Rather than whining about the swath of venues that have recently succumbed to Vancouver’s strict and expensive liquor licensing regulations, or picking up and moving to Montreal where everything is better, local music lovers are embarking on brave new adventures to indulge the habit these days.

Unique small venues have been popping up like weeds through the crumbling infrastructure of Vancouver’s music scene, sending fans scuttling down dark alleys, into old furniture factories and karaoke bars.

“Vancouver is the city of basement concerts,” says Laura MacDonald, Operations Manager of The Western Front, one of Vancouver’s oldest artist-run centres. “Why can’t we have access to good legal spaces?”

The story of the Front began with this question, when a small group of artists in the 1960s recognized a lack of stable art space. Sound familiar? They too had grown tired of illegitimate venues being busted, burnt down, bought out, or evicted, and realized that if they owned the space, they could never be evicted, even if funding ran short. They scavenged enough money to buy their current building at 303 E.8th Ave and moved in. “No one wanted to live here,” explains Laura. “They bought it for $48,000.”The space is huge, and full of life. As Laura describes the building’s original owners—a secret society called the “Knights of Pythias”—I am assaulted at regular mathematical intervals by the clicking of small turntables, blenders, and old lamps turning on and off in rhythmic sequence. This music project, built by Ujino Muneteru during a week-long live-in residence at the Front, represents a luxury most art spaces can only dream of. “The secret,” claims Keith Wallace in Whispered Art History: Twenty Years at the Western Front, “has been to maintain control of the space while working within the system.”

Not everyone has the luxury of controlling space, or working within the system. Although the Western Front has taken a more stable, government-funded route to success, other innovators in Vancouver must remain completely underground.

Not surprisingly, most underground venue operators did not want to be quoted or interviewed due to their precarious legal status. On the condition that she remain anonymous, one organizer agreed to speak with me about her space, which we will call “Frank’s.”

Home + Stage = Venue

When I call B, she is searching for electrical outlets. “I need more power,” she says, barely audible over the sound of a drill. Her space was not meant to hold a stage, or a sound system, or even an interview. When I arrive, we sit facing one another on two identical wooden chairs in the centre of a big blue room. Other than a guitar, speakers, and an answering machine plugged into the wall, the room is empty. Our voices echo under the high ceiling and we ash right on the floor.

B started Frank’s due to a combination of robbery and need. Her apartment was broken into this spring, which coincided with an art event she was trying to find space for. “There is a severe deficit of spaces for events. Everyone I talked to had either just been evicted or wanted to charge huge sums of money. I saw a For Lease sign on a piece of cardboard outside the space. So I said ‘Fuck this, I’m moving.”

Most underground spaces in Vancouver seem to be born of the same necessity, emerging artists “creating space out of what they want to see in their own lives,” claims B. “I felt a deficit of music and art spaces in Vancouver. I wanted to provide a small stage for unpolished works, the ones you won’t see in venues out purely to make money.”

B is understandably nervous about her space being discovered. But she is also aware of the necessity of these spaces, given Vancouver’s current musical climate. “I don’t feel like what I’m doing should be illegal,” she protests, unintentionally gesturing to a sign next to the door that reads Keep Beer Inside. “At first I was really paranoid. The sad part about living in a neighborhood the city doesn’t care about is….well…they don’t care. Nobody notices.”

At the moment, B lives here. She has no kitchen or shower, and compulsively apologizes for the belongings scattered about the front hallway in her attempt to locate power sources. This is a familiar situation for many beginning venues, and is often the only way to make them work financially.

Does she plan to become legit? At the moment, she is concentrating on paying the rent, soundproofing, improving accessibility, and occasionally eating meals. This leaves little money for licensing, which can run into the thousands of dollars and take years to complete. Applications must go through neighborhood notifications, public meetings, telephone surveys and more, costing upwards of $4000 just to apply. And if the time it took for the licensing staff to call me back is any indication (never), this might take a while.

And after all that, B would not be guaranteed approval. The city often declines or attaches restrictions to these licenses. “I worked in a restaurant once where one of our music nights had to be shut down,” she describes. “Why? People were dancing after midnight. The music wasn’t the problem, it was the ‘patron-participated activity’ stipulated in the license.”

I picture Vancouver attending a dance party with hundreds of other cities and spending the whole night leaning against the wall sipping Perrier. Is this where we are heading, as a city? Sometimes I think so. But then I walk into a place like Hoko’s Sushi and Karaoke on Powell.

“I Like Music.”

The first time I went to Hoko’s, I watched a band called The Screaming Females, ate two avocado rolls, and sang Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run. This is becoming fairly standard in Vancouver since Hoko began hosting live music shows at his karaoke and sushi bar two years ago. “A band came to me about playing here. I tried it. I liked the music. They were serious musicians, not all about money.”

The deal is simple. Hoko charges nothing for the space, sells beer and sushi, and bands take whatever they charge at the door. It’s simple, legal, and you get to see anarchist punks weaving their way through Cyndi Lauper covers at the end of the night. “If people come, don’t drink much, I don’t make much money, that’s okay. We help each other out, like a friend.”

This attitude is rare in a city where commercial venues and restaurants see music as a business option rather than an end unto itself. Hoko hosts for simple reasons. “I like music. Any kind of music. Good music.”

He screens bands for quality before shows, but realizes the importance of making space for emerging musicians. “Young people, if they don’t play music, what do they do? They go to nightclub,” he says. We cringe.

He also realizes that emerging musicians in the punk and indie-rock scene are generally broke. “If you charge too much, they won’t come. Where else can you get three-dollar beer and see music? It is hard in this city.”

But what can we do, I wondered, to change things? He paused, raising a finger in the air. “MAKE THIS CITY MORE LIFE!” he said. Seconds later, a miniature Hoko sprinted out of the kitchen and ran across the stage, ending our discussion.

Hoko is right to challenge our city’s no-party attitude, but he, like many others, is probably unaware of the multitude of small shows forced into underground corners.

Lacking the ability to advertise, audiences for these shows are limited to people who know people. If you are new to town, or stop talking to your scenester friends for a month, you are out of luck. If you are disabled and can’t make it up the stairs and through the alley, you are out of luck. If you forgot that the venue burnt down and the show moved to someone else’s basement, you are out of luck.

However, if you are trying to put a damper on new and interesting music in this town, you are also out of luck, because the music keeps on going. You just might not be able to find it.