Tantra is an odd choice for a sweaty rock ‘n’ roll gig - especially a launch party for Dick Venom and the Terrortines' new single. This city centre venue promised much when it first opened – it’s luxuriously decadent style positively cried out for a clientele of lounge lizards and sleazy listening fans, but instead the venue went for the presumably more lucrative middle market of Nottingham’s fashion elite (if there is such a thing) – not the cool kids, but the tediously middle class bores who you’ll find in any trendy bar. Walk past Tantra on a Saturday night and you’ll find gaggles of attractive, well dressed and entirely vacuous women and the strangely Neanderthal men that such women always seem to attract. And for all its self-styled elitism, the reality about Tantra’s regular punters can perhaps be assumed from the fact that the venue only serves drinks in plastic glasses. No one does this from an aesthetic choice, so we have to assume that violence has blighted the evenings of the beautiful people.

It’s a pity, because Tantra is in many ways a remarkable place – with it’s erotic art, beds, red leather walls and little booths, it should be the ideal home for kinky clubs. Perhaps tonight may act as a tipping point for the venue. I hope so.

Unfortunately, being screwed at the bar does not help my opinion of Tantra. Heading for a beer, I checked the drinks menu to see just how expensive the expensive beers would be. All beers were £3.70 a pint, so I ordered a Guiness from the bar hipster who had seen me checking out the menu. Some time afterwards, I notice an illuminated sign at the other end of the bar, offering Guiness at £1.50 all night. Quite a difference. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that important – but when you already have doubts about a venue, being ripped off within five minutes of arrival doesn’t much help, and I found myself not in the best of moods all evening.

So, nursing my overly expensive beer, I catch up with a few friends and colleagues – the DJ girls from Stiff Kittens, promoter Will Robinson, performance artist extraordinaire Rachel Parry – before the first of two burlesque spots gets underway from the amusingly-named Glory Hole A-Go Go Girls. A brief technical hitch with music aside, these routines are slickly done, with generally cute girls performing cutesy-pie pseudo-strip routines that are very much in the tradition of neo-burlesque. I do increasingly have a bit of an issue with modern burlesque – the snobbish attitude and self-proclaimed superiority to other, more commercial (and more honest) strippers, the lack of understanding of burlesque history from many participants and the lack of real talent in much of the scene all cause me concern. But the performance tonight is fun, fluffy and entertaining, so those arguments can wait for another day. Having been asked to bring my camera along, I did try to film these performances (as well as the headline act), but ironically, although tonight’s gig was taking place on Light Night (a typically dunderheaded local council idea that apparently thinks that locals will still be amazed by the wonder of electricity), Tantra’s stage lights are pretty feeble and the results way too dark to film for much of the time.

The opening band are Crushing Blows, a two-piece supplemented by backing tracks, who bark out a determinedly angular sort of art-rock that is inoffensive but immediately forgettable. Their performance at least shows that tonight will be a rather mixed bag, musically, rather than all-out rockabilly madness. Whether that’s good or bad is a matter of opinion.

After another burlesque interlude, Practical Lovers take to the stage. If you’ve ever wondered what OMD would sound like with Terry Hall fronting and doing an Ian Curtis vocal impression – and haven’t we all? – then this is the band for you, as they run through a collection of 1980s synth off cuts while looking desperately cool (sunglasses indoors? Whatever next?). Your enjoyment of this band will probably depend on just how much you think the Eighties wasn’t a musical nightmare.

The night is topped by Dick Venom and the Terrortones, who open up proceedings with a ‘gorelesque’ routine from – I assume – less experienced performers (the Fucked Up Bitches, would you believe?) while the band’s new video plays on the big screen. Then, it’s the live show proper. When I reviewed their new single, I suggested that the band would doubtless be much better live than on record, and so they prove to be. Their brand of sleazy rock ‘n’ roll offers a refreshingly unpretentious alternative to the earlier bands, and in Mr Venom – possibly not his birth name – they have a highly engaging frontman. With a mighty quiff and (under)dressed like Frank N Furter, venom is not a man to be confined to the tiny stage, and spends much of the gig flinging himself out into the audience as far as the mic cable will allow, leering his way towards whichever young lady might find herself within leering distance (and on that note: there were several leerable ladies in attendance). He’s a born frontman, and the rest of the band sensibly don’t compete for attention, instead concentrating on pounding out an entertaining selection of sordid rock ‘n’ roll tunes.

The band encore with – somewhat appropriately – a cover of Electric Six’s Gay Bar, leaving the crowd suitably sated, and your humble correspondent at last feeling slightly more chipper. Though not enough to stop me from immediately exiting into the frozen and oaf-ridden streets of Nottingham to make my way back to Strange Things Towers, where an annoying BBC4 music documentary awaited…

DAVID FLINT