Riverside

Riverside was a music venue on Melbourne Street in Newcastle upon Tyne that operated from 1985 to 1999. It began life as a left-wing co-operative, Riverside Entertainments Ltd, with each member holding a share and a vote in how the club was run, a model that lasted until 1994 when it became a limited company, Riverside Operations Ltd.

The venue grew out of Newcastle's independent music scene of the early eighties, when a collective of local music fans worked with Newcastle Council to secure a home for bands that the rest of the city's circuit tended to overlook. Over its fourteen years it built a gig history to rival any venue in the north, hosting acts including Nirvana, who played their first show outside North America there, along with David Bowie, Radiohead, the Pixies, Pearl Jam, Oasis and many more touring and local bands.

Alongside its reputation as a live venue, Riverside also ran a regular run of club nights that gave Tyneside clubbers somewhere to dance once the bands had finished. These included Bliss, Woosh, The Bing Bong Rooms, Scarlet Weasel, The Palace, Viva and the house night Shindig, plus a one-off goth event, Snakebite & Black, that later became a long-running fixture at Rockshots. Shindig in particular became closely associated with the venue; its promoters, Scott Bradford and Lee Melrose, later said their best years with the night were those spent at Riverside between 1994 and 1999.

With its battered décor and famously sticky carpet, Riverside had the feel of a working venue built by and for music fans rather than a polished commercial club, and it became a fixture for Newcastle's indie, alternative and grunge crowd through the late eighties and nineties. The building was sold in 1999, bringing the original Riverside to a close, and the site reopened as Foundation nightclub from 2000 to 2005, carrying Shindig and other house nights forward. The Melbourne Street building is now used as office space with a private gym, and the Riverside name was later revived in 2010 for an unrelated venue and nightlife spot elsewhere in the city on the Quayside.