CHRIS RICHARDS: The Basement started back in 1972 approximately, and it was started out by a couple of guys, one of them a musician, the other one who was in the restaurant business and they decided that rather than work for other people that they'd open their own club.

I think one of the reasons why I got involved with The Basement was many, many years ago, back in 1973 roughly, I'd been to seen a concert at the Sydney Town Hall with the Modern Jazz Quartet. And I heard there was an after-party going on at a place called The Basement. So I came down here & took one look, it used to be located next door of course, and I took one look and fell in love with it immediately.

TIM READ: When people come to The Basement they come to The Basement for a total night out, because we're not just a music venue, although it's about the stage, we're also about having dinner, we have a kitchen, we serve a 3 course meal, we have 3 different bars, so it's a complete night out for people.

CHRIS RICHARDS: The club was designed with the band in mind. I mean primarily that's what we're here to present and we try to present it in the best possible way, hence the way the stage is designed. It comes out into the room, people can sit around it and I think that's the key to it, the fact that most venues or performance spaces you've got a long thin room with a stage at one end and you know, tapering right to the back of the room. I think the intimacy is what they like, the fact that they've got people on their right, on their left as well as in front.

It's hard to say a specific highlight because there have been so many over the years, and that's one of the things about working in this business. You never get tired, you never get bored, because there's always something new on the horizon.

TIM READ: Probably one of my favourite shows at The Basement, the favourite bands to see at The Basement, is a band called Dig, which I think a lot of people would associate with the venue and in some ways the success of The Basement and the success of Dig mirrored each other. They were one of the first acts I saw down here, and they actually recorded for the record company, so the chap who'd signed them, a guy called Adam, dragged me down to see them at The Basement, brought me in the back and sat and saw them and they were fantastic, and amazingly in some ways the wheel's come full circle because they re-formed just this year and did a couple of amazing shows here which sold out, people hanging from the rafters to see Dig, so Dig are probably, for lots of reasons, historical as well as musical.

A venue like this helps bring out the best in its local music community, but also provides a venue for overseas music. It's a very long way to come but through having a facility like this you get to see someone like Roger McGuinn from The Byrds play solo shows, like Jimmy Webb play solo shows, some of the great music writers and it's fantastic to see legends like that really close up.

CHRIS RICHARDS: if you remember the night that I got a phone call, I think it was a Wednesday afternoon and I got a phone call from somebody who claimed to be Prince's manager, and saying they'd like to come down & have the after-party at the club. And I sort of thought, yeah this is going to be one of those jokes, or somebody's going to say you know, ha-ha, gotcha. Not at all, you know, we had Prince down here and the customers that came in were absolutely amazed at the fact that on stage they were seeing Prince. Now people were wandering around the club just absolutely amazed that there were able to witness that in such a small venue.

TIM READ: That's the other thing about a space like this. It relaxes people, it's more of a performance than merely a show, and artists like James Morrison who are so talented, it gives them the space to broaden out. So he always puts on a fantastic show.

CHRIS RICHARDS: He's a great entertainer in fact. You know, he has the audience in hysterics sometimes and I think that's an important part of a performance. And I also think that that is something that happens easier in a place like The Basement than it would do in a concert hall. And I mean his nights are remarkable. He plays just about every instrument, I think I've seen him play bass as well, so he's an amazing talent.

TIM READ: Back in 2000 we formed a partnership with a group of people who built a studio right next door. Not just a sound studio, but a vision studio as well, a TV studio. Through that we were streaming on the web, you could log on in China, in fact some our biggest audiences were in China, log on and watch shows live from the stage of The Basement.

CHRIS RICHARDS: I think live music venues will be around for a long time to come.

TIM READ: Live music at least in Sydney has grown in popularity over the past 5 or 6 years. To be able to find a venue like this, where you've got live music 6 or 7 nights a week, 12 months a year. We run 350 odd performances a year, that's still uncommon in the other major cities in Australia. But certainly what we do, music for grown-ups, as the baby boomers have moved up on through, they've kept that habit that we all took on when we were teenagers or at college, university and whatever, of going to live music, they're still there. Maybe in a way that our parents generation weren't. It's very important.