Bass Clef

British jazz venue, based in Hoxton, London.

The Bass Clef was a jazz club which ran from 1984 to 1994 in the Hoxton, London, an area which was, in the mid 1980s at least, profoundly unfashionable.

Bassist Wave Studios, featuring live jazz, african and latin music. A sister venue the Tenor Clef at 1 Hoxton Square was added in 1991.

At night Hoxton was dead, except for the Bass Clef, at that time a 200 capacity venue, which stood out from the surrounding area because it was the only building that wasn't completely dark.

The venue was a little more civilised than your standard rock venue, in that it had a restaurant that served food you could actually eat. More to the point, it also had something about it that made you feel you were getting more than the mass produced, rock ritual experience offered by most venues at the time.

It coincided with the (very) brief jazz resurgence in Britain of the mid-to-late 1980s, but became more dance-orientated as the area trendified around it.

All of the new generation of British jazz musicians played here, and some American guests, and with the acid house boom, there were also DJ nights.

The early 1990s recession killed the venues, with the receivers being called-in in February 1994, and the last music in May 1994.

The venues were bought by the record label Acid Jazz and knocked together as the Blue Note (capacity 480) which continued the DJ sessions between 1995 and 1998. (Noise complaints led to a move to Kings Cross in Mean Fiddler group premises, but a later dispute with Mean Fiddler led to the end of the Blue Note forever.)

Since 2002, the venue is now known as Bluu Bar.