What is Offbeat?

"Want to dance to tracks by loads of cool indie bands past and present who never get played at the 'entertain-the-masses-with-bland-britpop-and-retro-and-drinks-promotions' discos which masquerade as indie nights?"
Offbeat Publicity, May 1998

Offbeat was began as an alternative to the mass-market orientated indie discos which proliferated post-Britpop, and has continued to plough its own path through over 25 years, in which the popularity of indie within mainstream culture has lurched up and down and up again.

Despite the continuing popularity of radio shows and blogs which champion new and original bands, finding an alternative to events that claim to be an 'indie' night but are just another 3 hours of 'student anthems' is nigh impossible - which is where Offbeat comes in. We attract a mixture of young and old, students and non-students, indiepoppers, slackers, punks, mods, C86-revivalists, even the odd goth. The only common thread seems to be wanting to drink a lot, request lots of and dance to their favourite records and pinch a few extra of our free lollipops...

We always bring over 30000 tracks with us, so there should be a good chance of hearing something you like within the classic indie, punk-pop and indiepop underground genres. You can request records on the night or in advance by email.

For a rough idea of what we play genre-wise pop back to the band list on our homepage or check out the playlists page, a complete listing of the records we have played over the past few years. Better still come along and find out for yourself!

To see what others have said about us, check out the press page.

Click here to return to the Offbeat homepage and site index