From Rave to Revival
Sunderland Council has given planning permission for work on the old Blue Monkey nightclub. For anyone who missed the rave era, the Blue Monkey was infamous for wild nights and louder music. It closed long ago, but its name still carries weight in Sunderland nightlife.
Immigration and Tensions
The city is changing, and the changes to the Blue Monkey are part of that. Sunderland is still a largely white, homogenous place, but immigration, new developments, and the expansion of the University have altered the dynamic. The city now attracts people to work and study, rather than pushing them away to “make it” elsewhere. That shift hasn’t pleased everyone. Some locals grumble about a more diverse Sunderland and dream of keeping the city white.
Enter the Redeemed Christian Church of God
But the Blue Monkey isn’t becoming a mosque, temple, or gurdwara. It’s being redeveloped as a church — the first new one in Sunderland for years. The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), a Nigerian Pentecostal megachurch, has owned the site for a while and is now investing in it. Their theology might be unfamiliar to many Wearsiders, but their presence signals a changing Sunderland.
Back to Bede
People often think of Sunderland as the city that built the ships of Empire, and later turned its back on the world to vote for Brexit. But Sunderland’s deeper story is about Christianity. Long before Brexit, Sunderland was a cradle of English Christianity, shaped by saints like Cuthbert and Oswald. Ships once came up the Wear carrying sacred manuscripts, copied in the scriptoriums of Benedict Biscop and the Venerable Bede. The Codex Amiatinus, a masterpiece of the Latin Bible, was created here, rivaling even the Lindisfarne Gospels.
The theology of an African megachurch would puzzle Bede, but the idea of Sunderland once again hosting different branches of Christianity would not. In its own way, the Blue Monkey’s latest incarnation — as the Sunderland Redeemed Christian Church of God — continues that much older story.
Were you a bit of raver back in the day, Jon?
I’ve never been to the Monkey, but I have been to the ‘After Dark’ and the ‘Colosseum’ – which I believe is now also a Pentecostal church.
I was a bit too old for the Blue Monkey, I was away at Uni by the time it got going.
Mods/Rockers, Hippies, Punks, Goths, Acid/rave scene. All had massive influences on UK life and politics. But theres been nothing since, almost 40 years since the last one. I think we are long over due a good counter culture, we probably need it now more than ever.
You might be waiting for a long time. The way music and culture works there won’t be another movement artistically or stylistically
Why do you think this is?
I was talking to my daughter a while back about it. I asked if there is anything kids at school are listening too, something that adults don’t. Here answer was no, or at least not that shes aware.
With all thats going on, people getting poorer, food banks, stagnant wages, inequality, and the rise of the right, you’d think there’d be something?
I think social media plays a part, but I can’t put a finger on it, maybe the internet in general. Are we too fragmented as a society?
Sadly I think you’re probably right, I don’t see a 3rd summer of love anytime soon.
Nothing gets time to develop any more. Any new idea gets commercialised and distributed before it has had a time to grow and elaborate.
Streaming services homogenise everything, similar chords, beats, algorithims.
Another factor is likely that high housing costs means that the risks involved in trying to establish an artistic career are too great unless you have rich parents.
Exactly right. That is true across all fields of the arts. They have become middle class careers. Which is why music is so dull.
The last time it was this bad was the 70s when public schoolboys invented prog rock