First Truda Concert at Fire Club – almost 400 fans
For every generation there was certainly a place in Bucharest where something happened that never happens anywhere else…In the 70s and 80s, the places were the Students’ Culture House “Grigore Preoteasa” and the famous Club A.
The 2000’s were definitely won by “Fire”, a club located in the historic centre of the capital. Somewhere on Gabroveni Street in the Lipscani area there has been a place synonymous with a generation since 2000. The place where non-commercial music, or let’s call it “not accepted” by other clubs for commercial reasons, came to life for the first time.
The place where those who wanted to live, feel and experience something different came weekly, and “Fire” became a club where many of the kids of that time found themselves, and after gradually identifying with the place, they made friends and today we can practically talk about forming a family. The “Fire Club” family.
The 2000 generation bands such as Emil, Coma, Crize, AB4, DoDiez or Pistol cu Capse took the stage in this club for the first time, starting their careers and basically their own stories. After that, one after the other Implant for Refusal, Zdob si Zdub, Vita de Vie, Parazitii, OCS, Suie Paparude, Nightloosers or Luna Amara played in “Fire Club”.
Many bands played in the “Fire Club”, and at one point playing in this place was a “must” on the business card of any self-respecting rock band. More and more, “out of town” bands have also taken to the stage at the Fire. The club in Gabroveni Street 12 was visited by bands like “Therapy?”, “Born from Pain”, “Nomeansno”, “25 ta life”, “Kultur Shock” or “Last Hope”, a delight for fans who didn’t have the opportunity to see such bands. “Fire Club” broke the pattern imposed by the rest of the clubs in Bucharest by organizing thematic evenings specially dedicated to musical trends that until recently were practically impossible to organize anywhere in Romania…
This is quality but non-commercial music. In other words without invisible gala clothes… Until “Fire”, no one had even tried to pay attention to musical genres of the quality that “Fire” has successfully promoted. Or rather, no one has tried what “Fire” has succeeded at first… And this has made “Fire” rise above the other clubs and really be a place where what happens in the West becomes possible here.
Rock and hip hop festivals where many people were introduced for the first time to what was happening in the “4 elements culture” were welcomed by everyone. “Fire Club” is a place where history was truly made in the early 2000s for underground culture.
If “Fire Club” didn’t exist, maybe many of the new generation bands that the public appreciates wouldn’t have come into existence…
But if I had to find a counterpart for “Fire” – even keeping the proportions – I would push the comparisons to the extreme and mention New York with its “CBGB” club and San Francisco, where the famous Gilman Street still exists. For Bucharest there is Gabroveni Street and more recently Covaci Street, and at numbers 12 (Gabroveni) and 7 (Covaci) is the leading “Fire Club”.
