Move to restore music at historic Sydney pub
It’s been a big loss for the music scene. One of Sydney’s best known pubs, the Harold Park Hotel in Glebe which has been around for more than a century, has been forced to stop local artists performing at its Sunday afternoon sessions featuring acoustic music.
It happened after it received a request from Sydney City Council to stop.
According to the council, the Harold Park Hotel's conditions of development consent prohibits live entertainment from being staged in the outside courtyard area.
The council says it had to act after it received a complaint from a neighbour about noise from the venue. The complaint was about the alleged noise from live entertainment in the courtyard on Sunday nights.
This was an important piece of news because the Harold Park was the place where people would catch acoustic performances from members of a number of popular Sydney bands, including Bootleg Rascal, Lepers & Crooks and The Khanz. And everyone knows that the Hoodoo Gurus' filmed the music video for their 1984 track, My Girl at the Harold Park Hotel.
The pub had to break the news on its Facebook page: “So, our popular, long-running, Sunday afternoon music has been knocked on the head, after a complaint from a neighbour, who has just moved in next door. Pub been here 137 years, this anonymous mob move in two weeks, and our Sunday arvo local entertainment is gone. Thanks to all our fabulous musicians and patrons over these past years - it's been beautiful.”
But it might all work out in the end.
The council, aware of the bad publicity, is now talking to the Harold Park about how to restore live music.
The City regularly works with venues one-on-one to help them establish or continue live music programming – in line with our Live Music and Performance Action Plan – but the City cannot alter development consent conditions unless a venue requests it," the council said in a statement to The Music.
"The City's advisor for live music and performance has already been in contact with the Harold Park Hotel to discuss amending their development consent to allow live entertainment in the courtyard, and about the City’s Business Improvement Grants Program, which provide up to $5,000 matched funding for venues needing to undertake acoustic reports in relation to live music or performance."
by Leon Gettler, January 25th 2017
