Events
The first concert was performed on the evening of 16 May 1938, by the Old Royals Association, with Anne Ziegler, Webster Booth and several other soloists.
The hall has hosted a variety of events since its opening, although they are now mostly popular music based. In recent years the venue has been in competition for many of the bigger acts with Birmingham's o2 Academy, among others.
Despite this, the venue has attracted many mid-sized acts that have stopped at the venue on UK tours.
Comedians, such as Ken Dodd, Peter Kay and Jim Davidson, have appeared at the hall, which has also staged televised darts tournaments including the Grand Slam. Throughout much of the 1980s professional wrestling was broadcast live from the venue on Saturday afternoons. This became a noted part of English culture until American wrestling became more popular in the 1990s. British Wrestling returned to the venue in the 2000s.
Two long running club nights, 'Cheeky Monkey' and 'Blast Off' are held on Friday and Saturday respectively.
Friday afternoons see one of the largest ballroom and sequence dances in the UK. The hall has hosted dances since 1938, originally on Saturday evenings, when many top dance bands and orchestras have played to capacity audiences.
Read more about this topic: Wolverhampton Civic Hall
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“A curious thing about atrocity stories is that they mirror, instead of the events they purport to describe, the extent of the hatred of the people that tell them.
Still, you can’t listen unmoved to tales of misery and murder.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“As I look at the human story I see two stories. They run parallel and never meet. One is of people who live, as they can or must, the events that arrive; the other is of people who live, as they intend, the events they create.”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)
“This is certainly not the place for a discourse about what festivals are for. Discussions on this theme were plentiful during that phase of preparation and on the whole were fruitless. My experience is that discussion is fruitless. What sets forth and demonstrates is the sight of events in action, is living through these events and understanding them.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)