3-way

Well, I guess you want some gossip. Ok. I recall a night i was working on the 1st floor. That's where everyone who had just been to the Hoey, or the Strawberry Hills, or some other venue would come and drink if they weren't paying to go up to the 2nd and 3rd floor. Many people would congregate there. It's where you went after a gig - seeing one or playing one.

The first floor stayed open latest - till 5am when i first started working there, later, for a spell, it never closed. Can't remember if this recollection was from 24 hour-ville or not, but i think its from 5am shut era. There was always a frenzy of last minute drinking, even @ 4.45, when the 5am close-down loomed.

Anyway, one night, must have been late...I'd say around 3.30 or 4am ...I'd been working the first floor bar and needed to use the loo. Went to the ladies at the back of the floor, behind the pokies, 3 cubicles inside. All multiple occupancy. All doors open. One had two people snorting drugs, probably speed. Another had someone vomiting, hair held out of the way by a friend. The third featured a couple "in flagrante delectio", the guy a well known guitarist, well known to the ladies, too ...Let's just call him Brad.

It was 3 way trouble for me, what did i have to do to get to a loo? Finally the first became free as the youngters ran out of speed. Aaah, just another romantic night at the Trade...

the stairs

Remember the stairs at the Trade? They brought vivid meaning to the phrase "sudden death". Modern fire restrictions would now probably preclude the kinds of crowds who would then inhabit the Trade. But those stairs...trudging up and down them, three flights, not that wide, maybe 6 feet? Not too bad early in the night, tricky when negotiated with multitides of drunken punters. Especially going down.

I'm sure quite a few guys would have memories of being "escorted" down the stairs by Animal, the Trade's infamous bikie bouncer...

And who could forget that tiny, coffin-like lift, just large enough to fit half a drumkit, that would take bands up to the 3rd floor?

first night

My first shift at the Trade. It was either late 1983 or early 1984. Someone with a strong recollection of gigs might set me right. I was a student at UTS, and had cut my barmaid teeth at several less than salubrious places that i won't commit to print. Then I worked for a few months at the Brittania Hotel in Chippendale, Thursday and Saturday nights...The Wet Taxis had residencies on Thursday nights at the Brittania, occasionally I worried that my serving Louis Tillet quadruple tequilas might not have benefitted his health.

The Brittania changed management and i got myself a job at the Trade. My first Friday night, as i recall... (has time murked the truth?)...had The Birthday Party on the 3rd floor; Ed Kuepper on the 2nd, and Died Pretty with their Friday night residency on the ground floor, not far from the poker machines. Yep, a venue where Died Pretty was the smallest act of the night, Ron Peno screaming to carpet, pokies, a few old geezers still chugging money into the machines, and the swaying youth of Sydney.

I worked the 3rd floor that night, crazy violent hellride music of Birthday Party, so busy i barely had a chance to look over to the stage.

If walls could speak...

Why this blog? I recall the 1980's, where bands was played in Sydney every night of the week. Where if you weren't in a band, or seeing bands, there had to be something seriously wrong with you. Sydney in the 80's was a Florence in the Renaissance vibe for live music. It had its key venues...the Strawberry Hills, Annandale, Harold Park, Stage Door, Sydney Cove ( worked there too), Hopetoun. But it seemed that everyone always ended up at the Trade, if not at the start of the night, when 3 levels of music could surely entice you; then at the grovelly end, when the 5am, and later, 24 hour licence lured many of Sydney's finest young libertines.

This is intended as a collective blog. We all went there. Drank there. Partied there. If walls could speak...

If anyone has photos, or sounds, or videos...feel free to post them. Only one thing i would say. Let's try, if possible, not to speak ill of the dead...