues, which impressively managed to include interviews with Cud, Carter USM, Lush and Bob Mortimer.

seminars with her.

I got more involved in '92. Not many great stories apart from clearing the floor with Husker Du's Bed of Nails. I have a funny memory that's stuck for some reason. A band called Beautiful Happiness had a minor indie hit with Something Sonic ‐ a kind of Spacemen 3 type thing. I recall him dancing to his own record at an Offbeat night doing his stage routine. All rather hilarious although you probably had to be there. There was another band called Family Go Town I think from Leamington Spa who I'm sure had some kind of minor indie hit as well.

JOHNNY SHARP: In truth, in my era we did regularly play lots of dance music – but it wasn’t a case of trying to introduce people to Young MC B‐sides. It tended to be the more populist end of hip‐hop and dance –De La Soul, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, ‘Voodoo Ray’, ‘20 Seconds to Comply’ ‐ that sort of thing. A cynic might call it ‘dance music for people who don’t like dance music’, and they’d have a point, but it was more of a case of sensing what people liked – which included crossover chart hits like ‘Groove Is In The Heart’ and even Kylie now and then

and responding to it. In the first hour when everyone was still summoning up the Dutch courage to dance, the obscurities might well come out, but after that it was mainly a case of giving people what they wanted to hear, as long as it wasn’t too far from what we wanted to play, and wasn’t New Model fucking Army.

Needless to say, we were all way too hopeless to overthrow the conservatism of the ruling Market Place Disco, as Leigh and Matt’s attempt to DJ there confirmed. That didn’t stop me, as president getting slightly drunk on my own importance, strutting round the place like David Brent with a Howard Jones haircut. Power

corrupts, and it’s easy to take the whole thing a little too seriously, especially in the same era when a coalition of charidee campaigners campaigning under the banner ‘No Politics’ were regarded as an affront to democracy by the ruling Labour elite, and were almost publicly defenestrated by angry apparatchiks when they won the Union elections. I also fondly remember the all‐night occupation of the Arts Centre over the none‐more‐proletarian issue of campus car parking. Great days.

I digress, though. My abiding memory of Offbeat is just what a

blast it all was. It was always going to be a bit self‐indulgent – a bunch of mates playing some records and writing a daft fanzine with other people’s grant money – and I’m sure that’s how it felt for everyone else who ran the show at various points.

And I for one owe it a lot. I ended up doing another edition of the fanzine me and Leigh originally knocked up (courtesy of the same shonky photocopier that kindly ejected your 5p’s – situated in the Social Sciences block, in case you want to see if it still works 19 years later), and partly thanks to that I managed to bluster and rant my way into something resembling a career in journalism. I dare say that wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t had Offbeat as an outlet for our self‐indulgence.

And even now, every time I hear ‘I Am The Resurrection’, I think of Offbeat.

MARK PALACIO (member 1988‐91): I helped Claire and then Johnny Cigs with the running of Offbeat as well as DJing a lot during that period… I still have several Offbeat posters designed by either myself or John as we were the people who normally spent hours covering campus with 'em and doing the photocopies in the Union offices. My fondest memories are filling the floor with ‘Freak Scene’, screwing

with the stewards by playing ‘I Am the Resurrection’ at 11.57 when they asked for "last song please" ‐  and being the first Offbeat DJ to play CDs.

LEIGH ASHTON (President 1991‐92): in 1989 and 1990 we regularly had queues down the stairs at 8pm. We had 300 members who were charged 5p to get in. Non‐members had to pay £1. I seem to remember being at full capacity by 9pm a few times. Zippy's was/is quite small though.

I have fond memories of Offbeat being allowed (once only!) to DJ the main Monday night market place disco with Matt Common. We cleared the floor with the Sex Pistols, but raised the roof with Kylie's Better The Devil You Know.

The old fanzine is very rough and ready. No student had their own PC back then, and Desktop publishing software was a new‐fangled thing. Seeing it now, my memory of it has been a little tarnished ‐ I remembered it being absolutely hilarious. The humour hasn't stood the test of time.

Seeing it reminded me of the grief we used to get when trying to get posters printed for our events. It wasn't a case of cut and paste off the internet, but literally cut and paste (Guardian, NME, Private Eye, John's leftover Militant Worker) The Union print shop was run by a bunch of miserable women who always refused to print our posters because we didn't have written proof of permission from the copyright owners. They also objected to some of our non‐PC content (though, of course it had been vetted by our in‐house militant feminist, dungaree‐wearing Offbeat legal team of Jeanette and Judith).

same time as you pressed Copy button. It took about an hour to print 50 copies, but hey, one up against the fascist oppressors man.

CHRIS STRIDE (Offbeat member/DJ 1989‐96, later founder of Sheffield Offbeat): When I started at Warwick it was usually a fairly busy but rarely sold out event. Often used to have to sit on the stage area later in the night. Obviously early Autumn term ones were a bigger seller than in May/June exam time. I can't remember much change in this pattern until 94‐95 when attendances definitely increased.

Little or no competition from any Union indie nights then though. However indie was (relatively over‐) represented in the bands that played the Uni (5 'balls' a year which were basically 5‐stage evening festivals) plus bands every Saturday night in the Marketplace at the Whipround events. Quality depended greatly on the identity of the (then elected) Ents sabbatical. A guy called Chris was the man in possession in 89/90 and was fantastic; remember a line up of De La Soul + Carter USM + Cud + Benny Profane all for a fiver or so being particularly enjoyable.

Yet no official union indie disco, apart from a brief period in 93‐95 when they started up a night in 'Rolfs', unoriginally titled The Indie Bop.

My abiding memory of Zippy’s discos is the rule that said the music had to stop at 11.20 for 10 or so minutes whilst glass collecting / drinking up took place, then the music would resume until 12 or sometimes 12.30 if we were lucky. As the drinking up period dragged on, the more facist of the stewards and the slower drinker‐uppers would begin to get abuse, slow handclapping would start, etc etc.

Instead, we somehow discovered that the unsupervised 5p per copy photocopier in the hallway would print for free if you pressed the Coin Eject button at exactly the

JACOB HOWE (president 1992‐94):

With two years of running Offbeat and many sold out evenings with Zippy's heaving with Warwick's finest dancing creatively to Teenage Fanclub, one of my recollections is slightly different. It was the last week of term on a warm summer's day and the Offbeat team were taking turns to play tunes to themselves, a steward and nobody else in a Zippy's bright with sunshine. It seemed that the year was going to end with a whimper (only occasionally interrupted by a bang when Caroline stuck on something industrial). Then, at dusk, a capacity crowd showed up en masse for one of the shortest and sharpest discos of all time... Sun goes down and the hordes arrive at half 10, last orders at 11.

Meanwhile, Offbeat finds itself in competition with a couple of new alternative music societies…

JOHNNY SHARP: I felt we had to give people value for money to an extent. If you buy a copy of Angling Times, you might not mind the odd article about pandas or neo‐g othic architecture in there. But ultimately you want to read about fish, and if fish‐related content is thin on the ground, you might wonder if it’s worth defecting to the more traditionalist Angler’s Mail.

In fact as I recall, there was indeed an Angler’s Mail to our Angling Times, and its name was Floorshow.

A hazy and probably unreliable memory tells me that some of the more gothically inclined indie fraternity tired of Offbeat continually trying to force feed the philistines with breakbeats and formed Floorshow, where clogs were allowed and people could compare crimped hair without fear of ridicule or Fear Of A Black Planet.

Whereas Offbeat tended to attract people who liked to limp around like a dancing tree with its branches partially

torn off by vandals, Floorshow’s trademark dance was a lurch from side to side looking at each hand in turn, like an air traffic controller with stigmata.

Yet we all had more in common than we had differences. I suppose Floorshow’s disgraceful tie‐dyed goth splitters were the SDP to our Labour Party under Michael Foot, while Claire and friends were the student revolutionaries demanding free humus salad rolls in the Market cafe and troops out of Ireland now. Or possibly not. Oh, and there was briefly the maoist splinter group that was Crowbait, formed by a guy called Howard who looked like a Tim Burton film extra after rising from the dead, who played only rectal prolapse‐inducing industrial drillcore like Foetus and Einsturzende Neubauten. Laughter, music and moonlight all the way.

MARK CASAROTTO (Member 1992‐96, President 1995‐96): Floorshow was a mirror image of Offbeat but playing the heavier, rockier side of (early‐mid ‘90s) indie. You'd go to Zippy's to dance to Smashing Pumpkins, Mudhoney, Rage Against the Machine, Offspring, that kind of thing. I gradually went off the heavier stuff, but it was still a fun night and there was, at least initially, a substantial crossover in clientele between it and Offbeat, and a mostly friendly rivalry. Bear in mind pre‐Britpop indie music was something genuinely special and different and much more of a scene than it became by the late ‘90s. So we were, initially at least, filling two very specific demographics with a lot of cross pollination.

I'm surprised Floorshow folded, to be honest. By 1996 half of the stuff played at the Monday night disco was Offbeat‐type stuff, so Floorshow could have been a genuine alternative. Perhaps the grunge era burst that bubble for them, I don't know. Or perhaps there was infighting, musical differences etc.

I feel quite warmly about Floorshow. They filled an important and necessary hole in the alternative (as was) scene. I'm sorry they went defunct and while it might be patronising to mention them, I'd say they were a key part of the Offbeat story, not least because it gave indiekids an unprecedented six indie nights a term and twice the exposure to new music.

the britpop years 1993-97

As indie music hits the mainstream through the mid ‘90s, Offbeat follows, with discos packed with the Britpopping hoards. Yet by 1997, it finds itself dwindling again…

MATT NIXSON (member 1992‐95, presdent 1994‐95, and original designer of the current Offbeat logo): Arriving at Warwick in the autumn of 1992 one of the first things I saw was a poster for Offbeat. I was pretty clueless about university societies in general and pretty green. But someone must've explained what it was all about because when Cath Behan – a fourth year teaching student who subsequently became one of my best mates – came round our kitchen putting up posters for the first disco of the term I was enthusiastic about getting involved.

the station, and having to walk back in a thunderstorm. That record was key to what happened in 93‐95 when I became president because it kind of kick‐started Britpop. OK, it didn't happen overnight, but suddenly indie music was starting to become trendy.

Running Offbeat with people like Caroline Feltham, Jackie Drennan and help from Mark Casaratto, Mark Whalan, Stuart Poore and others always seemed more luck than anything else. Average evening would be something like 6.30pm arrive at Zippy’s; 6.45pm plead with surly events staff to get decks, microphone, lights (delete as applicable) working; 7pm consume rapidly a number of pints to quell nerves and start leaping about on dancefloor still light outside) like crazy to first couple of songs as we tested the levels. 7.15pm fall on your arse and then stop drinking... for a bit. They really were great days.

Perhaps too enthusiastic. “Are you taking the piss?” asked Cath, in response to my pleas to get involved. All in all, it was a lucky encounter, otherwise I might never have got off my arse and got involved.

Jacob Howe was president for the 92‐93 term. He had a car and I would tag along for many happy mornings in Coventry's Select Records spending the Offbeat budget on rare vinyl Mudhoney 7"s or the latest Family Cat 12". When Blur released Modern Life is Rubbish, I remember getting the bus into Coventry the day it came out, then, unfortunately giving my change to a homeless bloke by

PAUL TRIMMER (Member 1992‐2001, president 1997‐98): My first experience of Offbeat was in 1992 when I arrived as a fresher ‐ it, along with Floorshow (grungy with some live bands), Freakscene (can't really remember what they played, but it definitely involved Carter USM at one point, and is the only music society event that I ever attended where a girl took her top off and danced around literally half‐naked) and Rock Soc (which resulted in permanent damage to my neck and lower back from headbanging), were the events that I could cope with attending to avoid the travesties that were the Students Unions offerings ‐  Monday night MPDs (Market Place Disco ‐ later to become Top Banana), the Wednesday and Friday night ‘bops’ and the never to be revisited Thursday night dance music events. And yes, I still remember Whipround fondly – live bands for 50p or so, if you felt like putting it in the bucket – eg when Radiohead or Oasis played for example in ‘92.

So, if it hadn't been for Offbeat and the other alternative options, I would pretty soon have been forced to massacre if half of campus as it left the MPD singing along to the latest (and not so latest) pop music shite.

I don’t remember a lot from this period, I was, after all, a non‐religious, non‐teetotal (although I was for the 1st term ‐ another story entirely) British student in receipt of a grant ‐ not a big one, but it paid for quite a lot of double vodkas, and still left enough for Tesco value beans and easy cook rice. Indie music, alcohol, carbs and protein, what more does one need? However, I still remember this as the only period in which moshing was possible in Offbeat ‐ the indie kids were a lot less effete then ‐ and a crazy mad mosh with the option of severe physical damage was de rigueur ‐ for some reason Mrs. Robinson ALWAYS resulted in an exhausting but fun mosh with associated bruises. There was also a lot less shoe‐gazing then ‐ which was strange for a period famous for its shoe‐gazy bands but maybe was related to the fact that you could still get tracks by the Levellers played.

The only event that the Students Union ran itself that was worth attending was the Indie Bop ‐  Tuesday nights 'alternative' offering in Rolf’s (the venue that become The Cooler and is now the Copper Rooms). There was considerable derision of this within Offbeat circles ‐ indie snobbery is NOT a new phenomenon! I also remember being removed from the Indie Bop on a couple of occasions for moshing a little too hard, but those stewards were a real bunch of killjoys.

MATT NIXSON: It was my final year at Warwick ‐ 94‐95 ‐ that Offbeat really exploded. In retrospect it seems like it happened overnight, but it probably wasn't. Britpop was massive, there was loads of ace music about and classic indie ‐  Pixies, Dinosaur Jr etc ‐ was cool.

Offbeat went from being the occasional sell out to jam‐packed, sweat drenched mayhem, and it was great. Our so‐called rival,

Floorshow, in contrast went darker and darker in goth, grunge, punk territory. We used to go and it was fun, but it wasn't Offbeat.

Then living in Leamington, we would listen awestruck on a Sunday night to the official chart show as bands like Supergrass, Blur, Oasis, Pulp – even Sleeper – found their way first into the top 40, then the top 20 and finally the top five. But we didn't just play Britpop. In those pre‐digital days when often we didn't even have a CD player, tracking down a vinyl copy of some rare Beatles or Stones record, or the Kinks, could take two weeks!

It wasn't all good. Obviously loads of people who had just bought Parklife to go alongside their George Michael greatest hits or whatever turned up. So there were more fights, more drunken debauchery and more people getting kicked out. I remember wrestling a bloke called Brian off the dancefloor one night when I was plastered because he kept leaning over the decks and putting his hand on the turntable to slow the record.

I met my most serious Warwick girlfriend on way to car carrying my record box in a rainstorm. That's the only time DJing ever helped me pull!

As a result of our success with Offbeat, the Union asked us to launch a new night downstairs in Rolfs (500 capacity as opposed to Zippys’ 250). Hence Supersonic was born. That was every two weeks and I think complimented Offbeat. One of my best ever moments was getting a white label of ‘Wake Up!’ by the Boo Radleys because we never, ever got promos for some reason. The dancefloor went ballistic.

Offbeat continued being a brilliant laugh right to my leaving in 1995. I'm chuffed to bits it's still going. I still look back on it as one of my formative experiences. And I still DJ at the odd wedding too.

MARK CASAROTTO (President 1995‐96): I’d joined Offbeat at Fresher's Fair in my first year. I'd been going to gigs in London since I was 15 and was utterly immersed in the indie scene. Music was absolutely the number 1 thing in my life. Nowadays, it might be hard pushed to break the top ten, and that makes me sad. Though I am getting into classical music more and more (I'm only 35, Jesus).

I started DJing in my third year (I spent the 2nd year in Italy) under my friend Matt Nixson. Since I was one of the few coming back for a 4th year, it made sense for me to take over ‐ also I was a pushy bugger and made sure I had my hands on the presidency before anyone else could nab it. Nothing remotely democratic in those days (if there ever was).

We put on discos three times a term, which I think was the maximum we were allowed. Always in Zippy’s, though we did get co‐opted into a union event or two in Rolfs, I think. In theory, we had an exec of five members. In practice, the president did most things, with the others helping out when they could, or when I got sick of doing everything myself. I could never find anyone to lug those enormous sodding boxes of records for me, though. On the plus side, I did get to do the record shopping. (And if anyone tells you I ever nabbed anything from these shopping trips for myself, this interview is OVER.)

I was handed the easiest, most populist period in indie music ever, and it kind of ran itself. Earlier in the evening the DJs had much more of a free reign; I tended to do the final slot (power crazed egomaniac etc) so anything much more out there than, say, the Bluetones would have a definite floor‐emptying effect. I'd still slip in a few, but basically I was happiest when everyone was dancing, so... I

don't mean to say I disliked Britpop, far from it, although people like Matt N were much more excited by it than I was ‐ Blur, Oasis, Pulp, were never (or were only very briefly) among my favourites, even then. Suede were, though, after seeing them at Cov Uni in the snow at the end of my first year. One of those seminal moments, man.

I think we just got lucky with regard to the music. We all did genuinely like most of what we played, and we all got caught up in the euphoric attitude. It's a bit like supporting Macclesfield and them winning the FA Cup ‐ who's going to harp on about whether the best left back is playing? And a full Offbeat is/was a happy Offbeat. I actually wonder if my memories are all rose‐tinted, whether we had some 3/4 empty nights, whether we all bitched at each other behind our backs. I honestly don't think so.

Cast, however, can eat a bag of dicks, all the more because I heard them on the radio yesterday. I mean, there'll always be second division bandwagon‐jumpers ‐ but at least some have the courtesy to have maybe a couple of ace singles. Cast were everything shitty about Britpop. Well, Oasis were, but they at least had a year or two where they grabbed the music scene by the scruff of the neck before turning into a less interesting Status Quo.

PAUL TRIMMER: For a few years, it all went very well, with a fortnightly indie bop, three indie‐ish societies and enough people to make them all work. Then the decline set in, with Freakscene going first, followed by Floorshow. The Union’s Indie Bop became Supersonic and then Indiependance, and slowly died a death until it was cancelled, leaving a big indie hole in the week as Freakscene and Floorshow had long since disappeared.

MARK CASAROTTO: I don't remember who we handed the powers (and the fucking record

boxes) to – there was a willowy girl involved, but that's a pretty poor memory. There would certainly have been a big change in personnel ‐ hang on a sec, was Paul Trimmer involved? My memory is that he was quite ambitious, and probably the oldest person remaining from the DJs. Perhaps it changed direction ‐ I wouldn't have blamed whoever ran it if they wanted to present an alternative to the alternative. By 96/97 Britpop wasn't fresh and exciting any more, squaddies were singing Blur in the street, your mum was asking for the Pulp album for Xmas.

PAUL TRIMMER: Offbeat membership started to decline slowly, going from the thriving events of my time as a student to the point in 1996‐97 that there was a total membership (and attendance) of about 25 people ‐  on a busy night. The was both the zenith and nadir of Offbeat ‐ it was being run solely for the DJs to play the great music that they thought people should be listening to, with some excellent but unknown groups being played to very small numbers of people who the DJs had invited along ‐  and a tiny group of hard core followers. It really was an alternative society, but to the extent that it was exclusionary, and suffered badly because of this. Publicity was also non‐existent and it looked as if Offbeat, following its protracted decline, would disappear forever as the current exec couldn't find anyone to take it on.

itself outside of the mainstream. After a quiet year, things are on the up again…

PAUL TRIMMER (President 1997‐98): And this is where I came into the story properly – ‘97‐‘98. Having had a ‘bit of thing’ for the then‐president, I’d spent two days redoing the Offbeat logo, by hand, in Paint on a Windows 3.1 computer in Bio Sci; and as the longest running member of Offbeat (even then I had been in Warwick for six years), I somehow agreed to take the society on. This coincided with the second year of my PhD and becoming a resident tutor in Rootes Residences – so resulted in some conflicts as far as time and motion planning were concerned. Lots of motion, no time and the only way to make space for all of this was to give up sleeping. Obviously, I needed some help with this, and I was very lucky that Connie Cheung, a member of the previous Exec, agreed to stay on as the Treasurer, and that I had a semi‐willing workforce in the shape of my then girlfriend, Vicky Long, some good friends (including the redoubtable Pete Edworthy), and a captive block of students who I could draw upon to do poster runs and advertising ‐ all this pre‐Facebook and Twitter so people actually had to talk to each other and have real friends.

The Britpop heat dies down, allowing Offbeat to re‐establish

The run‐up to the start of the year was crazy, and I drew heavily on the graphic skills and computing resources of Pete, who had access to the Student’s Union computers and Photoshop. Between us, we worked out an advertising scheme that had to work. It worked like this –students watch lots of TV; the most bizarre and cultish TV show of the time was Tellitubbies which had gathered a massive, blissed‐out audience waiting for Tinky Winky to shag Po or otherwise commit handbagicide; therefore we need to have an Offbeat Teletubbies poster. Oh and Teletubbies have a TV in their tummy – which can obviously (eureka!) have an Offbeat logo on it. This was not the easiest task as the rendering capabilities of PCs at the time were, to say the least, shocking and it was not unusual for us, later on in the evolution of the society, to be up till

4am making a poster – especially when we started Dysfunction.

The most important thing we needed to do was to get word out about the society, and to do this we needed to saturate campus with Offbeat posters. So we set out to do something that no‐one appeared to have really done before as they mostly relied on the very poor service the Union provided – to identify the location and numbers of every kitchen, front door and noticeboard for every student residence, including Westwood, on campus, and to print out an A4 poster, arm people with Blu Tak and drawing pins and send them off to each location. With a team of six people, this could be achieved in a couple of hours. By yourself, it takes nearly a whole day… This was a big undertaking but one that proved itself on the day of the Societies Fair. From virtually no members the year before, the Offbeat counter had a queue, all day, and signed up over 200 members. With the capacity of Zippy’s standing at 250, we realised that this could be bigger and better than we had imagined.

That year was a blur – Offbeat went from having two events a term with 25 attendees in the previous year, to having three sold‐out events per term in Zippy’s just for Offbeat, plus some combined events booked in conjunction with the Red Bull campus representative – you say selling out, I say giving our members what they wanted i.e. cheap vodka Red Bull with great music! The posters got bigger and better but stayed with a cartoon / kids TV theme – there was Fred and Penelope, Superted, Banana Man, Lego, Star Wars and more. There was quite a lot of friction within the exec – I was, and probably always will be, very impatient with people not pulling their weight, and I drove myself and people around me as

hard as I could to make this work. And it did. Offbeat events continued to sell out in minutes, queues stretched all the way down the stairs from Zippy’s and we always ended up turning people away. Even though we had to pay the Union to put on additional bar staff, the Offbeat account filled up rapidly to give us a great cash surplus.

This period coincided with the further popularisation of (late) Britpop and the rise of bands like Catatonia, Bluetones, Echobelly, Elastica, Hefner, Idlewild, Gorky’s, Kenickie, SFA and so many others – and we did, in the view of many indie purists, sell out quite thoroughly to match the audience requirements. But we never really gave in to it – the evenings always started with some pretty good stuff, and then gradually built towards the big sell‐out tracks to finish the night off. There was a lot of friction because of this – some people were convinced that we should continue to only play really ‘indie’ tracks, in the true meaning of the term, whilst my view, as the President, and as the person who had to take responsibility for the continuing success of the society, realised that we had to match the current zeitgeist, with the term ‘indie’ broadening to take on a lot of bands that just weren’t indie, even though they had plenty of guitars and looked the part. We had ‘issues’ with some DJs who thought Big Beat [ie Chemical Brothers, Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, Propellerheads] was appropriate but even this was fitted into the night and proved to be popular with a subset of the audience – one of the benefits of selling out was that it took a really obscure track to really clear the floor – although it did seem that some DJs prided themselves on being able to achieve this. We were still using a couple of the DJs from the previous year for a while, but as they perceived Offbeat, and the current exec, to sell out further, and, as it became obvious that the music they were playing was simply not appropriate to the new clientele, they withdrew,

leaving the DJ field open for a new breed willing to compromise and play some Pulp and Manic Street Preachers alongside the Smiths and the Pixies.

So, the year progressed, and the main rival for Offbeat turned out to be Clublands – a dance society run by the redoubtable Matt, with whom the rivalry was intense, but mostly good‐natured and based on the incompatibility of the music styles and the theoretical difference in personality between the introvert indie kids and the extrovert dance monkeys – I’ve never been particularly convinced by this, mainly because very few indie kids are at all introverted, mostly just oblivious or depressed. There was little overlap in the membership, but we had to compete for the limited space and nights available in the Union resulting in some extremely devious charming of the ladies in the Societies Office and SU reception in order to gain advantage in getting the best nights.

However, I hadn’t finished with my reinvention of Offbeat, and working with the Rock Soc and Underground presidents, we brought a new event to the Students Union – Dysfunction. Named by one of the students in my hall of residence, this combined the music that most overlapped the 3 genres of indie, rock and ‘60s and ‘70s music that these 3 societies played. It was end of May / start of June 1998 ‐  exam term, week 6. No‐one believed it could work but it was the only slot available.

Once again, I worked with Pete Edworthy to create a poster that would draw people in, with a dark, industrial, brushed metal (and you have no idea how long that takes to render on a Pentium

2) style, whilst Rock Soc sorted out the venue with camouflage nets, great lighting and smoke machines, and Underground provided manpower for poster runs. We printed the poster in full colour A3 for posting around the whole of campus, a big investment in terms of cash and time but when we ended up selling 330 tickets for an event in the Cooler at a time when attendance at all the SUs main events other than Top Banana was lower than this (it was during the exams), it was all worth it.

Dysfunction was an unmitigated success and continued for six years after this – it was successful enough that the SU poached the idea to create Crash. I still remember this first Dysfunction as one of the highlightsof my time in Warwick – with the DJs working together flawlessly to create an amazing mix of rock and indie from four decades, the crowd dancing non‐stop and there being a huge cheer at the end of the night from the masses!

So, 97‐98 ended with Offbeat in a very different place to where it had started ‐ with over £1000 in its account, 15 events behind it, and ready for the next year to kick in – under the new management, with Steve Kelk taking on the post of President as I had, by this time, quit my PhD and was therefore ineligible to run the society.

We started 98‐99 with a bang. Capitalising on the previous year’s turnout and the experience we had gained, we hit hard with another massive advertising campaign – by the end of the societies sign‐up day we had over 350 members. Once again, we had sold out events, and once again our main rivals were Clublands. However, the success of Clublands and Offbeat had had an interesting knock on effect, with other music societies seeming to piggy‐back off this, gaining membership and copying the tactics of the two largest (by this point) societies.

Around the start of 1999, to really prove the point of how successful we had become, we organised and ran ‘A Cooler Offbeat’ where we booked the Cooler, a 450 person venue. This was something that very few individual societies had ever done before, resulting in some tense moments – would we get enough people to break even, and even worse would we have an empty and forlorn dance floor? The poster was prepared – suitably epic, with a gold statue, beseeching the heavens astride a huge iceberg – the Cooler, geddit? The publicity runs began, the arguments with the Union over bar opening times, staffing levels, decoration and ticket prices, handled, eventually… So, would people come? Well, yes. We sold over 320 tickets – an absolute triumph of a night made possible by the hard work of some very dedicated people –notably Steve Kelk who was an absolute rock! The music was slightly more populist than a normal night, but worked extremely well. There were a couple more of these events but the AGM of early 2000 [which saw Steve Kelk successfully putting through a motion that the Union had to put on their own mainstream indie night rather than letting Offbeat do their job for them] put an end to these with the introduction of the SU event Popscene.

STEVEN KELK: The first Cooler event was a real highlight for me. We put a vast amount of effort into promoting this event, and gave Paul the mission to design a poster that was no less bombastic than a U2 world tour. Prior to the evening itself we were really worried that we had bitten off more than we could chew, and that the Cooler would be as sparsely populated as a Supersonic evening. In the end it all worked out really well, a load of people came, and someone

even played Blue Monday. At some point Ben the treasurer came running to me with a hand full of receipts with the news that we had broken even (which was a considerable achievement given the costs of hiring the Cooler). A strange twist to this tale is that the Students Union ultimately claimed the (small) profit from that evening; that was one of many weird and wonderful encounters that we had with the Students Union that year (partly because Offbeat organised so many events that year and had become so big and probably also a little bit arrogant).

PAUL TRIMMER: At some point in the year, I must have gone mad, as I found myself booking the SU building and organising a whole Union society event called Pick’n’Mix. I persuaded 11 societies – amongst them Rock Soc, Underground, Clublands, Breakdance, African and Caribbean –to get together across about 7 venues (we used everywhere we could separate out, and had some societies swapping over halfway through the night) and ran this as a huge 2,200 person event; I also arranged themed cocktails and discounts through the ex‐Bar Manager (I wish I could remember his name, he was very helpful indeed!); worked with societies to create their own theme and decorations for every room and generally tried to make this as good a night as possible. And again, somehow, it all worked – we sold 2000 tickets which would have made a great deal of a difference to the smaller societies – except that the SU kept the proceeds from the event! And to rub it in, the concept for the event was stolen by the Students Union ‐ which was becoming a bit of a habit. The reason I include this event, was that, in essence, it was done entirely to get Offbeat a night in the Cooler – which it did!

STEVEN KELK (president 1998‐1999): As Paul says this was a year of explosive growth in the Offbeat membership, capitalising on the momentum created by Paul the year before. That increase in scale brought a lot of (organisational) challenges with it, but also a lot of

opportunities. It was in any case a lot of fun.

I think that 1998‐1999 was the first year of the Colosseum trips, the first year of regular Dysfunction events, and we even organised some discos in really strange places (such as the mysterious Sports Pavillion).

I remember vaguely that, even though the executive that year consisted of people who were very good friends (or who in the course of that year would become very good friends), we had a peculiar near‐schism at one point about music policy. Some people felt that the music policy of Offbeat had become too mainstream, whilst some felt that a tilt towards, err, more offbeat indie music would alienate the several million people who had in the meantime become a member of Offbeat. This culminated in a tense lunchtime meeting in the Union Resources Room somewhere on the second floor of Union North. No idea how it ended but it can't have been that bad because I think things just pretty much carried on as before. In any case neither camp felt much for my Depeche Mode obsession so I like to think that in some way I helped to bring the two warring factions together by showing them just how much they had in common.

One other thing that I remember is that we had a friendly rivalry with Clublands. They had approximately as many members as us and were similarly hyperactive in terms of organising events. Ultimately we jointly won Best Society of the Year, which was nice. So yeah, 1998‐1999 was a lot of hard work but also a lot of fun. Lots of stress, poster runs, music, bureaucracy, excessive use of email (it was 1998, we didn't know any better), forgetting of DJ headphones, discos and parties. I

would be so bold as to suggest that the other exec members that year, many of whom remain good friends, would make a similar analysis. I remain very proud to have been so intensively involved with Offbeat during that year!

the millennial peak

1999-2002

Offbeat’s popularity continues to grow, with over 400 members and 20‐odd people involved in running the society. The Union is still incapable of getting it together to put on its own indie nights, meaning that Offbeat was where everyone would head if they wanted anything other than the usual dancey/cheesy fare.

Post‐Britpop, the term ‘indie’ has long since ceased to mean a specific musical genre. The sheer number of people involved meant that musically, there was something for everyone. A single night’s Offbeat playlist would feature anything from tried‐and‐tested classics of a few years before (Blur, REM, Suede, James, Manics, Stone Roses, Radiohead) to the indie favourites of the time (Belle & Sebastian, Muse, Beck, Mansun, Hefner, Super Furry Animals) and a generous sprinkling of now long‐forgotten classics, generally on sparkly 7” vinyl (Chewy, Pullover, Angelica, Looper, Mo‐Ho‐Bish‐O‐Pi…)

JO WONG (Offbeat member 1999‐2002): Offbeat was the first society I joined as a fresher. I remember the incredibly intimidating experience of filling in the form at the stall, trying to list my favourite bands under the watchful eyes of the effortlessly cool exec (who I’m sure were very welcoming and friendly really, and not as terrifying as I thought then). But it was all worth it for the discos… Going to events where I could dance to music I loved was a new experience for me, and – better still in some ways – there was also music I didn’t know but found out about from other people. Plus there was the glitter, the balloons, the bubblewrap (for jumping on, of course), the dancing in one big circle which filled the dancefloor…

The internet forums were fun too, as a sort of extended Offbeat community – lots of general pointless waffling, sharing news about pretty much anything, and random arguments to keep things interesting.

few events downstairs in the Cooler, either in conjunction with other societies (like Dysfunction or the nights we did with BandSoc) or as Offbeat in its own right. Plus there was a lot of Zippy's action from related societies like AbSynth and Underground (once waggishly described by someone‐or‐other as, respectively, "The Offbeat exec with a Human League CD" and "The Offbeat exec with a Doors CD").

I joined the exec in early 2000, around the same time as Offbeat started doing weekly Thursday nights at the Colosseum [Coventry nightclub now known as the Kasbash] and the related drinks offers meant that I became very, very annoying indeed. Despite this, I managed to become friends with a lot of absolutely brilliant people, many of whom I still see now.

I really think Offbeat is something to be proud of. In the past few years I’ve met a few indie types with no links to Warwick who have heard of Offbeat. I can’t tell you how weird it is to be discussing Offbeat with a random stranger at a professional archivists’ conference – but I think that’s quite impressive for a society which started out as (and I suppose still is, to some extent) a few mates playing music they loved.

If not for Offbeat, it would probably never quite have dawned on me that an idiot like me can do things like DJ, play in bands, organise events, design posters etc, and have absolutely loads of fun doing it. Even all the inter‐exec politics and pointless internet arguments about fuck‐all have taught me something about how if you want to make something cool happen it helps if you're prepared to listen and compromise and generally not be an arse.

MARK STURDY (exec member 2000‐2002): I started going to Offbeat towards the end of 1999, and almost straight away it became a r eally big thing for me. For a couple of years, there seemed to be something Offbeat‐related happening every week – as well as the inevitably packed discos in Zippy's, there were nights at various venues in Coventry and Leamington, and quite a

PAUL TRIMMER: An interesting point here was that the SU gave office space to The Boar on the basis of the size of its membership – at Offbeat and Clublands’ peaks, each society easily topped the membership of the Boar society by well over 100. When we approached the SU about this i.e. could Offbeat and Clublands also have an office, we were refused. There had always been tension between societies and the SU, and now it became clear that the SU was strongly opposed to the growth of Offbeat and it became extremely difficult to organise anything – for example they cut the number of nights per term societies were allowed to book Zippy’s to two, eating into our

main source of revenue. This appeared to be specifically related to our requests to book four nights a term to meet the requirements of our large membership.

So, Offbeat diversified. Having run a few nights out

previously to the Colosseum who ran a reasonable indie night, we started DJing there and encouraging Offbeat members to attend. At the end of this year, we spent some of our money on purchasing a set of DJ equipment for £1800 which we used for years afterwards when booking venues off campus for mini‐events.

This was the beginning of the end of my involvement in Offbeat – whilst I was involved for a few years off and on after this time, notably with Dysfunction, making posters for events and DJing occasionally, increasingly, as I got older, I withdrew and was simultaneously pushed out by the younger members who wanted to r un it as an egalitarian multi‐chaired committee driven commune –rather than the dictatorship that I preferred. As the majority of my friendship circle was formed during the initial 97‐99 period, it was a peripheral part of my life for longer than I would have expected – and since Mark Sturdy will never let it die, for some time more I suspect! I think that this makes me the longest running Offbeat member, ever – having been a continuous member of the society from 1992 to 2001.

After me and Steve Kelk, there was ‘the Ben’ Jones, Simon Miles, Jenny Bunker and Luke Noel‐Storr, I think, it gets a bit confused at this point as they went all weird and hippy on me with their lack of figurehead president! There are a lot of great memories from this time for me – one event stuck in my mind where pretty much every person at the event was linked directly to me in one way or another –the ultimate ‘Facebook’ moment with a whole room trying to stand in a circle! I note on the Warwick SU website that Offbeat is still going – unlike Clublands, bwah ha ha!

Some notable mentions – Pete Edworthy, Steve Kelk, Vicky Long, Tim Heron, Connie Cheung, Andy Cooke –without their support Offbeat would have disappeared in 1998. Also for the few DJs who really set the standard in the first couple of years with a great mix of tunes, again Vicky, but also Jenny Bunker, who could always be relied on to play the Manics and Kenickie’s Punka; Luke Noel‐Storr, who, against all his instincts, used to play great populist sets at the end of the night; and not Steve Kelk, for all his virtues, for whom no pit is deep enough as a punishment for playing German techno‐trance‐death‐metal‐synth, or whatever the hell it was. I dedicate this track to all who have enjoyed Offbeat since 1998 – and as I am proud of this achievement I’d like to say – ‘I did that’.

the colosseum years

2002-2006

Around the mid ‘00s the centre of Offbeat activity shifted to The Colosseum in Coventry, where we ran a regular Thursday night in its end room for seven years from February 2000. Drinks were drunk. As the Colosseum nights went from strength to strength, Offbeat’s profile on campus went into a slight decline – Zippy’s (or The Graduate Club as it became around 2006) was becoming prohibitively expensive to hire, and the Union, after 20 years of trying, had finally managed to get its act together to put on some successful indie/rock nights of its own –namely Crash and Electric City.

JAMIE HUNTER (Co‐president 2003‐2006): In my first week on Westwood campus, some of the third years introduced me to the Colosseum (as an alternative to the Fresher’s Ball). I was shown a thriving society music scene, including Offbeat, RockSoc, BandSoc, S.Punk (now PunkSoc), Goffbeat and

Underground. As a result, I made a bee‐line for the Offbeat stand at the Freshers’ Fair.

After several weeks getting to know everyone and DJing up at Zippy’s, I was invited to help out on the exec. At this time, first term of 2002‐03, there was around 160 members, and Zippy’s was generally pretty full, although I don’t remember it ever selling out. The primary focus was still on Union events rather than using the Colly. I was asked along to the society elections in early 2003, and Grant Lakeland and I were elected as Society Presidents for the year. The following year, Grant stepped down and Clare Rowntree stepped up. Then in my final year in charge, Clare stepped down and Gareth Roberts stepped up.

Those who preceded us will, I’m sure, be pleased to know the 5p discos and cartoon‐styled posters continued in the main; the society had quite a large bankroll and we didn’t want to charge members anything to come if we could help it. Also, the old society kit of speakers, sparkly lights, turntables and decks, and crates of vinyl still exist somewhere in Coventry.

However, as time went by, the Union chose to increase the prices of Zippy’s, which resulted in us having to charge entry if we wanted to keep running on

campus events. Numbers however, stayed pretty solid, with the introduction of themed discos (the playlists favoured particular bands). The biggest motivator for Offbeat’s members at this time was the Colly Discount Card. As we had a weekly residency at the club, they gave us discount entry cards for our members. Whether this

was a blessing or not, I’m not sure, but for a prolonged period of time, it ensured Offbeat had a pretty large membership base (peaking at around 300).

I would say things started to go into decline in 2005/2006. Due to popular demand, the Union finally managed to setup a successful mainstream indie/rock night, Crash, which it started to run in competition with the other music societies’ events. In retaliation, several of the larger student music socs clubbed together to make running events on campus more viable. We ran joint events with BandSoc, RockSoc and Underground in efforts to draw in enough people even if the Union chose to put us up against Crash.

We started booking in bands as part of our discos to boost demand, which included Envy & Other Sins, Bearsuit, Fonda 500 and The Apartment throughout the year. Ignoring the Union’s apathy getting each band sound‐checked, including complete no‐shows (thanks!), these were really enjoyable nights on the whole. The Union competed by bringing in bigger bands, including the likes of Biffy Clyro, Soulwax/2ManyDJs, Easyworld, The Killers, British Sea Power etc.

The final thing I was majorly involved in before I stepped down, was setting up Last Exit. Due to our frustration with the

Union, and improved relations with the other music societies, we approached the Colly to hire it out in full for our own alternative End of Year Party, ‘Last Exit – the Alternative Way Out’. They let us hire the entire place for a nominal fee and we started organising an all‐music‐society blow‐out, in direct competition with the Union. I think at the first Last Exit, we had an attendance of around 900 people, with bands and DJs from Offbeat, BandSoc, RockSoc, Underground, Goffbeat, PunkSoc and NoiseSoc. The next year’s was just as, successful, if not more so.

As I was finishing as President and helping out as part of the general Exec, my main memory was of the Colosseum’s owner going AWOL, and then changing hands. The arrangement changed, with us then helping DJ in the main room as well as keeping the residency in the left wing. Looking back, this was almost certainly detrimental as the previously large left‐wing Offbeat‐exclusive crowd became diluted across two rooms.

My fondest Offbeat memory was probably the first Radiohead themed night. I wrote to Waste [Radiohead’s PR company] to see if they could provide any freebie goodies for us to give away on the night, and to my surprise, they sent a crate full of rare and unusual Radiohead memorabilia, including pin badges, albums, posters, key rings and other weird toys. We then blew up around 500 balloons, filling a select

few with brightly coloured tokens representing different prizes. At midnight we released all the balloons to what would be best described as dance floor carnage. Quality.

the lean period 2006-2008

Offbeat’s tenure at the Colosseum came to an abrupt and inexplicable end in February 2007, leaving the society with no regular home and robbing us of some focus. Thanks to constant hikes in hire costs, it was no longer financially viable to hold regular Zippy’s discos and as a result the society diversified into running various short‐lived or one‐off nights in Coventry venues like The Phoenix and Taylor John’s House.

Further tragedy struck in summer 2008 when Zippy’s closed its doors for the last time, a casualty of the (still ongoing) Union rebuild. Fittingly, the last night of the venue’s existence was an Offbeat reunion with DJs and punters from every phase of its history, giving the society a chance to connect with its past for the first time. The society carried on, mainly as a vehicle for socials and gig trips, and yet another rebirth is no doubt just around the corner…

WILL METCALFE (Co‐president 2006‐2007): I joined Offbeat as quickly as possible when I came to Warwick, although I’d joined the forum about 14 months beforehand… it's either keen or desperate but really there wasn't much to do growing up in Cumbria and it [the forum] put me on to a lot of good music before I'd even got to uni.

Loath as I am to say it, I'd heard a lot about Offbeat from my older sister and it influenced my choice of uni massively. It was down to Warwick or Cardiff and, whilst I might have ended up in Los Campesinos! had I gone to Cardiff, I got caught up in the strangest, most life affirming few months of Offbeat at Warwick.

Musically, I wanted to get back to the core values of indie rather than what was popular. As a result it went a bit 'Pete Tong' as a thirtysomething maths teacher might say. There were a group of freshers that set up what quickly became quite a popular night, 'The Dog and Pony Show', as a bit of a splinter. I hated remixes and, by and large, still do. I should have been less of a c***, that way the dance floor would have stayed full but really, what's indie about that?

We mostly used to put on discos in the Graduate Club (aka Zippy’s). The weekly Colly night was still swinging when I started as president and I tried to get people up to Taylor Johns House... partly as I worked there and to try and get something a little more leftfield going... needless to say that fell flat on its arse but we still put on a wicked gig with Darren Hayman, even if the support acts were a bit fixed. We had DJ slots before Misty’s Big Adventure too, and a few nights at the Tin Angel.

Offbeat was run by myself and Amanda Avis, who I was seeing at the time. Whilst the two of us had

fairly compatible views and taste in music it got a bit awkward when we broke up. She was the main reason we held a second Smiths night with Chris Stride DJing, we did OK though the two of us. I do regret the way it ended up with the two of us being a bit awkward just to get at each other... mind you, that was nothing compared to the way things were with certain other exec members. A good piece of advice is never to perform a song, even as a 'joke', insinuating the out‐going president is a nonce.

During my year as president the society changed from being relatively popular to dying on its arse and, part of that was down to decisions made by Amanda and I. We had a radio show, sympathetic music editors at the Boar (notably me) and a deal with Electric City for 8 free passes to it but still, somehow it went wrong. Part of it was due to the fall in popularity of the Colly as a venue...they ended up ousting us by refusing to promote events and then complain that we were failing to bring in a crowd despite the fact that we were actually DJing every room and bringing a coach of booze hungry students every week at one point. The Colly involved a large crowd but then that was more for the free entry people got...the other events were never as popular.

After the deal with the Colly died, we got RockSoc and PunkSoc involved with what was proposed as a monthly night called Resurrection although I think that happened once too. The union didn’t help and as a result me, Amanda and Andrew Russell paid for the Darren Hayman gig ourselves ‐ the union paid us £30 each, which was half of the loss we made but that was it. They basically stamped on our throats when we were gasping for air at that stage. By the end, when I pushed Gilly into the presidency it was an empty shell. He, and a few others, had some good ideas that just seemed to fall flat. We did work hard but by the time I left indie was a mainstream concern and Offbeat as such had ceased to function...why sideline yourself if the

main uni caters for you....it was a shame but in the form it ended up Offbeat was extinct. Despite efforts to get some proper alternative blood into it all.

LIAM GILLIGAN (GILLY) (Co‐president 2007‐2008): After joining Offbeat in my first year and spending my time attending the nights and becoming close friends with Will, Andy and the other members holding it together, it eventually became my turn to give it a go trying to restore it back to being one of the University’s best societies. This plan didn’t get off to a particularly good start – the elections we held failed to attract a new exec, which meant that aside from Will helping me out as best he could with his final year commitments, I was effectively running the society on my own (the co‐president, Andy Russell, was a final year engineering student who could spare little time). In addition to this, our previous treasurer had forgotten to submit any sort of budget plans/applications, which left us with no new money to start the year.

I decided that the best plan to keep Offbeat afloat was to generate as much money for the society as possible so that when interest was hopefully rekindled the next year, they were in the best possible position to get the society back on its feet. If previous members will forgive me, I attempted to do this by trying to make Offbeat appeal to a larger, and perhaps less “Offbeat” base of music listener.

Inspired by this, we would then do this with white shirts to create some very nice looking Offbeat T‐shirts.

When the University began running its own indie night, Electric City, bearing in mind what had happened to previous Offbeats when competition was introduced, I joined forces with them, promising fresh young Offbeat members for a discounted entry to the night (and 5 guest list places each week). This proved to be one of the strongest pulls we had for the first few months of the year, and the nights we had with the newest members were great, with a real sense of friendship and group unity, with many of those members running the society now.

For the fresher’s fair, we came up with the idea of creating gift bags full of random trinkets to give away to the new kids who showed an interest in the society. Over the summer, I emailed, phoned and wrote letters to over 50 PR companies, trying to get my hands on whatever music I could, and ended up with a hoard of stuff of, shall we say – mixed value, from stickers and badges, to 50 Cent vinyl (which were subsequently donated to the Union).This leads to one of my fondest Offbeat memories, the image of me, Will and Andy sitting in my room, cutting the top off of brown envelopes, cramming stuff into them, and then using poster paints and homemade stencils, painting “Offbeat” onto the side.

Things began to fall apart in the second term of the year, with many people not showing up for socials anymore, and blaming the lack of diversity in the society. This led me to put on the ill fated ‘Offbeat at the Phoenix’ night, with the upstairs room to ourselves, Will DJing and leaflets giving our members their first drink free –which failed to pull in anyone past the first week, members seeming to be unwilling to travel to Coventry.

On the recommendations of previous members, I decided to organise a disco in the Graduate Club, to try and pull in members to a campus event which they had no excuse not to attend. After shelling out ridiculous amounts for the room, bar, staff and countless other costs, and postering the event like mad for 3 and a half weeks straight, well....the night will go down in Offbeat history, for all the wrong reasons. Having done most of the organising, I left it to the other President to stay (remotely) sober as health and safety demanded, and began drinking and enjoying my night. The room was a tribute to Offbeat as I knew it in my first year, balloons, Haribo and music posters everywhere we looked. After dealing with a doorman who was apparently telling people to “come back later it’s a bit dead at the moment”, the room was full enough for me to be happy and people were generally enjoying themselves. Around 10ish however, things seem to begin coming apart, starting with the m usic levels in the room. The head of security decided to come into our event and inform Will, who was DJing the night, that the music was too loud, and pushed

the dials on the equipment down. Unfortunately, having the courage of a bottle of wine in him, Will decided that he was wrong, and shoved the dials back up (and possibly shouting “Fuck You” – I forget). This resulted in his eviction from the premises – I only noticed this when the music suddenly stopped. Seeing him being yelled at outside, I looked around in vain for my sober president, who had in fact disappeared somewhere with his girlfriend, leaving me, 8 or so pints in, to throw a fresher on the decks (who proceeded to play ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, clearing the dance floor) and headed outside to confront the head of security. I don’t remember much of what he yelled at me, but after confiscating my University card and calling me a number of things (which included many variations of useless, disgraceful, unsafe and bastard) meant that by the time I was finished, the music had long since died, everyone had gotten confused and left, and there were around 4 people left sitting in a silent Grad Club, drinking merrily. We wished them a good night, and left.

The day after, as me and Will met with him to collect our cards and discuss the potential £800 fine and closure of our society, ended with nothing more than another telling off and return of our cards. Further gossip and sources who had access to the incident log informed us that said security had been criticised for being over the top and ruining the night, and although the thought of pursuing further action did cross my mind, I thought it best to leave it while we had a society left.

Due to the combination of course pressures alongside the stress of running the society on my own, with interest lagging and further sniping and criticism, I stepped down early, at the start of the third term. I left it to Ben Shepperd, who I believed could bring Offbeat back to what it used to be, and with his music knowledge and dedication – I had high hopes. I unfortunately lost my interest in Offbeat and wanted little else to do with it afterwards, helping Ben as much as I could.

On reflection of my time as president, I don’t regret the actions that I took, and although I was criticised, I felt the actions I took were the right steps in having a shot at keeping the ship floating. Offbeat at the moment is competing in a time in which every pub, club and social event is labelled as ‘indie’, and it becomes hard to justify the necessity of a group of people coming together to listen to what everyone is doing. Offbeat is down, but it certainly isn’t out, and I hope that upcoming execs restore it to what I couldn’t quite manage to.

c’mon kids!

2008-present

Laurence Thompson (Vice President 2008‐2009, Co‐President 2009‐2010): My initial involvement with Offbeat was a strange one. Disheartened with the hopelessly mainstream music taste of my hall mates in my fresher year I attended a few socials and the odd gig. When an email was sent around for new exec members in the third term I heeded the call. Sadly I was the only attendee for that meeting, and it was clear things were a breaking point for the society. That said though the year started well. A fantastically well first social, free T‐shirts, CDs, and a zine. The number of exec members too had grown over the summer. But then the President stepped down prematurely and things floundered. Looking back now maybe I should have stepped up, but sadly I don’t think I was ready to single‐handedly shoulder a society.

Thankfully our story doesn’t end there. After hosting elections this time around we once again have a strong enthusiastic exec. It’s an odd time for the society. Now every club has there own indie night, and the SU refuses to allow Offbeat more involvement with Electric City, but that won’t stop us. Socials are well attended by no end of new faces, but Alex has written far more on that than me. Over to him…

ALEX WELLS (co‐president 2009 ‐2010): I must thank, on behalf of all those currently involved with Offbeat, all those who ran/helped/partied with and danced alongside the earlier incarnations of this most topsy‐turvy society. I knew when I joined as a fresher that this was a society with an important and pretty cool history, but reading all these testimonies made me realise how much effort

people have put in over the years, just for the love of good music. So, thanks guys, the current exec and membership owe all of you a lot for getting this thing running and then keeping it going through thick and thin, and we hope we can do it some form of justice.

My involvement with Offbeat started when I was doing uni research, and was blown away by what I saw as a disco playing my music collection (Electric City), and a society dedicated to the sort of music I loved. It was quite probably the first thing I signed up to at the various fairs, and I really looked forward to getting involved. I had not then realised how turbulent a history this society had had, and perhaps naively thought that Electric City and Offbeat were one and the same, not knowing how bizarre that might have seemed to previous years’ members and exec teams. However, I had some cracking nights at Electric City, stuffed out of sight and out of mind in the sweatbox of Tempo, and the first few Offbeat meetings were, as far as I can remember, pretty cool, especially as I got to blag a free T‐shirt with Bowie on it. There, were problems within the society however, and for various reasons it, for all intents and purposes, died a slow death. I say this from a fresher’s perspective, and there may well have been things going on, I just never felt involved and that there was anything for me there. And I guess that’s what makes me feel so passionately about this society now, and why we’re trying so hard to get it back to where it should be, back on those award boards in the SU HQ, and back in the hearts of those who really love a bewildering variety of good music.

So, now we have a new, sparkly, revamped and re‐energised society. At a time when ‘indie’ music has become incredibly mainstream, and yet diversified into so

many different genres and sub‐genres, we face a number of challenges, not just in terms of defining what the society stands for but what we can provide that the Union doesn’t already, or to put it another way, what can we do that the Union will let us. The lack of a suitable space for a society of our size, which currently stands at 70 or so members, effectively prohibits us running anything on campus, but as I write we are stretching our wings back out into Coventry and Leamington and hopefully we can establish some sort of base out there. Our other main problem is that, really, ‘indie’ has ceased to have any real meaning. How can an indie music society flourish when no‐one really knows what that means, and so many people are turned off by the idea of elitism and snobbery? I don’t know, but we’re going to give it a damn good try. As far as I see it, someone who adores and worships the new indie‐folk revival may not be able to discuss with any great authority the new synth modulator dealies of the latest indie‐dance troupe, but there’s bound to be a cross‐over point somewhere, but it musical, literary, personal or just that they get on. Offbeat cannot ever hope to define indie, and it had better not ever tell people precisely what they should listen to. Instead, it’ll be a meeting ground of like‐minded people who feel passionate about their music, whatever it is, and feel some sort of affinity with the alternative scene. We hope to bring Offbeat back from the brink, and by running more socials in the Duck, more CD swaps, quiz nights, bar crawls and gig trips we really feel that we can create some form of community, and provide a real alternative to the club and dance scene which swallows up so much of uni life.

25 YEARS OF OFFBEAT was written by Adam King, Mark Oxley, Simon Rosenberg, Gabriel Sterne, Nick Edser, Claire Hungate, Pete Fallen, Johnny Sharp, Alex Baker, Mark Palacio, Leigh Ashton, Chris Stride, Jacob Howe, Mark Casarotto, Matt Nixson, Paul Trimmer, Steven Kelk, Jo Wong, Mark Sturdy, Jamie Hunter, Will Metcalfe, Liam Gilligan, Laurence Thomspon and Alex Wells. Thanks also to Dick Smith, Rachel Whalan, Luke Noel‐Storr, Simon Bernstein, Deborah King and Andy Russell. Compiled and edited by Mark Sturdy.

All content © 2009 the contributors.