Madame Jojo’s, the music venue and cabaret club in Soho, London, has had to shut up shop. While there hasn’t been an official announcement from the owners as yet, White Heat, the promoters who have been running their club night at the venue every Tuesday night for a decade, have today put a statement on Facebook announcing that Westminster council has revoked the club’s licence. The action comes after the club was shutdown following a "serious incident of disorder" last month.
Say White Heat: "We know a lot of you have been waiting to hear about what’s been going on with White Heat over the past few weeks. About a month ago our home of ten years, Madame Jojo’s, was shut down due to a serious incident of disorder outside. On Thursday the council decided to revoke the venue’s licence rendering us homeless and its staff, our friends, out of a job […] We’ve been forced to cancel all of our foreseeable shows at the venue and it’s probably going to be impossible to have one last hurrah at Jojo’s for old times sake […] Over the ten years we’ve been there we’ve put a lot into how the venue looks and sounds to make it the best live experience possible and to try and be one of the best places to watch new bands in London. So it really is gutting to have to announce that White Heat at Madame Jojo’s is no more."
The incident that caused the initial closure took place on October 24, when members of the Madame Jojo’s staff, alongside those of nearby sister club Escape, assaulted a group of assailants, who had been throwing glass bottles at Jojo’s door, with baseball bats, as This Is Cabaret report.
Madame Jojo’s has played host to a rather impressive number of bands, including The xx, Savages, The Horrors, Factory Floor, Wild Beasts, Cold Cave, HTRK and more.
White Heat end their statement by adding that they’ll try to find an alternative means of hosting the night. "We’d like to thank every single person who’s come to a show and/or partied with us late into Tuesday night," they say, "the literally thousands of bands we’ve had play (many of you played three or four times – 9 in one case Young Knives!), all of the agents and managers and tour managers and engineers and door people and flyering people and journalists and everyone who, over the years, has had a hand in making White Heat what it was, including Cilla Black […] For now we’re going to weigh up our options and try to work out what we can salvage from this. We’ve put on a party every week for the past ten years so it’s in our blood, don’t expect to hear nothing."
