According to Drowned in Sound, The Independent's produced a list of its top ten venues. We say 'according to' just because we've yet to see it in The Independent ourselves but the DiS article was a decent enough excuse for Londonist to debate within ourselves our favourite venues.
The Independent list as quoted by DiS is below. We've put the London venues in bold.
1. Eden Project
2. Glasgow Barrowlands
3. Sheffield Leadmill
4. Belfast Limelight
5. London Bush Hall
6. Manchester Apollo
7. Nottingham Rock City
8. Leeds Cockpit
9. London Astoria
10. London Somerset House
The first thing Londonist staff noticed was the absence of the Brixton Academy. Could it be suffering from the association with a certain brand of lager? Yes, it's a big venue but that shouldn't disqualify it from the list, especially as it's got an effective slope which means Londonist has never had any problems getting a decent view. Plus it has those balconies which never fails to make us think of Romeo and Juliet (the play, not the Dire Straits song).
There was one dissenting voice speaking against the Brixton Academy. This same voice spoke up in favour of the Islington Academy
The ICA surprisingly drew a consensus thumbs-up view from the Londonist team ("Like being in a Borg cube but without the cheesy lighting."), even ignoring the extreme bias shown by one staffer who works part-time at the ICA.
Of the other venues featured in the original list posted on DiS, only the London Astoria featured in Londonist's own straw poll, with the other commonly-liked venues being the Electric Ballroom, Mean Fiddler/LA2 and the Barfly.
We'd be interested to see whether our readers' views concur with our own so feel free to make use of the comment boxes.
