Welcome to Native's new series, INSIDE, where we'll be taking a behind-the-scenes look at your favourite venues - finding out what makes them tick, how they came to be, and what they've got in store.

First up is Sticky Mike's Frog Bar. A favourite amongst members of Brighton's live music scene, SMFB has stood on Middle Street for nearly seven years. In that time, a whole host of talent has played in their intimate basement, including a slew of massive indie success stories - names like Japanese Breakfast, Porches, Yuck, Royal Blood, and Pity Sex. 

In addition to live music, SMFB runs regular club nights, videogame nights, comedy shows, and their regular open decks DJ night Spin Cycle every Thursday. Take this from someone whose job it is to ensure Native's events guide is always fully stocked - Sticky Mike's has an absolute shit ton of stuff going on every single day.

The people responsible for this are creative director Sally 'Dynamite Sal' Oakenfold, and bookings managers, Chris and Polly. We caught up with Sally and Chris to discuss Sticky Mike's rich history as a Brighton venue, their strategy when filling up their events calendar, and the mystery behind the venue's absurdist name:

Okay, wonderful, we're rolling. So, Sally, who are the people behind Sticky Mike's? What are their roles?

Sally: So it's me, kinda holding it all together, and then Chris and Polly, who run sugar-free and Acid Box Promotions, they do all the booking. Chris is sugar-free and Polly is Acid Box and they do all the live bookings and put on their own shows here, and then I just kind of hold it all together. I do most of the club nights...

So it's just the three of you who run the music here?

S: Yep, and then we have the managers who take care of the bars and that sort of thing.

And when did you guys start working here?

S: Sticky Mike's started... what is it, it'll be seven years in July, next July. So six and a half years.

Catch The Myrrors with support from Desert Mountain Tribe on February 21st!

Have you been here from the start? Could you go over what the venue was before you arrived?

S: Before I arrived it was called Jam. It had kind of been turned into a live music venue. I did a couple of club nights here as a promoter and I really liked the space and then - they weren't really utilising it - it was literally only open if there was a show booked in and then it wouldn't be open for the rest of the week. It was quite different then.

I really wanted to open a venue, so I put a proposal together to turn it into Sticky Mike's.

Did you come up with the name?

S: Yes I did.

Where did the inspiration come from? It's always stumped me...

S: Sticky Mike's Frog Bar was a venue in New York which I used to go when I lived in there briefly in the 90s. It was like a hip-hop venue, it was full of students. It was a kind of basement, dark, dingy, club, much like here, and I'd always said if I ever run my own venue it's gonna be called Sticky Mike's Frog Bar. 

Allegedly, it's what Jean-Michel Basquiat would have called a club if he had one. 

Basquiat?

S: He's an artist. He's an American artist; he's one of my favourite artists of all time. He's got a massive exhibition called Boom for Real at the moment. 

Chris: The crown!

S: Yes! So, Fall Out Boy's logo is based on Jean-Michelle Basquiat's. An untitled work of his recently became the most expensive work by an American ever sold at auction. Which, as an African-American, who started out being hated by the establishment, is a massive FUCK YOU to the art world - but it also makes me sad that he isn’t still here being creative. It sold for 110 million dollars.

Is he still alive?

S: No. He sadly died at the age of 27. But he produced a really prolific body of work, which, because he was originally a graffiti artist in New York City, wasn't really taken seriously. Yeah. He's my hero.

So you're carrying on his legacy with this venue.

S: Yeah. You know, they used to put on club nights, he used to DJ. It was all around the time of hip-hop being huge - there were these big hip-hop warehouse parties. He was a DJ, he went out with Madonna, there was all of that kind of early 90s New York City, hip-hop, graffiti, art.

I had no idea. That's really, really interesting. My next question, something we'll be asking everyone - with so many venues in Brighton, why do you think people choose to come here?

S: Because it's open late I suppose.

C: [Laughs] We have a lot of cool stuff going on. A lot of people really like the gigs downstairs.

S: And the club nights. I suppose we also play a lot more kind of alternative music to a lot of places - and at the weekends as well. I mean the whole idea with Sticky Mike's is that it's everybody's venue. It's not my venue. The whole point of it is that people were able to take ownership of it themselves.

What's been your most memorable event at Sticky Mike's so far? Seven years is a long time.

S: Goodness. Some of the gigs that are particularly memorable are... God I can't remember. Yuck! That was really good when they played, I enjoyed that a lot.

C: One of my favourite bands played here - Modern Baseball. They're a kind of North American Emo/Punk band. 

Were you responsible for booking that?

C: I wasn't actually.

But it must be quite nice to be able to bring bands that you want to see to Sticky Mike's.

C: That's the thing; it's kind of nice when someone else promotes it because it takes the stress of me and I can actually enjoy it haha. But that was one of the most memorable because they're one of our favourites. We were kind of all fanboying a little bit.

S: They made them a cake.

C: [Laughing] Yep, all the bar staff here made the band a cake in the pizza oven.

Did they like it?

C: Yeah they loved it. They had a good time.

S: Some of the Physics House parties with the Physics House Band, you know, Small Pond, they were really, really good. That was kind of a big experiment to see if something that wasn't cheesy would work for New Year's Eve. We put them on, we did a couple of New Year's Eve parties with live bands and DJs and they were pretty good, weren't they?

C: Yeah. Mad.

Have you got similar plans this year?

S: We're doing Dude Ranch this year for New Year's Eve which is live bands - a pop-punk/emo band party. I mean, the Physics House boys are too busy being the Physics House Band and Small Pond these days. But yeah, doing those parties was really fun. We did one in the summer and one on New Year's Eve, they were both really good.

Bitchcraft has been really good, which is the night Polly runs. It's primarily female-fronted or majority female focused bands. That's been really good. The precursor to that was Late Night Lingerie, which was showcasing lots of local bands, again as a late night thing, 11-3 rather than 7-11.

Catch Alt-Rock Trio Paceshiftets @ Sticky Mikes Frog Bar, Friday 23rd February!

And it works.

S: It does. It's quite hard work and it gets quite messy but it does.

What's your favourite venue/event that's not run by you guys? That you don't have anything to do with?

S: I still really like the Albert, the Prince Albert. You know, it's always been there. I really like the paint job they've done out the front, too.

C: This One's For The Crew put on a lot of shows I really like. Lout Promotions, I go to a lot of shows at The Haunt. I don't really have a preference, it's just about if there's a band I wanna go see. I guess I don't really get out of here much haha.

So I used to do a lot of the events listing for Native, and when I did I noticed that Sticky Mike's has a LOT of events. Sometimes three or four a day. How do you keep up with it all?

S: We just have to be really organised. That's why Chris and Polly do all of the live stuff, I do all the bar nights and the clubnights. Because of the layout of the venue here, you know we normally have an early show, a clubnight, and a bar night up here. You know, this isn't a pub. It's not somewhere people just come for a drink, we have to put on events, it's very event-driven, so you have to put on as many events as you can to get people in.

Sticky Mike's strikes me as quite an accessible venue for new bands and club nights just finding their feet - is this a conscious decision?

S: I suppose we're kind of... we are what's known as a grassroots venue where people can get their first step on the ladder. Things like Late Night Lingerie and Bitchcraft, some of the other promoters, this will be the first venue they've put shows on. The same with clubs, a lot of our club nights have moved on to bigger venues like The Arch and Patterns, which is a little bit sad.

It just means you have to find something else. You know, I think putting on club nights these days is quite a hard thing to do - to get people to go out, to populate something regularly. There's a lot if competition with bars and free entry stuff. But yeah, we've had a lot of club nights go on to other places like Freerange, Mute, 23 Degrees. They've all started here and gone on to other venues. 

We still have Between The Tropics, Dude Ranch, we've got some new things starting for next year which are quite exciting. We've got a reggaeton night which is happening in January and weve got some new pop nights starting.

In terms of bookings - how much is people coming to you looking to put stuff on and how much is you guys seeking stuff out?

C: I'd say the majority of it is people coming to us asking to put stuff on. We put in a lot of time going through it, getting more information, seeing if it's gonna be worth it or not. With us being 200 capacity, we're quite open to new promoters, giving people the chance, giving them the guidelines on how to run an event. A lot of times it's quite a frustrating thing but then you get these bands that are playing their first shows and their mates who are coming down didn't know about this place previously.

We've obviously still got the standard, reliable promoters that we always use, and it's really easy with them.

S: You've got to take a chance sometimes, to find some new talent, to keep it fresh. Although it's 200 capacity, 100 people downstairs is perfectly doable and looks fine so it's a good starting place for a lot of bands and promoters. But most people come to us with ideas. 

When you're looking through proposals of people that have come to you with ideas, what sort of thing do you look for? Are there any red flags?

S: We don't do pay to play shows. We don't do battle of the band type shows because they're usually not very fair on the bands. I don't really believe in battle of the bands contests.

I've never been to one myself, I've only seen them in 90s films.

S: Exactly. It's usually done on a similar format to pay to play, so the band that brings the most people does the best.

C: They're pretty poorly attended as well in general. A lot of times we get college students looking to put shows on so we have to check on the younger bands often if they're under 18.

S: A lot of European touring acts want to put shows on and I don't think they quite undertand that if we put on a band that nobody's ever heard of from somewhere in the back of beyond Austria, unfortunately no-one is going to come and see them. It doesn't work.

Is that one of the hardest decisions? Deciding whether or not something is going to flop?

S: Yeah. I mean it's quite difficult. We have done it in the past when you're just learning the ropes and it just doesn't work.

What do you guys plan to do with Sticky Mike's in future? What's the grand vision?

S: Well the venue is what it is. It would be nice to have a bit of money spent on it at some point in the future but we're quite happy being a grassroots venue, putting on new and upcoming bands. That's what we do, that's what we like doing. The next level is a whole different ball game really. This what we do, this is what we want to do really.

C: I think the more bands that come through here and have a good time, have good shows, they all want to come back, so it's growing in that sense and it's a cool place for people to do underplays - people that could sell out a much bigger venue but they want to play in a rammed basement.

So what events have you got coming up that you're most excited for? What are the big ones?

S: I've got a comedy night coming up which is sold out. I do it with a guy called Brian, we do a monthly comedy night, he's got some really big names down here. We've got Angelos Epithemiou playing and also some super-duper secret, very big name guests to play on the comedy night, so I'm looking forward to that.

Have they played here before?

S: They have. In the very early stages of their career. I think they met Angelos (whose real name is Dan) at a festival and they became pals, so that's how that came about. 

Right, last question is for both of you - what are you guys listening to right now?

S: I'm listening to whatever Chris and Polly are listening to basically.

C: I've been listening to Free Throw's album. They're a band from the states, they're coming back here in February. 

S: I've been listening to Bananarama because I'm going to see them next week at the Brighton Centre, and Dinosaur Jr because I'm going to see them as well. I've also been listening to St. Vincent and also Here Lies Man, who are playing at The West Hill Hall, which is a great venue.

Thanks you very much guys, this has been very enlightening!