The original Bunker was a youth project born in Borough Road but moved to Green Terrace in 1982 before finally settling in it's current home in 1983.
This building which once hosted gigs by The Clash and Billy Bragg, 29 Stockton Rd has a history synonymous with the creation of music in the North East...
The huge structure morphed from a bakery into a music factory in 1983, when the regions disenfranchised punk rockers flocked to the ramshackle building to see their idols playing secret gigs, whilst laying the groundwork that would lead to the formation of the next generation of post-punk bands.
It was from The Bunker that Frankie Stubbs and Leatherface led their earth shattering assault on the alternative charts in the late 1980s / early 90s, unwittingly sealing their fate as the grand masters of the Sunderland music scene, with their DIY approach to music making and an uncompromising attiude influencing a city full of kids who had been used to seeing and hearing records and bands who had no semblance to their own living circumstances.
In the mid-1990s, groundbreaking alt-pop group Kenickie launched themselves upon the wider world from The Bunker, sparking the career of TV starlet Lauren Laverne and the arrival of countless bemused A&R men onto the grey streets of Sunderland.
The late nineties almost saw the end of The Bunker, after local government officials decided that the only place in the city that had constantly supported grass-roots music and art was not worth funding any longer. Protest from the local community was phenomenal, and was joined by the late John Peel, who had taken a personal interest in the Sunderland music scene and donated a large sum of money in an attempt to keep The Bunker open.
Despite this, funding was withdrawn in 1998, leaving the city void of a creative nucleus and leading to the end of the line for many local bands and the folding of Bunker Magazine prototype, Pulse Magazine.
Enter two lads who’d misspent their youth playing in countless bands within The Bunker walls. Buying the building outright just before it was turned into an apartment block, The Bunker was re-opened in 2000. Within a year or so the local scene was again flourishing, and with the emergence of bands like The Futureheads and The Golden Virgins, The Bunker Magazine began in an effort to support and promote what was obviously the beginning of a new and exciting chapter in the musical life of the city.
The only recording and rehearsal studios in Sunderland are open 7 days per week and currently house Mercury League , Sheerdrop and The Former Cellmates among many others. With rehearsal prices from £4 per hour, and recording rates from £10 per hour, it has once again become the creative HQ for local musicians.
Encompassing a record label which is nurturing the region's most exciting upcoming bands, and a promotions wing which has attracted national acts such as Snow Patrol, Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, Kula Shaker and Kasabian to play in Sunderland, The Bunker is now again firmly at the forefront of the North East music scene.
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