This is a site displays photographs taken by Steve Fisher of Nottingham. The Photos were taken at The Sandpiper Music Venue in Nottingham during the late 1970's. All photographs on this site are the copyright of Steve Fisher.

The Sandpiper was a Punk Music venue that had many well known punk bands appear, I went to several gigs there and took my camera. However as most of the time it had already been a long evening before we got to the venue the resulting quality of the images can be a bit suspect. This was not helped by the fact that virtually all cameras of that era were manual ( manual focus, manual exposure, manual winding ), which mixed with alcohol gave a vast scope for issues. Like most photographers at that time I was working mostly in black and white and processing the film myself.

Over several house moves, issues with storage ( including lossing some negatives ) and other incidents I have no real details of dates. As I am attempting to cataloge old photos I may find more images to add later. I have grouped the bands I know together, but these photos could be taken over a couple of gigs. Others bands are just called other band one, two etc. If you know the name of the band please email me the info. Also shown are many shots of people etc at the venue.

Sandpiper was an eclectic venue, it was a former discotheque. Located in the Lace Manufacturing district on a road called Broadway, the venue was based in a low ceilinged basement of a warehouse with limited ventilation (well I was told there was ventilation, but the way the camera was always steaming up seemed to disprove this). People smoked ( what they smoked was a different question ), The toilets were a major health hazard. The door policy was if you could manage to walk in, you could get in. The Music was loud ( ears still ringing the next day was expected ). The type of music played by the DJ's was vast - Punk, POP, disco, rock, poetry etc. People forget that, in the Sandpiper at least, the Punk movement was a kickback against the disco scene that had overwhelmed all other sorts of popular music. However most of the live music, but not all, was Punk. The quality of the live bands went from tearfully bad to brilliant. Now a underground car park, the Sandpiper music venue had a short but interesting life.

The images on this site are reduced in size and quality to reduce download time.

It is a deliberate choice to keep this page simple and text based, as many of the other pages on this site contain a significant number of images that can (depending on your connection speed) take time to download.

Steve Fisher can be contacted at SMF@SMFPICS.COM

I have had a few requests for copies of the photos, I will charge £5 per digital image. These images will be higher quality and cleaned up versions of the images on the site. But please note I keep the copyright of the images at all times, so if you want to use in publications etc you need to speak to me first.

This site was last updated: 18th April 2020 (add copies of all negatives I have to the page)