Audiences at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club won’t be dancing cheek to cheek anytime soon, with the famous London venue having introduced a raft of “Covid protocols” (some already required by the Government, others not), including mask-wearing, facial thermometers and protective screens. Here’s a list of new rules from their website.
- Face coverings must be worn when entering and leaving the venue or anytime you are not seated. Staff will wear face coverings.
- Upon entering the club there will be an optional sanitiser station and a facial thermometer which you will be asked to use;
- All guests must scan the Track and Trace QR Poster on arrival at the club.
- We have removed entrance furniture to ease congestion in and out of the venue;
- We have increased our cleaning system using medical grade sanitiser on all surfaces;
- We politely ask customers not to bring excessive baggage that needs to be checked into the cloakroom to ease congestion upon entering and leaving the club;
- Increased hand washing of staff and staff health declarations;
- We have gone cashless. Your PDQ machine will be cleaned between each use;
- We have reduced capacity to 50% to allow for spacing between guests;
- We have adapted our air conditioning system to ensure there is 100% fresh air being circulated in the club;
- We have installed some protective screens in certain areas.
As if this wasn’t enough, the Club points out that these are “just a few” of the measures which it has introduced to ensure the safety of its staff, musicians and audience members. Incredibly, it says that this can all be done while “maintaining the atmosphere of the club”. Yeah, right!
If all (or most) live entertainment venues return to action in this manner, their post-lockdown recoveries could well be short-lived.
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Hi all . . . For an alternative in the London area you could try the Cavern Freehouse in Raynes Park. Don’t know anything about restrictions – their website says ‘5 weeks of limited crowds then *NORMALITY*’ . . . possibly a bit optimistic, but sounds like the right sort of spirit.
Tomorrow night (Fri 28th) features ‘Ken Pustelnik’s GROUNDHOGS’, a most sceptical band! No Tony McPhee, I’m afraid, but a 4-piece rockout unit with the original drummer (Ken P) playing a load of those great tunes from 1969-1971. . . should be *ahem* interesting.
Why would anyone go to such a place. It won’t be long before they see the light, I mean their decrease in profits and do an about turn. They have been well and truly frightened. Well done to those indulging in scare tactics, another success.
I had a tradesman round a couple of days ago, who worked in private houses all through the lockdown.
He said that he & wife have invested in a large, garden hot tub with covered seating, outdoor heaters, lights & music, plus a fridge.
Every third week, two couples come to them. On the other two weekends, they collect at one of other of they’re friends “garden bars”.
Said they really like their small gatherings & don’t plan to return to pubs unless & until all measures are removed.
Up to now I’ve been very sympathetic towards the plight of the hospitality sector. However, any venue that insists on foisting this nonsense onto paying punters when it’s just not necessary any more deserves to go bust as far as I’m concerned. One thing’s for sure, they won’t be getting any of my trade.
Up to now I’ve been very sympathetic towards the ongoing plight of the hospitality sector. But quite frankly, any venue that insists on foisting all this nonsense onto paying punters when there really is no need any more deserves to go tits-up. One thing’s for sure, they won’t be getting my trade.
I’ve just emailed RS’s with my despairing reaction. I told them their venue sounds like a Swiss clinic.
I hope they won’t be another of Ferguson’s casualties.
As far as I’m concerned these venues can do one! I won’t be giving them a penny. I won’t jump through these unnecessary hoops.
This Jazz Club wins the prize for most woke business in the world. Apparently Jazz fans are all about following the protocols and doing what the Man says.
Not much fun if you have to go through all that crap. Stay in with a few records and a good supply of beer. Invite some friends and make your own speakeasy.
Sure. though I do think, that the first place bold enough to say: ‘we’re ditching the theatrics, any homosapienophobes can simply stay at home..’ will live long and prosper. 🙂
Jazz meets Dystopia lol.
I do think if people who would ‘normally’ frequent these kinds of places emailed them explaining that whilst they can understand some level of precautions being taken in the current climate, their current system of viewing the paying public as radioactive means you won’t set foot in the place.
Even with all the ridiculous precautions they have planned, I imagine only desperate jazz enthusiasts will give it a go. No doubt once will be enough for them too!!
The end of a pandemic is almost always a social phenomenon. Not a medical or scientific or even (in our case) a legal/Governmental one.
Covid-19 won’t be over when Boris Johnson, or Chris Whitty, or Anthony Fauci, says so. It will be over when enough people get tired of playing silly covid games and just start getting on with life. When the benighted fools wearing face masks in the street begin to understand how ridiculous they are. When they realise how much their paranoid idiocy is costing them in terms of lost life experience.
I’m not going to worry about what delusions the managers of Ronnie Scotts’ Jazz Club might harbour. Society, and events, will pass them by soon enough.
Agreed. And if the comments in the Daily Mail (yes, I know) and other places are anything to go by, people seem to be waking up rapidly. It’s very encouraging.
The young will wake up quickest and might tip the balance. They don’t have the most to lose, but they have the most to never potentially gain.
That picture just looks
Absolutely
And utterly
Ridiculous
Bankruptcy beckons
Fast they deserve it.
Unfortunately, this is typical of venues across the country encompassing the arts, sport and hospitality. Businesses are quite clearly making up their own rules over and beyond any actual government guidance.
Now, there are two reasons for this…they either think they are doing us a favour because they actually believe that people who want to go to such venues are absolutely terrified and therefore won’t set foot in them unless rules are in place to reassure and pacify them. Or they think that the rules are necessary to avoid fines or closure by the authorities. Either way, they have all rolled over and let this happen with barely a whimper and a disappointing lack of fight or rebellion.
I received an email from a county cricket club I am a member of, “welcoming” back fans, but then followed a long list of restrictions, rules, do’s and don’ts and a code of conduct you are required to follow under threat of expulsion. This is to watch a county cricket match in the open air that will be attended by a few hundred die hard fans at best in a ground with a capacity of 10,000. I emailed the club telling them… Read more »
With no standing at the bar and half the seating gone, it won’t just kill the atmosphere but kill recovery. Unless pricing most out of entry is their plan.
They will end up subsidised, sucking on the tax payer as ‘they had no choice but to follow the government guidance’.
Somewhere not to go, hope many feel the same
They’ll soon exclude unvaxxed as well. They can have it. Sounds utterly awful.
I always wanted to visit Ronnie Scott’s but now I never will.
Jazzmen used to be known as rulebreakers and non-conformists, Eddy “Lockjaw” Davis supposedly saying he became a jazz musician because he saw them smoking, drinking, getting up late and having lots of girlfriends so he chose that path for himself.
I wonder what his school’s career officer was like?
In Rock music there’s the legendary Keith Richards who I’m sure has been dead for several years but nobody has told him.
When the world ends the only things left will be Keith Richards…and some cockroaches.
Deserve to go under unfortunately.
Used to go to Ronnie Scott’s a lot when I was younger. It was dark, smoky, hot and a bit cramped – what you would expect from a traditional jazz club, known the world over. People went for the atmosphere. They won’t anymore!
40 years ago I sat in the lobby of Rusacks Hotel, St Andrews as the ex-head girl of Benenden and my then wife asked Ronnie Scott why he had ‘double dipped’ for his expenses at St Andrews Festival and a gig in Edinburgh to rip off a little student festival. This all feels pretty familiar. Not cuddly people at all.
Think we may give it a miss.
How do they think they will attract anyone like this???
What on earth would possess you pay good money to be treated like this?
Nothing
Last week, me and the ball & chain called at one of our (once favourite) locals to find that they’ve now imposed a regime that’s not far off this description of Ronnie Scott’s. Not quite as bad – but close.
We swiftly moved on to another of our locals, where the atmosphere and regime are altogether more relaxed to the point of *almost* feeling like normal. Some lip-service being paid here & there to “The Rules”, but not to the point of being completely off-putting.
Guess which boozer we’ll be frequenting from now on, and which one we won’t be going back to?!
Cripes a’mighty. I should think Ronnie Scott would be spinning in his grave at this crap. Another venue killed by these weedy folks. A sad fate for something started by an unconventional pioneer of modern jazz in the UK.
Goodbye Ronnie Scott’s. You fulfilled a vaulable function before you cowed to utter madness.
Used to hang-out at Ronnie’s in the 70’s most nights till 3am when I should have been studying at uni, and was a regular visitor over the years, but won’t be back there anytime soon. Those new regs are no way to operate, the fun has gone. Play ‘The Last Post’!
I wonder if, outside the picture above, his saxophone is also wearing a face muzzle?
Haha I just posted the same comment to my WhatsApp lads chat – only N3 filters will do!
Does make you wonder if they realise where the air goes…..
Mask that damn saxamafone
I demand the chairs have seatbelts!!
can’t be too careful.
And you must wear your seat belt when going to the lavatory, attaching it to the tank.
Ditto Crash helmets.
And Crash helmets.
and Air Bags
I wanted to book 2 tickets for Andrew Lawrence gig in Camberley.
I would have claimed my exemption, of course, and turn around if that was not accepted.
Maybe someone who went there or to Ronnie Scott’s can let us know how that was handled?
(The booking process was too cumbersome, I donated him the 30quid instead.)
Businesses that do this can sink. Buh-bye!
And you really think you’ll be left with something worthwhile?
Well – if you like derelict bomb sites and pathological solitariness …..?
I work in the arts so am not unaffected by this, but things are so screwed up in my opinion that quite frankly I’d see it all go and see myself lost to it simply to drive home the point that being a sociopathic coward comes at a grave cost.
There will be a renaissance, there always is, but I think that it may be up to younger generations. This society is well and truly lost imo and could do with a wake up call in the form of mass social bereavement.
Precisely right. When something or someone commits suicide, all that remains is a corpse. The interim stage of expiry after taking the poison and before death is just death throes.
Yes, if you’ve ever seem someone die this society is uncannily like someone riddled with cancer.
I’d say Leukaemia to be exact.
Something there to defend the rest of the body/nation, but grows out of size, yet become totally useless at it’s defence role.
The state has gone metastatic during this lockdown.
Have a look at the mouse utopia experiments, social media has ushered in the end times, the vapid are rewarded and the rest give up.
I take your point – but wrecking balls and demolition charges work much quicker than bricklayers and masons.
I thought it was just my particular response – but many of the musicians I know haven’t often picked up an instrument – because the essential social component has gone, and group activity – the social core of music – has gone.
On the professional side, one family member has been lucky as working in a national company, and thus being provided with some protection. But – as you will know, many free-lancers are without work, and even at the top of the game, free-lance musicians have been looking for alternative employment.
That’s the wrecking ball in action.
Yes, destruction is easy, creativity is difficult. Many cultures have learned this and remember the lesson. Ours doesn’t. I blame centuries of empire. Theft is easy, hard graft isn’t.
I know a lot of musicians and many have reacted as you say, but then I know a lot who’ve actually made a lot of progress in this time and have actually taken music on board even more, myself included. I’d say I know more in this latter category, but their interest in music is for its own sake rather than social. They aren’t going to be contributing to the recreation of night life, although you might find them on YouTube.
I always said that the hard times would come after the ‘pandemic’ and people would look at me funny. Now they know what I meant. A lot of it is their fault, and they increasingly know it.
“Progress” has over decades apparently required the destruction or removal of previous progressive steps. As a mundane example, the Victorians made great progress in public hygiene, especially public lavatories. 150 years on, we apparently want to go back to people routinely having to relieve themselves in hedges and alleys, in absence of now-closed public lavatories.
They’ve been closing public toilets for years and the Covid event has added further impetus to this nonsense. This is something that you become much more aware of as you slip into old age.
I always said that the hard times would come after the ‘pandemic’
We ain’t seen nothing yet, for many of those who’ve risked the Covid injections, chronic illness and worse will be all that’s left.
I think you’ve put cart before horse (as is common with marxist “thought”). Because it was not worthwhile, it has gone bankrupt.
Exactly. The fact is both I and many others have got better things to do than frequent venues like this. They no longer serve their purpose. There’s work needs to be done elsewhere to sow seeds in fertile ground, not barren deserts.
The old jazz men are all dead now anyway. If you want jazz pick up yer guitar and make some goddamn jazz. Screw these people.
Still plenty of young jazzers. For example Shabaka Hutchings and his numerous groups – Shabaka And The Ancestors, The Comet Is Coming, Sons Of Kemet.
I think his best work is with Louis Moholo and his Four Blokes/Five Blokes/Six Blokes. Uncle Louis is now eighty and the other players much younger
Oh dear, another thumb-sucking fixation with irrelevant.’marxism’ instead of using intelligence.
In actuality, this disaster is one brought about to the benefit monopoly capitalists by ‘free market’ fanatics. Just look at the movement in the balance of resources.
You’ve got to vote with your feet. What’s the alternative?
Exactly. Ronnie Scott’s is now clearly run by morons for morons.
no, “woke” entertainment will get taxpayer “support”, just look how long the BBC has parasited upon the British people.
Not so, the arts have been systematically de-funded. What you might see left is woke, but even a lot of that’s gone and increasingly so.
This venue used to be such fun back in the day. Great atmosphere, great music, the guys that worked there were a riot. Sigh.
What do you think Ronnie himself would have had to say about this?