Venue: 12 Bar Club
Town: London, GB

The 12 Bar Club was a music venue in London that opened in 1994 on Denmark Street - known as Britain's "Tin Pan Alley" - just off Charing Cross Road and close to Soho. Some of the most famous musicians and groups to play at the 12 Bar before they reached a wider audience include Adele, Martha Wainwright, Joanna Newsom, KT Tunstall (all of whose first London dates were at the 12 Bar), Damien Rice, Rolf Harris, Regina Spektor, The Libertines, Keane, Seasick Steve and Jamie T. Jeff Buckley also played an impromptu set at the 12 Bar before the launch of his debut album Grace. The Denmark Street venue officially closed 16 January 2015 as part of a redevelopment for the area, despite a lengthy battle to keep it open. Shortly after its closure, activists occupied the building and re-opened it to live music. Property owners attempted to evict the activists. The club relocated to Islington, shutting for good a year later. The original Denmark Street venue reopened as The Lower Third in 2022. The building was originally constructed in 1635 as a stable. It was later converted into a forge for the St Giles area that was used until World War I. (The fireplace from the forge could be seen at the rear of the stage and regularly housed the performers' guitar amplifiers. The new stage for The Lower Third is built to one side of the forge, revealing lower sections of it previously concealed by the 12 Bar stage.) The building then became a carpenter's shop until shortly after World War II, when it was converted into store rooms. It is a Grade-II listed building. During the 1980s, parts of the premises (later to become the area around the bottom of the stairs up to the 12 Bar toilets) housed science fiction/comic book shop Paradise Alley, with the entrance in the side alley connecting Denmark Street to Denmark Place (directly facing the rear fire exit of larger science fiction shop Forbidden Planet 2). The painted-over Paradise Alley store sign would remain over the former entrance unt