The club was booked and run by Barry, with the help of Ollie Redmayne later in its life, along with a host of volunteers, friends and people up to no good.

It spawned three record labels, Baz McHat, Wilde Club Records and Jawbone, and hosted a huge variety of bands. As a provincial city the nights often gave people an opportunity to see acts who would have found it hard to play anywhere else in Norwich or indeed Norfolk at the time. It also offered support and somewhere to play for a myriad of local bands and musicians and indeed helped to launch the careers of local performers.

The main home for the Wilde Club was Norwich Arts Centre (NAC, formerley Premises) on St Benedicts Street but also occasionally occurred as itself or in other guises at The Jacquard on Magdalen Street, The Waterfront on King Street, and Fat Pauly’s on Edward’s Street in Norwich.

Wilde Club became an important facet of the social structure of the city and the county, much aped but never really bettered during the time it existed. Thousands of people attending over the 11 years it operated.

Part of the point of this is to try and start building a digital archive of what it was, what it gave the city, and how important it was socially in an area that at the time wasn’t terribly well served by venues which would host the sort of bands who performed.

This site will form part of an archive of various privately held collections of material; posters, flyers, photographs, ephemera and where possible sound and video recordings of the gigs held throughout the late eighties and through the nineties before it closed in 2000.

We are looking for any material relating to the events held, people’s memories, photographs, dates, stories and ephemera. We’d also like to hear from any local bands who cut their teeth on the stage at the Wilde Club.

Bands who played included Inspiral Carpets, Bob, Ride, Kit, Colorblind James Experience, Four Brothers, Boo Radleys, Moose, Slowdive, Catherine Wheel, Death By Milkfloat, Slab, Thee Hypnotics, Head Of David, My Bloody Valentine, Mudhoney, the Shamen, Nirvana, Curve, Cud, Mega City 4, Ash, Sleeper, Cornershop, Stella Maris, The Male Nurse, Magoo, Johnathan FireEater, China Drum, 60Ft Dolls, Heavenly, Snuff, Dawn Of The Replicants, Half Man Half Biscuit, Tiger, BabyBird, Muse, Oasis, Doves, Snow Patrol, Delgados, Urusei Yatsura, Prolapse, Coldplay, Lemonheads and many more.