ollywood has a talent for not taking risks. Every year it seems like more and more films are sequels or remakes, sequels to remakes, or remakes of sequels. Studios don’t want to spend millions of dollars on something that’s new and unheard of. They want to spend their cash on projects with a built in audience like, say, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, or something that’s already made a shwack of cheddar in another foreign market version (The Ring).

That’s why I was more than a little apprehensive when I heard that the immortal indie club, The Republik, which hosted the likes of everyone from Fishbone to Grandmaster Flash to SNFU, would be re-opening its doors at a new location, after a 7-year hiatus. Most cool, renowned things that have run their course should probably stay that way (Star Wars Episodes 1, 2 and 3 anyone?); bringing them back tends to suck the cool right out of them.

But let’s survey the indie venue scene in one of the most supposedly conservative cities in the country. We’ve got Broken City, the HiFi, the Ship & Anchor, and the Marquee Room (among others, and now, The Republik) – all of which are busy joints.

Why reopen the Republik when there are other places that fill that same alternative music niche sufficiently?