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Even before he was old enough to be allowed in, Londoner Sean Stanley says he was well aware Call the Office was the place to be if you loved rock music.
“I remember my babysitter saying she was going there and what a wild, great night she had, so it got on my radar as this destination for rock and roll and this place that you wanted to go to,” he says.
The now-closed concert hall, which shut down in late 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, will be the subject of a new documentary being directed by Stanley.
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Stanley, who said he’s old enough to have gone to Call the Office “when you could smoke” inside, in 2019 co-directed the award-winning documentary The Phantom of Winnipeg, which explored the love local fans had for Brian De Palma’s cult 1974 classic Phantom of the Paradise.
As a Londoner, Stanley said the decision to do a documentary on the landmark bar – a dingy place with a small stage and long list of young bands that went on to fame after playing there – was an easy one since it combines his love for documentaries, his hometown and music.
But he also wants it to show younger generations what made this particular venue, located at York and Clarence streets, so special for thousands of people during the years.
“Call the Office, to me, was the place in the city that I enjoyed going to the most,” Stanley said. “I loved it there, and I heard stories my whole life from other Londoners who referred to it as a second home.
“So, I kind of want to put together something that will make you feel like when you left The Office at night, thrilled out of your mind by the music and drenched in sweat.”
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For decades, Call the Office was the go-to place in London to see live music. It was also a place to see up-and-coming acts that would later become huge, such as the Tragically Hip, Nickelback, Blink 182 and Queens of the Stone Age. Most famously, Radiohead played there for $10 in 1995.
“That’s a nationally recognized music venue,” Stanley said. “It made London a place on the map.”
In more recent years, however, Call the Office struggled to attract the crowds needed to make the historic bar a profitable business. In 2020, about six months into the pandemic, the bar closed, leaving a big hole in the local music scene.
Its owner at the time, Darren Quinn, blamed the restrictions to slow down the spread of the virus for the decision to close.
Though the likelihood of it ever reopening seems small, Stanley wants his documentary to honour the history of the bar, of which he says he has “a lot of archival footage.”
Work on the documentary, being produced by rakehellrow productions and Secada Films, already has begun, Stanley said. His hope is it will be released in about a year.
A fundraising event to support the production of the documentary will take place on Saturday starting at 8 p.m. at Palasad SocialBowl on Adelaide Street North.
“We want the community involved,” Stanley said. “We need the community’s help to tell this tale, which is a tale of unity, and it’s amazing the support we’ve seen so far.”
Word of the documentary has kicked off a mini-wave of nostalgia on local social media and beyond. At Western University’s radio station, CHRW, the show Radio What Wave planned to play only songs by bands that played Call the Office during its Thursday broadcast (6 p.m. to 8 p.m.).
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