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Tag: Bon Marche

Venues

Aranui Tavern

The Aranui Tavern at 317 Pages Road was a working-class pub in Christchurch's eastern suburbs that became one of the city's most significant live music rooms from the mid-1970s through the 1980s. Bon Marché and The Newz held a three-year residency from 1978 to 1981, nurturing emerging acts including Pop Mechanix and the Dance Exponents — whose own Aranui residency led directly to their Mushroom Records signing in 1982.

Venues

The Fire House Nightclub

The former Sydenham Fire Station at 293 Colombo Street had two lives as a music venue: Wayne Manor from 1979, hosting Christchurch's early punk and post-punk scene in a BYO cavernous station space, and The Firehouse Nightclub from 1985 — a more polished club that survived a bomb attack and a gunman before ironically being destroyed by fire around 1990.