2004: THE BEAUTIFUL OCTOPUS CLUB GOES TO HACKNEY OCEAN

In 2004 The Albany in Deptford closed it’s main space for a year for refurbishments and we had to find a new home for the Beautiful Octopus Club.

A brand new venue called Ocean had just opened on Mare Street in Hackney. Ocean comprised of three different performance spaces, two live spaces and a studio space and our Beautiful Octopus Club was the first ever event to take over all three spaces.

There was a certain amount of risk because our audience had not really been to Hackney before, but we worked with the venue and insured that seven hundred people attended the first club night there in 2004.

In the photo is Mat Fraser, another Big 30 interviewee performing a track he created specifically for that club night called “Beautiful Octopus Sexy People”. Mat invited people to come on stage and gyrate on stage with him, which they did with great enthusiasm! Heart n Soul also performed a version of the show “Large” on the Ocean main space (The week after George Clinton and P-Funk All Stars performed there!) and you can see a clip of that performance here. 

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