Review Scene: Bakehouse Studios 25th Birthday – Leaps and Bounds Festival, 16th July 2016

What is a birthday the celebration of? Your mother doing the hard yards and launching you into the world? A commemoration of the birth of the legend that is you? The marking of another year flown by? Perhaps it’s all of the above with a good side helping of the sentiment ‘God I’ve survived another year despite all the odds!’

Bakehouse Studios has survived for 25 years, and along the way has become so much to so many. At this point in history no one could imagine the Bakehouse ceasing to exist because Melbourne’s music and art creatives breathe new life into it every day.

Bakehouse is its history and its present too, and if walls could speak we’d be held enthralled by tales of the early days of the building’s incarnation as a carrier’s business, a factory and then a tailoring business. We’d hear tales of the bands who’ve found inspiration there like The Meanies, Cosmic Psychos and Spiderbait. We’d hear the walls delight in the artworks painted on them by local people, and convey pleasure in the creative juices that well up within their warm, un-corporate-like ramparts.

If the Bakehouse had lapels it would proudly raise them in honour of the many musicians who prefer to rehearse, record and hang out there, rather than anywhere else. The spaces feature in many a film clip and documentary, and its owners are given the honour of speaking about Melbourne’s music scene, and helping to save it when the greedy developers attempt to slice off this city’s musical soul building by building.

In true Bakehouse style, its 25^th birthday was marked by joy and total lack of pretentiousness. A BBQ that friends and neighbours could partake in for a measly gold coin donation, beers from the local Mountain Goat brewery, and bands for which tickets sold out in a matter of hours, came together in right spirit to make this birthday a ripper.

Adelita had lost her voice, so it was down to The Meanies, The Drones, Blank Statements, Cable Ties, City Calm Down, and Die Roten Punkte among others, to keep those birthday candles alight and get us to cake time.

Punters hope to be at the 50^th birthday celebrations of Bakehouse Studios. It may look a lot different by then, but we can bet that the same spirit of creativity, nurturing and energy is what will still be driving the place in the years to come.