The Zombie Hut in Corby is becoming increasingly popular as a rock venue, enjoyed by an alternative crowd with an unusual sense of humour.

The club has hosted many live acts, with some big names such as Carl Barat of The Libertines and Ian Brodie of the Lightening Seeds having played there. In addition, The Zombie Hut has also attracted up and coming bands such as ACODA, drawing music fans from near and far.

These music fans adore the fantastic RockBox jukebox, which was installed by Hire Jukebox. It has over 10,000 hand-picked tracks from a wide range of popular genres including Rock, Ska, Punk, Indie, Goth and Metal. The RockBox is the perfect jukebox for venues that don’t want mainstream chart music and want more of an alternative jukebox.

The Zombie Hut is also making the most of the free Venue Favourite service that allows the venue to put on any extra music requested by the locals to be added at no extra cost. This included local bands and artists.

They use the touchscreen display to advertise forthcoming events – so the customers can also use it to find out what bands are playing over the forthcoming weeks. The jukebox works well to create the right atmosphere before and after the bands come on. In fact, the RockBox is going from strength to strength – just like the venue.

“Over the past 12 months we have seen an increase in live music venues showing interest in jukeboxes,” says  Marc Bird. “We have sited three Rockbox jukeboxes from Sound Leisure, with music profiled by Soundnet in venues that are particularly music-orientated, and this has paid dividends for both our business and the sites themselves.

“This may seem ironic, but in my opinion the reason for the success of jukeboxes in live music sites is that these venues are putting in more effort in to improve their business than most other pub landlords. They are constantly working to advertise and promote their venues, in the hope of getting people out during the week – and it’s working.”

The latest promotional tool used by the Zombie Hut has proved to be a rather unexpected success. In fact you could say he has taken on a sort of un-life of his own. Ari and Roddy, the owners of the venue installed a dummy zombie in the club for Halloween weekend. He proved to be so popular with the guests that they decided to keep him.

But they were as surprised as anyone when they found that the zombie had been given a name and his own Facebook page by an unknown fan! Christened Jeff Hut, the dummy is now a major draw for the crowds who vie to take the most ‘unusual’ pictures with him and post the images via social media.
Jeff Hut is now trending on Twitter as well as Facebook and he has become something of a local celebrity. But clearly this is not down to his good looks!

“If you visit the site, you would never imagine that the building used to by the Corby Rugby Club, the owners have made such great efforts to transform it into a rock venue, with memorabilia the RockBox and of course Jeff Hut,” adds Marc.