FANGIRL Online: Marshall’s Dead Venue Sessions teams up with Sweet Pill to bring accessible spaces back to the fans
Photos by Cheryl Dunn
From CBGB’s in New York to the London Astoria in the UK - even The Smiling Buddha Cabaret in my hometown of Vancouver, Canada — legendary music venues are closing down all over the world. Every corporate buyout and noise complaint chips away at the spaces that once allowed us to meet, connect, and lose ourselves in the music. If the barrier to entry keeps getting higher, how is the new generation of fangirls supposed to find their community? Marshall’s Dead Venue Sessions aims to spotlight this growing problem and amplify artists as they ask the daunting question: Where can we play now?
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit us all in 2020, it really solidified the already massive gap between mainstream artists and everyone else. The arenas weren’t going anywhere, and although major artists took a hit too, no one was affected like the DIY and underground music communities. The venue my husband used to run is now an empty gravel pit with a condo proposal posted up around it. These spaces aren’t funded by Live Nation or billionaire investors so they are always the first to get axed, leaving us with nowhere to go and nowhere to play.
“Hopefully, the new generation can keep creating new spaces when old ones shut down,” says Zayna Youssef, vocalist of Philadelphia emo outfit Sweet Pill. Youssef and her band are featured in the latest instalment of Marshall’s Dead Venue Sessions which focuses on storied Philly punk venue Stalag 13, which shut its doors in 1999 and has since become a gym, aptly named Body Rock.
Renowned for hosting bands like Dillinger Escape Plan, Refused, and many other pioneering hardcore acts of the late 90s, it’s fitting that Sweet Pill got to bring Stalag 13 back to life, even if just for one day, with their performance of their song “No Control.” The emo outfit filled the space with noise and energy in a way that I imagine the walls have craved for decades. While the building’s heartbeat flatlined in 1999, in 2026, Sweet Pill came in and yelled, “CLEAR!”
“It might be a gym now, but anything can be a venue.”
-Sweet Pill
The idea of hosting shows again at these now dead venues is inspirational. It’s easy to feel defeated in an industry (and a world in general) that feels as though it’s actively working against you, trying to silence you. Captured by acclaimed documentary filmmaker and photographer Cheryl Dunn, Dead Venue Sessions explores three dead venues across the USA to highlight the importance of independent live music. As if streaming wasn’t already destroying the logistics of being a musician enough, now small and mid-sized venues are taking a hit. But what if Sweet Pill are right, that anything can be a venue? What if we don’t need venues, just willingness to see any space as somewhere music and community can thrive.
When I started going to shows in the early ‘00s, Ticketmaster was a physical place you would go line up at to buy tickets. Scalpers still existed, but there weren’t any bots or resale sites to drive the prices up so high you needed to take out a second mortgage. Punk shows often had ‘ask a punk’ in lieu of any real address to deter narcs and cops from shutting the show down. And, of course, there was no streaming. You want to listen to a song? You have to go buy the CD - or get a virus on the family computer trying to download it from LimeWire. Now, I’m not saying any of this to be like, in my day it was so much better, because the music industry has always been flawed and broken. I’m saying it because I believe we, the fans AKA the consumers, have more power than we think we do. If we can take what we’ve learned from the past and combine it with the knowledge we have today, we can at least be more conscious consumers and thus, more conscious fans.
I worry that with the instant gratification and ease that technology has brought us that we are favouring the path of least resistance even when we know it’s going to shoot us in the foot. It’s increasingly difficult for artists to profit off their own art in the age of streaming, especially as it becomes less convenient for fans and listeners to find alternatives. It wasn’t quick and easy to wait in line for tickets all day but it created community, and it sure paid off when you got the seats you wanted.
So what do we do now? We need to metaphorically put our apps away and get back in that line together. It’s important for anyone who loves music to support their local music community as much as they can.
You want to see your favourite pop star play that huge arena? Go for it, post that selfie with the girlies at the big show. But then also go to a local show and buy their merch and be just as proud to post that you were there supporting local music. Do you have access to a space that could also be a venue in its off hours? Offer it out to the community. Have a house, in this economy? Please throw a house show, I beg of you. We need real patrons of the arts more than ever because it starts and ends with us.
