Club With No Name returning to a Peterborough bar

Chris Lovell, a self-confessed music obsessive who wanted to bring bands he travelled the country to see to his home city, started CWNN in 1999 in the backroom of The Boys Head on Oundle Road (now a Tesco express). In just under a year it had become so successful, it was relocated to a newly opened and more central venue The Park nightclub in the city centre.

In the years that followed it went from strength to strength – and Chris managed to bring some of the finest emerging new acts to the city. He gave Kasabian their first ever official gig and the band ended up playing the club a total of five times in those early years.

“I saw them again most recently, at Portsmouth’s Victorious Festival, when they headlined the main stage on Saturday night. To be honest, I think that stage must have been twice the size The Park …It was very satisfying for me to watch them up there,” he said.

Another band that played the club in their early years, and it must be said, to just a handful of people, was Keane.

“That was their first gig outside of London,” added Chris. “About three years later they were headlining the Glastonbury Festival. They never did return to the The Park as promised!”

When a band called Parva played they also were relatively unheard of, but they hit the charts about a year later having changed their name to The Kaiser Chiefs and the rest as they say is history. Other bands up and coming bands that played included Biffy Clyro, Athlete and numerous others.

The move to The Park, in 2000, being a larger venue also gave Chris a chance to bring to Peterborough some more established acts, some of which would not have normally played venues of that size including amongst others: The Damned, The Beat, Wheatus, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, New Model Army and Pauline Black’s The Selecter to name but a few.

Club With No Name was fuelled by one man’s tunnel vision, blind ambition and his absolute fanatical love of live music. But what started out as a hobby after a few years had turned into a monster.

“I was literally doing everything,” recalled Chris, “from booking the bands, making sure they were looked after and fed when they played the venue, designing the flyers and posters, right down to actually driving round Peterborough pushing envelopes full of flyers and a monthly newsletter through club members’ letterboxes to save on the postage.”

Eventually it all got too much and Chris called it a day and the last gigs were in 2009. But after a 14 year hiatus, on Saturday 18th November he’s bringing Club With No Name back to life in the city once again, at a different venue – Charters Bar on the River Nene.

“I’ve always loved the idea of using unusual spaces to host events and a converted barge is ideal," he said. “Playing on the night will be the notorious London based The Blue Carpet Band, along with Peterborough’s very own Destructors 82 and The Fyzz Wallis Band.

Tickets are available now, for more details go to either Charters Website or the Club With No Name Facebook group.

Check out these galleries from CWNN in 2004 and 2003