page_title: Newtown, New South Wales
section_title: Live music
hierarchical_section_title: Newtown, New South Wales / Culture / Live music
caption_attribution_description: New Theatre, Newtown, NSW. 542 King Street.
context_page_description: Newtown, a suburb of Sydney's inner west, is located approximately four kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, straddling the local government areas of the City of Sydney and Inner West Council in the state of New South Wales, Australia.
  King Street is the main street of Newtown and centre of commercial and entertainment activity. The street follows the spine of a long ridge that rises up near Sydney University and extends to the south, becoming the Princes Highway at its southern end.
  Enmore Road branches off King Street towards the suburb of Enmore at Newtown Bridge, where the road passes over the railway line at Newtown Station. Enmore Road and King Street together comprise 9.1 kilometres of over 600 shopfronts. The main shopping strip of Newtown is the longest and most complete commercial precinct of the late Victorian and Federation period in Australia. King Street is often referred to as "Eat Street" in the media due to the large number of cafés, pubs and restaurants of various cultures. Cafés, restaurants and galleries can also be found in the streets surrounding King Street.
context_section_description: Newtown has been a hub for live entertainment since the late 19th century. During the 1980s the many pubs in the area housed a thriving live music scene, notably the Sandringham in King Street. One of the best-known Australian bands to emerge from this scene was The Whitlams, who held down a formative residency at "The Sando" for several years. Musician John Kennedy wrote a tribute to the area in the mid-1980s. His single "King Street" name-checked familiar Newtown landmarks and local figures of the time, including "The Wire Man" (a local eccentric who collected wire and wire coathangers), Maurice's Lebanese restaurant, and the Coles New World supermarket, which occupied the site of the current Dendy Cinema.
  Throughout the 1990s it was particularly known as a centre for indie rock, with the suburb home to many musicians and several live venues. In the late nineties it boasted a handful of popular venues: Goldmans / Newtown RSL, The Globe, Feedback and The Sandringham, all of which had closed by the late 1990s. After its takeover by Petersham RSL Club, the former Newtown RSL reopened as a music venue under the name of @Newtown but closed in January 2011 due to financial losses.
  Live music returned to the Sandringham Hotel in 2005, and in 2014 it reopened as the Newtown Social Club, hosting music in an upstairs performance space. However, in July 2017 the Newtown Social Club closed and the venue reopened as Holey Moley, a licensed 18-hole mini-golf course designed to give punters "good content for Instagram", according to its developers. Another recent addition to Newtown's live music scene is the small live venue Leadbelly (formerly The Vanguard) at the north end of King Street, and the continuing popularity of the lyric-sized Enmore Theatre.
caption: The New Theatre
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-V1", "Image Orientation": "0", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2005:05:14 20:57:13", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "254", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "2300", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5451", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/250", "EXIF FNumber": "9/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2005:05:14 20:57:13", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2005:05:14 20:57:13", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "7", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "892", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "594", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "2176", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}