Thursday, May 15, 2008
WHAT'S ON HERE
LATEST:
Our wedding DJ will play anything but we've only got 3-4 hours and we're sure we're missing some classic songs - there's 80s indie, there's sixties, there's Madchester, there's Tom Jones, there's Britpop - but is there a Half Man Half Biscuit song you can dance to? - NEW
Wit and wisdom of Mark E Smith
Music
Camra branches' pubs of the year - UPDATE, includes Halifax, Huddersfield, Keighley, Soouthport and York
Summercross, Otley - latest
Pub news
You can keep the Orient Express - I got a South Pennine Day Ranger and had a chance to visit the exotic sites of Oldham, Barnsley and most stations in between in a day
Trains
COMING UP:
May 23-24: Skipton Beer Festival, Town Hall
May 29-June 1: 'Beer-Jing Ale-ympics', West Riding Refreshment Rooms, Dewsbury
My Flickr site:
Olthwaite Flickr
WILL ALSOP: Buildings shaped like Marge Simpson’s hair next to the M62
Buildings
HYLDA BAKER: I speak without fear of contraception - you’re sat sitting there supping while we should be going to Blackpool hallucinations.
Comedy
BARNSTONEWORTH: Yorkshire Premier League 1922: Haggerty F, Haggerty R,Tompkins, Noble, Carrick, Robson, Crapper, Dewhurst, MacIntyre, Treadmore,
Davitt.
Comedy - clips
BEST BREWERIES: Where were the northern beers in the list of Great British Beer Festival winners? Were the judges all from Chiddingfold-on-Sea and used to watery, headless brews? Here's THE 10 best breweries - Moorhouses, Springhead, Phoenix, Linfit, Dent, Ossett, Marble, E&S Elland, Anglo Dutch, York
Best breweries
BEST PUBS: 1 The Sair, near Huddersfield. 2 The Guesthouse, Southport. 3 The Grove, Leeds. 4 The Marble Arch, near Manchester city centre. 5 Best pubs in Huddersfield (Rat and Rachet, The Star, The Grove). 6 Rose and Crown, Stoke Newington. 7 Compton, Islington. 8 Leggers, Dewsbury. 9 Victoria, Leeds. 10 Sheaf View, Sheffield. 11 Britons Protection, Manchester. 12 Crown Posada, Newcastle. 13 Three Legged Mare, York.
Best pubs
BOWLING GREEN, OTLEY: Stuffed snarling badgers, gas masks and a skeleton were among the 3,500 items inside. The landlord, Trevor, was a rather forbidding character. It looked like you had to pull a thorn from his paw to get on with him.
Pub news
NELL BRYDEN: She called me sweety when I bought her CD off her. I don't think anyone's called me sweety before - mind you I was dressed as a Mars Bar at the time.
Music
TED CHIPPINGTON: Walking down the road the other day, this bloke came up to me and said: 'Can you tell me how far is to the railway station?’ I said: (gruff voice): ‘One mile.’ He said: (gruff voice) ‘One mile?’ I said: (gruff voice) ‘One mile - roughly speaking.’
Comedy
CUD: Was Carl's voice up for it? Would new guitarist Felix fill the considerable boots (Hey Boots!) of the assistant headteacher from Tadcaster? Would the band gel like the greasiest Ted? Yes, yes and yes! Carl bellowed like a moose, holding a note like Pavarotti. Felix is the indie Jimi Hendrix and the band were tighter than a gnat's chuff.
Music
DOCK PUDDING: People flocked to Cragg Vale to taste Doris Hirst’s championship winning pudding
Pies and other food
ROBERT ELMS: Ludicrous clotheshorse
Mithering (moans, rants, whinges)
THE FALL: A member of the opening act assaulted Smith with a half-eaten banana and the band played on while MES chased the banana-assassin into the parking lot, where a scuffle ensued.
Music
GOOD BEER GUIDE HIGHLIGHTS
Forget all the other pub guides - unless you want to take your granny for Sunday lunch in an unbearably twee Cotswold village where they rethatched the roofs in 1973.
Includes pubs in west Yorkshire, west Lancashire, Manchester, Sheffield and York.
Good Beer Guide highlights
VAL GUEST: He hated Arthur Askey, but he made his directing debut with him in Miss London Ltd, about an escort agency. It probably wasn't that kind of agency,although, you never know - "A handjob Arthur?" "Well stone me!"
Films
HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT: I went to see the Bootleg Beatles as the bootleg Mark Chapman
Clips/Top 10 songs
HUDDERSFIELD: Pubs, trains, buildings (see index)
LEEDS: Britain's most overrated city is just Wakefield with delusions of grandeur and good PR.
Mithering (moans, rants, whinges)
JEFFREY LEWIS: He says he's not even a glass half-empty person, he's glass half-full - half-full of nothing. There's also some delightful rhymes - on one song about a dead pig he sings: "He's called Jonathan or Jason/It depends which way he's facin'"
Gig reviews/Clips
LORD OF THE RINGS: It's all completely humourless and is desperately in need of Brian Blessed SHOUTING LIKE HE DID IN FLASH GORDON. "HAWKMEN,
DIIIIIIVE!" (When he was in his patrol car in Z Cars did he shout: "POLICEMAN, DRIIIIIVE!"?)
Mithering (moans, rants, whinges)
MORRISSEY: If you were his friend in school, could you trust him? Wouldn't he be making arch comments about your pencil case behind your back? "We are dazzled slightly by his pencil case".
Mithering (moans, rants, whinges)
STERLING MORRISON:
Interviewer:Is New Wave rock 'n' roll or is it folk?
Morrison: I'm afraid it's folk singing and this pains me.
Sterling interviews/Velvet reviews
CHIC MURRAY: It was raining cats and dogs. I stepped into a poodle.
Comedy
NORTHERN FILM LOCATIONS:
Hell is a City - Grim Up North Noir with Stanley Baker as a copper so hard-boiled he's been left in the pan for a week.
Everyone smokes. Trains stop at GMEX.
Levenshulme, East Didsbury, Huddersfield, Medlock, Burnage, Withington and
Oldham are the other locations.
A Kind of Loving - Alan Bates throws up on Thora Hird's carpet. Thora, in Dame Edna glasses, calls him a pig. Steep park where he gets Thora's daughter pregnant is in north Manchester, also Preston, Stockport, Salford.
Films
ERIC OLTHWAITE: It were always raining in Denley Moor, except on days when it were fine; and there weren't many of those - not if you include drizzle as rain. And even if it weren't drizzling, it were overcast and there were a lot of moisture in the air. You'd come home as though it had been raining, even though there had been no evidence of precipitation in the rain gauge outside the town hall.
Comedy: Clips
ORRELL RUFC: Morley's giraffe of a flanker had a field day as Orrell missed their first tackles time and time again. Video montage of Orrell's greatest hits
Rugby union: Orrell and Otley
PIES: There’s been a run on Hofmann’s “growlers” since he won the World Cup of pies
Best pies in GB/Yorkshire/Wigan pie eating contest
REAL ALE TWATS:
'I'm remindful of The Lamb and Tuppence in Pontypridd, a splendid little pub which serves Bishop's Gleet'
Comedy
RUGBY LEAGUE: Why Eddie Waring pretended to live in a hotel in Leeds and the mysteries of breadcakes, tea cakes, barms and buns.
Rugby league: Review of Dave Hadfield's book/National League/Wigan
JOHN SHUTTLEWORTH: Go caravanning in Dyfed or Clwyd/Order a pizza and get it delivered/ How to be happy in a sad, sad world
Comedy
FRANK SIDEBOTTOM: You're going home in an organised football coach
Comedy
WIGAN INSULTS:
To someone who’s ugly:
Who knitted thi face an dropped a stitch?
To someone with a terrible memory:
It’s a good job thi balls are in a bag
Swiggin in Wiggin
Our wedding DJ will play anything but we've only got 3-4 hours and we're sure we're missing some classic songs - there's 80s indie, there's sixties, there's Madchester, there's Tom Jones, there's Britpop - but is there a Half Man Half Biscuit song you can dance to? - NEW
Wit and wisdom of Mark E Smith
Camra branches' pubs of the year - UPDATE, includes Halifax, Huddersfield, Keighley, Soouthport and York
Summercross, Otley - latest
You can keep the Orient Express - I got a South Pennine Day Ranger and had a chance to visit the exotic sites of Oldham, Barnsley and most stations in between in a day
COMING UP:
May 23-24: Skipton Beer Festival, Town Hall
May 29-June 1: 'Beer-Jing Ale-ympics', West Riding Refreshment Rooms, Dewsbury
My Flickr site:
WILL ALSOP: Buildings shaped like Marge Simpson’s hair next to the M62
HYLDA BAKER: I speak without fear of contraception - you’re sat sitting there supping while we should be going to Blackpool hallucinations.
BARNSTONEWORTH: Yorkshire Premier League 1922: Haggerty F, Haggerty R,Tompkins, Noble, Carrick, Robson, Crapper, Dewhurst, MacIntyre, Treadmore,
Davitt.
BEST BREWERIES: Where were the northern beers in the list of Great British Beer Festival winners? Were the judges all from Chiddingfold-on-Sea and used to watery, headless brews? Here's THE 10 best breweries - Moorhouses, Springhead, Phoenix, Linfit, Dent, Ossett, Marble, E&S Elland, Anglo Dutch, York
BEST PUBS: 1 The Sair, near Huddersfield. 2 The Guesthouse, Southport. 3 The Grove, Leeds. 4 The Marble Arch, near Manchester city centre. 5 Best pubs in Huddersfield (Rat and Rachet, The Star, The Grove). 6 Rose and Crown, Stoke Newington. 7 Compton, Islington. 8 Leggers, Dewsbury. 9 Victoria, Leeds. 10 Sheaf View, Sheffield. 11 Britons Protection, Manchester. 12 Crown Posada, Newcastle. 13 Three Legged Mare, York.
BOWLING GREEN, OTLEY: Stuffed snarling badgers, gas masks and a skeleton were among the 3,500 items inside. The landlord, Trevor, was a rather forbidding character. It looked like you had to pull a thorn from his paw to get on with him.
NELL BRYDEN: She called me sweety when I bought her CD off her. I don't think anyone's called me sweety before - mind you I was dressed as a Mars Bar at the time.
TED CHIPPINGTON: Walking down the road the other day, this bloke came up to me and said: 'Can you tell me how far is to the railway station?’ I said: (gruff voice): ‘One mile.’ He said: (gruff voice) ‘One mile?’ I said: (gruff voice) ‘One mile - roughly speaking.’
CUD: Was Carl's voice up for it? Would new guitarist Felix fill the considerable boots (Hey Boots!) of the assistant headteacher from Tadcaster? Would the band gel like the greasiest Ted? Yes, yes and yes! Carl bellowed like a moose, holding a note like Pavarotti. Felix is the indie Jimi Hendrix and the band were tighter than a gnat's chuff.
DOCK PUDDING: People flocked to Cragg Vale to taste Doris Hirst’s championship winning pudding
ROBERT ELMS: Ludicrous clotheshorse
THE FALL: A member of the opening act assaulted Smith with a half-eaten banana and the band played on while MES chased the banana-assassin into the parking lot, where a scuffle ensued.
GOOD BEER GUIDE HIGHLIGHTS
Forget all the other pub guides - unless you want to take your granny for Sunday lunch in an unbearably twee Cotswold village where they rethatched the roofs in 1973.
Includes pubs in west Yorkshire, west Lancashire, Manchester, Sheffield and York.
VAL GUEST: He hated Arthur Askey, but he made his directing debut with him in Miss London Ltd, about an escort agency. It probably wasn't that kind of agency,although, you never know - "A handjob Arthur?" "Well stone me!"
HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT: I went to see the Bootleg Beatles as the bootleg Mark Chapman
HUDDERSFIELD: Pubs, trains, buildings (see index)
LEEDS: Britain's most overrated city is just Wakefield with delusions of grandeur and good PR.
JEFFREY LEWIS: He says he's not even a glass half-empty person, he's glass half-full - half-full of nothing. There's also some delightful rhymes - on one song about a dead pig he sings: "He's called Jonathan or Jason/It depends which way he's facin'"
LORD OF THE RINGS: It's all completely humourless and is desperately in need of Brian Blessed SHOUTING LIKE HE DID IN FLASH GORDON. "HAWKMEN,
DIIIIIIVE!" (When he was in his patrol car in Z Cars did he shout: "POLICEMAN, DRIIIIIVE!"?)
MORRISSEY: If you were his friend in school, could you trust him? Wouldn't he be making arch comments about your pencil case behind your back? "We are dazzled slightly by his pencil case".
STERLING MORRISON:
Interviewer:Is New Wave rock 'n' roll or is it folk?
Morrison: I'm afraid it's folk singing and this pains me.
CHIC MURRAY: It was raining cats and dogs. I stepped into a poodle.
NORTHERN FILM LOCATIONS:
Hell is a City - Grim Up North Noir with Stanley Baker as a copper so hard-boiled he's been left in the pan for a week.
Everyone smokes. Trains stop at GMEX.
Levenshulme, East Didsbury, Huddersfield, Medlock, Burnage, Withington and
Oldham are the other locations.
A Kind of Loving - Alan Bates throws up on Thora Hird's carpet. Thora, in Dame Edna glasses, calls him a pig. Steep park where he gets Thora's daughter pregnant is in north Manchester, also Preston, Stockport, Salford.
ERIC OLTHWAITE: It were always raining in Denley Moor, except on days when it were fine; and there weren't many of those - not if you include drizzle as rain. And even if it weren't drizzling, it were overcast and there were a lot of moisture in the air. You'd come home as though it had been raining, even though there had been no evidence of precipitation in the rain gauge outside the town hall.
ORRELL RUFC: Morley's giraffe of a flanker had a field day as Orrell missed their first tackles time and time again. Video montage of Orrell's greatest hits
PIES: There’s been a run on Hofmann’s “growlers” since he won the World Cup of pies
REAL ALE TWATS:
'I'm remindful of The Lamb and Tuppence in Pontypridd, a splendid little pub which serves Bishop's Gleet'
RUGBY LEAGUE: Why Eddie Waring pretended to live in a hotel in Leeds and the mysteries of breadcakes, tea cakes, barms and buns.
JOHN SHUTTLEWORTH: Go caravanning in Dyfed or Clwyd/Order a pizza and get it delivered/ How to be happy in a sad, sad world
FRANK SIDEBOTTOM: You're going home in an organised football coach
WIGAN INSULTS:
To someone who’s ugly:
Who knitted thi face an dropped a stitch?
To someone with a terrible memory:
It’s a good job thi balls are in a bag
MUSIC
WEDDING SONGS
The lovely P and I are getting hitched later this year and there are two vital things we've got to do - never mind frocks and vows, there's got to be real ale and top tunes!
The ale is sorted and we've found a DJ who'll play what we want. We saw him when we went to a wedding in Manchester where the bride was dancing magnificently to The Stooges.
So we've got 3-4 hours and we want people on that dancefloor straight away cos a lot of the time people wait for everyone else to dance and half the night's gone. So it's got to be all thrillers and no fillers - but how to get in all our favourites that are danceable and ensure we're not missing anything?
We keep hearing great songs on the radio that we'd forgotten. Our pal Rosh lent us one of those Guinness chart books and then played a selection of lost classics (Bananarama and Blondie sounded fantastic).
My favourite band is The Velvets and while it would great to have the 40 minute live version of Sister Ray/Foggy Notion, I don't think anyone else would. Neither would The Gift ('His head split gently in the morning sun, sending little rhythmic arcs of blood spurting'). But would people get up to What Goes On or Temptation Inside Your Heart?
Is there a Half Man Half Biscuit danceable wedding song? 24 Hour Garage People for a singalong?
And what about The Super Furry Animals? And Jonathan Richman?
Some of our favourite joint songs are inappropriate - Tempted (by the fruit of another) - Squeeze, and Something Better Change by The Stranglers. And I am Kloot? ('There's blood on your legs, I love you')
So here's our rough guide - but are we missing anything?
Early 80s uni stuff (Smiths - Hand in Glove?, Bananarama - Venus?, Violent Femmes - Gone Daddy Gone? Kiss Off? Bunnymen's Never Stop. A bit of Squeeze and Ian Dury). Cure's Inbetween Days would be a good opener to the whole shebang I reckon.
Madchester - Mondays' Step On/Kinky Afro, Roses' I Am The Resurrection, Charlatans' The Only One I Know/Sproston Green. Plus, from the same era - Cud's Rich and Strange, Weddoes' Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft
Britpop - Parklife Blur, Wonderwall Oasis, Common People/Babies - Pulp
Sixties - Stones Jumpin Jack Flash/Hony Tonk Woman/Can't Always Get What You Want.
Georgie Fame - Yeh Yeh
East Listening singalong for last half hour? Green Green Grass of Home Tom Jones, I Love You Baby Andy Williams. Plus Catatonia Mulder and Scully/Thank The Lord I'm Welsh.
Then there are a few stand-out songs - Brimful of Asha Cornershop, Groove is in the Heart, Edwyn Collins' Never Known a Girl Like You Before. Belle and Sebastan's got to be in there - Boy With The Arab Strap I reckon
There's got to be some Badly Drawn Boy in here as well for the lovely P...mmm.
So are we missing anything? Any requests?
The wit and wisdom of Mark E Smith
Apr 2008: OK, he's bit of a miserable bugger with a chip on his shoulder and attracts a lot of uncritical male fans (like The Smiths and Half man Half Biscuit), but he's one of the few famous people who's stayed true to himself over the years and he's hilarious.
Here's a few quotes from his autobiography, Renegade, from The Guardian.
Sex
The older I get, the more I remember things my dad used to say to me, things like, "If you're feeling too sexy, have a glass of water and a run round the backyard."
Why he sacked Mark Riley
He was getting out of hand - wanting to do Totally Wired twice a night, playing Container Drivers with his cowboy hat.
Footballers
Beckham and Lampard look like they've just got ready for bed after polishing off their mam's supper on a Sunday night.
Madonna
Spending two million sampling Abba's Gimme, Gimme, Gimme. What's the point? If you spent a week working at it you could whistle a tune as good as that. It's not just her, though, they're all bone idle.
Smoking
I'm annoyed by the lack of smoking on TV. We should have more ashtrays on morning TV, and presenters wheezing.
Dinner party chez Smith
I only have three chairs in the house: one for the wife, one for me, and one for a guest. No more. One guest at a time - that's my philosophy. You don't want your house turning into a hippy commune.
Students
They've all got foppy fringes
Pic: Me
ARTISTE OF THE MONTH - LIONHEART BROTHERS
March 08: Joyous tunes with a psychedelic tinge - '50 Souls and a Discobowl' sounds like Belle and Sebastian, 'Lead me to the waters' is a little bit Spiritualized. The Brothers are from Norway and are at the Night and Day, in Manchester, on March 31.
My Space site
FEATURED ARTISTES
I'm not listening to enough new stuff so I decided to track down what's on at the Night and Day, in Manchester, the Brudenell and Packhorse, both in Leeds, (who are all good at showcasing interesting new stuff) and myspace them.
So here's my favourites for November 07:
Sky Larkin Leeds based but with a poshish woman singing, they remind me of Sleeper.
My Space site
Jim Bianco - thankfully no relation of Mat, more a cousin of Tom Waits, with some swing/blues slowies. You can imagine him playing at 3am in a New York bar.
Jim Bianco
Sons and Daughters - echoes of choppy post punk chords of Fire Engines and Josef K with some lovely Glaswegian vocals.
My Space site
THE LANCASHIRE HOTPOTS
Spoofing awful Lancs folk bands like The Houghton Weavers and Fivepenny Piece, with Fred Dibnah vocals and lyrics such as this (to the tune of the Okey-cokey):
Oh no, he's turned emo
He's dressin' like a goth and he's let himself go
He used to be listening to Simply Red
But now he's listening to Fall Out Boy instead
My Space site
EMILY DRUCE
Face of an indie singer, voice like Memphis Minnie.
Oct o7: Emily has joined forces with the Yorkshire based Swing group 'Dizzy Fingers' to perform popular songs of the 30's and 40's and they've got a sold-out gig at Marsden Jazz Festival (and my mate tells me she's doing a version of Pale Blue Eyes.
News from website, June 07: "Emily Druce and co-front man Steve Jones are in the throes of recording an album of original songs with their new band The Why & Wherefores.
The Why & Wherefores plays cool contemporary blues, swinging all the way from roots to rockabilly.
It's a dynamic five piece band featuring a tuba taking up the bass lines, a truly funky drummer, soaring lap steel, dirty, pretty guitar from Steve (plus vocals and harmonica) and gorgeous, gritty vocals from Emily(plus guitar, fiddle and mandolin)
As well as recording at Touchwood Studios in Leeds, Bruce from Touchwood is recording a live set at The Albert in Huddersfield on Friday 27th July 2007.(entrance free !).
The new album will be recorded by mid August and released in autumn 2007."
Tour dates 2007:
Tunes:
Stony Road from the Guilt Trip LP (2000)
Down on my knees from New Day LP (2002)
Let's walk out from Druce and Jones LP Songs from the silver band room (2004)
Official Emily Druce website
HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT
Britain's most sarcastic band
24 Hour Garage People YouTube video
Paintball's Coming Home YouTube video
BEST SONG TITLES:
1 Outbreak of Vitas Gerulitis
2 99 Per Cent of Gargoyles Look Like Bob Todd
3 Dead Men Don't Need Season Tickets
4 We Built This Village on a Trad Arr Tune
5 Tending the Wrong Grave for 23 Years
6 13 Eurogoths Floating in the Dead Sea
7 Joy Divison Oven Gloves
8 Improv Workshop Mimeshow Gobshite
9 Paintball's Coming Home
10 The Len Ganley Stance
If I was a linesman, I would execute defenders who applauded my offsides
Peel Sessions:
Camra Man
Prag Vec at the Melkveg
Paintball's Coming Home
I went to see the Bootleg Beatles as the bootleg Mark Chapman
Cammell Laird Social Club alternative LP titles:
And you will know us by the trail of bread - The Ducks
Charlie Drake sings Nick Drake
James Alexander Gordon yodels Division 2
Crunchy the donkey brays Elgar
Jack Charlton reads the Book of Job
The Stooges of Humber - You're pretty face is going to Hull
Official Half Man Half Biscuit website
WEDDING PRESENT IN HOLMFIRTH
May 07: I must have seen the Weddoes/Cinerama about 10 times since the late 80s but I wouldn't have gone to this gig if Richard, King of Otley hadn't asked me. The Weddoes' 'comeback' tour show at the Leadmill was such a disappointment and the new songs rather dull. That's the thing with the Weddoes, you can see them at a run of gigs and they're exhilarating or they get drearier and drearier at each gig. I'm glad I went to Holmfirth, this was one of the Weddoes' best gigs.
It's only Gedge now and some young pups half his age - when I say 'only Gedge' it's a bit like saying only Mark E Smith in The Fall. Maybe I was a bit disappointed at the Leadmill gig that the original band hadn't got back together.
Anyway Gedge is a lot more cheerful than he was at the Leddy and he's in blinding form, zipping through the set with his excellent band. His thick thatch is drifting towards V-shaped baldness, matched by the wilting quiffs and bald spots in the moshpit. The rest of us 30 and 40 somethings are resting our ageing limbs in the comfy former cinema's seats.
The Weddoes' template is untouched. A man with a pleasingly braying voice (who occasionally looks like John Major's trendier younger brother) talks over his disappointment at catching his lover in bed with someone, or his longing for someone unobtainable, or the rather excellent sex he's been having. Meanwhile What Goes on by The Velvets is played at various speeds.
There's a smattering of favourites from the last 20 years, including one Cinerama song, and two promising newies - one with the title What I Like Best About You is Your Girlfriend, which Gedge says is a classic 'Gedge' title although his drummer's told him it's the title of an old Specials song (I think he's right).
And here's a YouTube video of that very song from the gig!
The Weddoes are on the up again and I won't need persuading to go to the next gig.
UPDATE June 07: To mark the 20th anniversary of the release of George Best,the Wedddoes are playing the whole LP live and recreating the tour of the time (or as near as damn it) - Manchester Uni on October 26th, Liverpool Academy on 27th.
Original vid of My Favourite Dress
Blurred cameraphone pic - Me.
MIK ARTISTIK'S EGO TRIP
April 2007: There's a hard-looking bald man in a loud shirt singing "Gulliver..Gulliver" in front of the small crowd at the Zephyr Bar, in Huddersfield. He's staring straight ahead, unblinking. "Gulliver...Gulliver". There's a few nervous laughs - is he funny or scary? "Gulliver..Gulliver..he were a big lad."
The place erupts. It's Mik Artistik and his band (or statement of life) Ego Trip. Think Brian Glover sings John Cooper Clarke and Half Man Half Biscuit and you're somewhere near. He compares himself to Wild Man Fischer and Charlie Chuck. He's a 52-year-old grand-dad from Armley and he's hilarious.
'Joyce Grenfell's teeth exploded in my face' is the title of one song.
'Sculpture Workshop' has the chorus 'Don't bring your son to the sculpture workshop, he copies what I do'.
Another song is about finding a dipstick in Roundhay and deciding to build a car around it.
'Birdbath' is reworking of an old rock 'n' roll tune 'Birddog' - 'Johnny was a birdbath/He's a door'.
And 'Turning into Dad' (to the tune of 'Walking in the Air') is a touching song about his Irish dad - 'He was a f***ing brute/He told me what to do/I didn't pay any attention and went to listen to Santana'.
Halfway through the gig, I suddenly recognised him - he was the man who drew portraits on brown paper bags at the Grove Festival in Leeds about five years ago. He was also the man who got up on stage at this festival and sang 'Caught in your straps' to the tune of 'Caught in a trap' and 'My daughter sells shoes' (he said after the gig that this song was a one-off).
According to the BBC, he's been gigging as a band since 2004 and the guitarist and bassist who backed him did a cracking job.
He's done three LPs (I think), been an extra (on Phoenix Nights, he was one of 'alternative' comedians) and a stand-up. He's at Glastonbury in June and in West Yorkshire pubs before.
And he says he's not hard. Go and see him and buy his LPs
Mik's site
RETURN OF THE RHYTHM SISTERS
Saturday, Saturday, Sunday, Sunday, Lazy Leeds afternoons
March 07: Mandi and Debi Laek have announced the release of their third album 20 years after the first one - Road to Roundhay Pier.
But goodness knows what they've been up to in recent years, there's nothing on their official or MySpace websites.
I played the Roundhay Pier album death when it came out. The sisters' vocals were instantly recognisable and irresistible with memorable choruses backed by some acoustic, occasionally slide, guitar.
They had also the winning combination of looking sultry and bolshy - and one of them wears specs, hurrah!
The new LP's called Tell Me How Long The Boat's Been Gone and is supposed to be similar to Roundhay Pier. No gigs due.
Rhythm Sisters MySpace site
'GLASTONBURY' DOESN'T COME TO HUDDERSFIELD
May 2007: It's off! Organisers have decided to call it off before the licensing application went before council. Worryingly, council officers had given no recommendation either way and whingeing villagers had set up petitions complaining that the festival would be a cross between Altamount and a Viking raid when it would probably have been full of Bob Harris-types with pipes and slippers.
March 2007 update: Huddersfield's answer to Glastonbury takes place in Farnley Tyas, near Honley, this summer with The Proclaimers, Badly Drawn Boy and The Levellers starring.
Song07 is on July 27-29. On July 28 order of bands is Proclaimers, Badly Drawn Boy, Paul Brady, Duke Special, Holmes Brothers, Nizlopi and others.
On July 29 it's Levellers, Seth Lakeman, Calexico, Cara Dillon, Chris Difford, Paul Burch, Thea Gilmore.
£80 for whole shebang, £45 for Sat/Sun day tickets. No licence yet and 250 residents have signed a petition to oppose (traffic, noise blah-blah nimbys!)
BEST LPS OF 2006
Dec 2006: Word magazine did a great feature about Dadrock this year in which dads sneeringly dismiss their offspring's choice of music with phrases such as "of course this sounds just like Gang of Four from 25 years ago". I must admit I feel like that when I listen to My Chemical Romance (watered-down marchalong punk with added eyeliner) and even the Arctic Monkeys.
So here's my Top 10 for this year. I have to confess it's the top 10 of all CDs I bought this year as I haven't heard enough decent new stuff - Hot Chip, The Raconteurs and Cat Power did nothing for me and Bob Dylan and Neil Young will always be crap.
1 Lily Allen - Alright Still: Feel a bit "getting down with the kids" about this one but her hilarious "bovvered" lyrics sung around some catchy ska riffs made this my favourite this year.
2 Belle and Sebastian - Life Pursuit: Showed how patchy their previous LP (Dear Catastrophe Waitress) was. Songs on this LP ranked with the best of their early stuff.
3 Meic Stevens - Disgwyl Rhywbech Gwell i ddod: The Welsh folk legend has been fined £500 today (December 15) for threatening to shoot a Pembrokeshire landlady. I bought this compliation of his early stuff (from 1968-1979) a few months earlier and it's fantastic - blues, folk, psychedelia, pub sing-a-longs and more formal choral stuff.
4 Sparks - Hello Young Lovers: They creeped me out in the 70s but this was a revelation. Amusing songs based on repetitive riffs and lyrics ("Here Kitty, Kitty") which occasionally outstay their welcome.
5 Cud - Rich and Strange Anthology: Triumphant return for the Yorkshire band who were overshadowed by Madchester and Britpop.
6 Dominic E Collins - Canadian Geese Over Ancoats Skies: Compared mistakenly with Mike Harding, Dominic has a Manc-as-they-come voice, an acoustic guitar and songs about his local pie shop, among other things.
7 Zero 7 - The Garden: Two very different vocalists (Jose Gonzalez and Sia Farler) mean this album is divided into slow moody songs and quicker sing-a-long stuff.
8 Van Morrison - It's Too Late To Stop Now: I bought this 1974 live double after reading Johnny Rogan's critical biography of the grumpy maestro this year. This was one of the LPs Rogan recommended and he was right.
9 Arctic Monkeys - Whatever... Great lyrics and distinctive vocals lift this above the usual punk-lite tunes.
10 North by North West: Liverpool and Manchester bands of the late 70s/early 80s. The obvious choices plus some forgotten gems such as Blue Orchids' Work.
CUD-FATHERS
Sept 2006: On the way to the Leeds Irish Centre to see the Cud band for the first time in 12-13 years, Radio 1's Zane Lowe (the most serious man ever) was bigging up some achingly trendy band called Tram, Tram, Tram (or something) and then played their song and it sounded like.. the Knack's My Sharona.
And then I saw Cud. Knocking seven bells of shit out of all the angular-haired punk-funk retreaders from London or the US.
Was Carl's voice up for it? Would new guitarist Felix fill the considerable boots (Hey Boots!) of the assistant headteacher from Tadcaster? Would the band gel like the greasiest Ted?
Yes, yes and yes! Carl bellowed like a moose, holding a note like Pavarotti. Felix is the indie Jimi Hendrix and the band were tighter than a gnat's chuff.
Starting with Purple Love Balloon they mixed their big hitters with some rarely played early stuff. There was a fantastic middle section featuring Love in a Hollow Tree, Hey Boots and Robinson Crusoe.
Rumours that Carl had finally lived up to the fat bastard taunts were wide of the mark. He looked more Vegas Elvis than Johnny Vegas.
He was having a great time as were the rest of the band and the audience who in Cud gig-style were dancing on stage. I'll never forget three blokes singing "Things get worse when you get older", from I've Had It With Blondes, looking like three butchers who'd owned a shop for 20 years.
The four-song encore was a bit of wind-down as they'd done all the hard work, although they made Jethro Tull's Living in the Past sound like Mission Impossible.
Yes Carl's voice and some of the songs do sound samey but there's no-one like Cud. You can hear snatches of Jonathan Richman, the Stones and the Weddoes but if they were a new band now Zane Lowe would be creaming his pants.
Cud will be wowing the festivals next year (apparently). Can't wait!
UPDATE May 2007: Cud playing Glasto, third on bill on some smallstage behind Ned's Atomic Dustbin and Back to the Planet (lovely, strapping ginger singer!)
Thanks to
Urbanwide on Flickr for photo of Cud at Leeds Cockpit
GIGS JULY - AUGUST 2006
August 2006: A bumper crop of gigs over the past two months - most of them good, all of them interesting.
Highlight was Jeffrey Lewis (www.thejeffreylewissite.com, pictured -he really is this tall)at the Polish Catholic Centre in Sheffield (August 25). One man, one acoustic guitar, one comic book. Simple tunes which rattle along at a fair lick, crammed with laugh-out lyrics sung in a hangdog voice.
There's something Woody Allen-esque about his longing for unavailable women, worries about his health and his self-deprecating cracks about himself. As he says, he's not even a glass half-empty person, he's glass half-full - half-full of nothing. There's also some delightful rhymes - on one song about a dead pig he sings: "He's called Jonathan or Jason/It depends which way he's facin'"
On three songs he holds up a comic book to accompany him. Two of the songs are B-movie stuff - one about a brain which grows bigger and bigger until it rampages through a city and another about a walking hand which offends a bus-full of nuns. The third is a dead straight history of communism in China!
Support came from Benjamin Weatherill who looks like Bernard Sumner circa Joy Division but covers Irving Berlin and Nat King Cole in a high quavery voice while playing guitar and banjo. Fragile and folky.
Then there's David Thomas Broughton who, like several solo artistes, has one of those devices which means he can record a riff and play another on top. Early on this was a discordant mess but it gradually came more compelling as he wandered through the crowd, singing snatches of Leonard Cohen songs in a voice which sounded a blood-and-thunder preacher or the two aromatherapists in Vic and Bob.
A fortnight earlier I was in Hebden Bridge for a beer festival at the Trades Club and there was an unexpected treat - Nell Bryden (www.nellbryden.com), pictured, a Brooklyn singer songwriter with a powerful soaring voice and some nice blues touches on her acoustic guitar.
She looked completely at home with the hustle and bustle in the hall - children crying, dogs yawning and fat blokes creaking their chairs to get another Moorhouses from the bar (ahem).
She even called me sweety when I bought her CD off her later. I don't think anyone's called me sweety before - mind you I was dressed as a Mars Bar at the time.
It was also great to be in Hebden Bridge, one of those attractive, rather dour West Yorkshire towns enlivened by a splash of lefty-Glastonbury colour. Where other towns have Poundlands, Hebbo (as no-one calls it) has a CD shop full of 60s and 70s obscurities run by a jolly long-haired chap. Where some schools are covered in grafitti, Hebden's is covered with a huge mural.
What a pity there's no decent boozer. There are two pubs in the Good Beer Guide - one's a bit pokey, the other's restauranty. The Trades Club is about the best and you can sign up for a tantric astrology or clay oven making if you so desire.
On August 7 I was in the Packhorse in Leeds, one of my regular haunts when I lived in the city as it put on some excellent gigs along with the Brudenell Social Club.
There were four acts on that night - three were connected and appeared to be from the Brighton area.
Anyone calling themselves Kevin 2 Sheds (www.threeface.co.uk/kevin2sheds) with an album called 'Mark Knopfler Taught Me Everything I Don’t Know' sounds brilliant. He looked like a young John Otway or Super Hans from Peep Show, but he was never more than mildly amusing.
He was backed by the next act, Pog (www.worldofbeardandpog.co.uk/pogwash/menu.html) a brother and sister act on acoustic guitar and acoustic bass, who occasionally sounded like Violent Femmes without the lyrics to match.
Pog also supported MC for the night and third act Philip Jeays (www.jeays.com) who looks Peter Cook and sings occasionally laugh-out loud songs in a melodramatic Scott Walker/Jacques Brel stylee. The highlight was a song about being on his deathbed, listing all the people he hated with the chorus "Fxxx you!" He got the biggest cheers of the night.
All three acts were light-hearted, knockabout stuff and the final act bucked the trend but was enthralling.
Simon Siddol loves the minor chords and the big pauses on his electric piano, sounding like Lou Reed's Berlin occasionally, although Siddol has a deep, rich voice which sometimes veers off into a Tom Waits-rant. It was a pity he was on so late as many people had to leave during his set.
And finally Shona Morrison, Van's daughter, at the New Roscoe in Leeds. Too Alanis Morrisette for my liking. She was at her best when her band went bluesy and she did a lovely cover of her dad's song Sweet Thing.
CUD
Head full of loose change
July 2006: One of the great live bands of the 90s have released a greatest hits double and the band (minus guitarist Mike Dunphy) have reformed to play some gigs - their first as Cud for 11 years.
Carl Puttnam's voice was always a blessing and a curse for the band as it was easy to recognise one of their tunes, but as he barked out one note (but what a note!) some of the songs sounded very samey.
This didn't seem to matter as much live where their relentless tunes were exhilarating, but the best songs were the ones where they varied the pace a bit - Robinson Crusoe, Love in a Hollow Tree, Hey Boots and Rich and Strange.
They did five dates earlier this month (August) and have added five more, including two supporting "a chart act", and a final gig at Leeds Irish Centre on September 19.
It's their homecoming gig as the band met at Leeds Poly, forming in 1985. They hit their stride at the end of the 80s and had two Top 30 hits in the early 90s with A&M but they were overshadowed somewhat by the Madchester scene - neither indie-trendy or mainstream enough - and split in 1995.
I saw them at the Leadmill, in Sheffield, and Manchester International 2 and I think the NME gig review below is from that Manchester gig:
Udderly Fab-Tastic!
Manchester International II, NME, 26 October 1991
'I LOVE you!' sings bespectacled spectacle Carl Puttnam, the Mick Hucknall you can trust, 'I luhuahu-u-uuuumhhhve yo-o-o-oul'.
His cavernous diaphragm quakes, he woos the already-sodden audience with Tom Jones-ian lungpower and Engelbert-esque melodrama. Truly, we are in an Indie Las Vegas. And the Cud band are glittering.
Outside is the coldest bastard rainy night In Manchester ever. In here, still largely unbeknownst to the music industry, Cud are happening. Warm your toes on that.
A tangible buzz permeates the air; It's like Carter at the end of last year. Teenage Fanclub this summer, Kingmaker at Reading - yes, that exciting. You come to review a concert by a band, but the sheer swell of the expectant and genned-up crowd knocks you out. These Cud fans know something and, in elitist terms, we about to be taken away from them.
So, the important question, has The Man got Cud? Hell, no. They're A&M property now, sure, they're suddenly in the overtaking lane, and they can have WHATEVER THEY WANT (Later, Carl will delight In telling me how A&M spent a week trying to obtain the actual model of a knight an horseback, used by Anglia TV as their logo in the '70s, for the sleeve of 'Oh No Won't Do') - but the power and the possibility haven't made them giddy. It's a tighter four-piece that cook with gas.
This evening, confident. cool. together, swaggering, laughing all the time - no longer will the shorthand cynics be able to write Cud off as udder-achieving amateurs. They're done with merely singing for their supper, nowadays they're playing for their life!
Cud are the actual Idiot Joy Showband, Glam Rock for the '90s. 'Eau Water' opens the set, babbling insanely, stomping, showmanlike, on all yer near-sighted Indie codes. Cud dare to crowd-please, to exaggerate gestures, to clutch their frilly chest. And that Puttnam Voice - not for Carl the insipid, apologetic sniffing of Damon from Blur - when he goes for it he really blows for it! BOOM! BOOM! A resounding success.
A camp 'Roblnson Crusoe', a rousing 'Hey Boots', a charming 'Love In A Hollow Tree', and three now ones, 'Sometimes Rightly Sometimes Wrongly', 'Easy' and 'Pink Flamingo', which la a 'Norwegian Wood' made pulp.
Stage divers crowd the skies, about three balloons bob from head to head, Cart chuckles "Heh heh heh" uncontrollably and tells a punter who's waving his boots In the air during 'Hey Boots' that "It's not about shoes!'
Correct. an album in the New Year, America and The Drummer From Cud will leave cult status way behind him. We need stompalong, unashamed, OTT cabaret entertainment that shakes a log to Third World debt; we need Carl Puttnam In his rubbish beads; we need STARGAZERS II
Simply Cud, honey.
Andrew Collins
Picture and NME review:
Official Cud website
JEFFREY LEWIS
Shy New Yorker meets perfect woman. Blows it. Writes nervously-voiced, pleasingly-shambolic songs (and cartoons) about the experience
Video from Fortmark Films:
Posters
Cartoon:
The making of Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song
Source/picture:
Official Jeffrey Lewis website
VELVET UNDERGROUND
June 2006: You wait years for the first ever Velvets DVD and two come along at once - Velvet Redux, a live concert from Paris in 1993, and Under Review, featuring interviews with Mo Tucker, Doug Yule and some rare Warhol footage.
The Velvets reunion is seen as a failure by most of the mainstream media. As usual with films and music, they all tend to agree with each other and because one or two journalists criticised the reunion at the time it's slated by others now.
If the band had been inferior to their 1960s live LPs and bootlegs then I'd agree, but you just have to listen to Heroin and Waiting for the Man, arguably their key songs, and realise they had recaptured their peak form and unique abilities - tub thumping drums, relentless guitars, droning viola, pounding piano and Reed's lyrics.
I was at the Wembley gig in the same year (Jarvis Cocker was sitting nearby!) and this DVD brought it all back - the thrill of seeing the four of them together and the exhilarating versions of some of my favourite songs with subtle variations.
Cale sings vocals on Waiting for the Man and adds a lovely violin part to Pale Blue Eyes. Morrison's lead guitar work shines on Rock n Roll and White Light White Heat.
The choice of songs was my only complaint then, and it is now - no Run Run Run, What Goes On, Foggy Notion and especially Sister Ray. They could have replaced Hey Mr Rain, Beginning To See The Light and dreadful newie, Coyote.
Under Review doesn't look so promising - it's mainly journo talking heads with new interviews from Mo and Doug, some Warhol film, bits from the 1993 concert and from the Reed/Cale/Nico reunion in 1972.
But it's pretty good, especially in the way it analyses the songs (how Waiting for the Man originally sounded slow and Dylan-esque).
There's also some suitably extravagant journo claims ("Rock music started with Dylan and the Velvets") and some interesting arguments - Cale's departure benefited the band because they were able to concentrate on the songs, and the third LP was the best (Rubbish! Apart from What Goes on, Pale Blue Eyes and Some Kinda Love it's bobbins).
Gigs
Velvets' support bands included:
1968: MC5, Canned Heat (supported), Flamin Groovies, Chicago, The Nazz feat. Todd Rundgren (supported), Tim Buckley (supported), Sly and the Family Stone
1969: Grateful Dead (supported), Chicago festival (feat Byrds, Muddy Waters, Fleetwood Mac), Nice, The Allman Brothers
Gig list and picture from Velvet Underground website
STERLING MORRISON
Velvets guitar ace
Sterling's favourite musicians (in 1969):
The Byrds, The Kinks, Dr. John, Quicksilver Messenger Service.
But he didn't like:
Creedence Clearwater Revival ("monotonous")
Van Dyke Parks (MacArthur Park, Beach Boys producer) "I dismiss him summarily. I don't care what he does. I don't think he has the credentials. Whatever he's supposed to be doing - he isn't good enough."
Frank Zappa: "Zappa is incapable of writing lyrics. He is shielding his musical deficiencies by prolelytizing all these sundry groups that he appeals to. He just throw enough dribble into those songs, I don't know, I don't like their music."
And MC5 "I think seldom of the MC5."
(From interview with Greg Barrios, Fusionmagazine)
And in another interview, in 1980, he doesn't like New Wave:
Interviewer: Do you think New Wave is new, or is it just a rehashing of old stuff?
Morrison: I'm afraid to say what I think about New Wave.
Interviewer: Don't be. Go ahead. Please.
Morrison: I'm worried a whole lot about it. People that have known me know that the major bitch in my life has been between rock 'n' roll and folk singers. That's it.
Interviewer:Is New Wave rock 'n' roll or is it folk?
Morrison: I'm afraid it's folk singing and this pains me.
Great quote:
Why do you have such an aversion toward people who talk to you?
'Cause I read books!
On Lou Reed:
"Lou really did want to have a whole lot of credit for the songs. So on nearly all the albums we gave it to him. It kept him happy. He got the rights to all the songs on Loaded, so now he's credited with being the absolute and singular genius of the Underground, which is not true."
He loves Hendrix (who liked the Velvets), hates Dylan and lays into Zappa, again:
"If you told Frank Zappa to eat shit in public, he'd do it if it sold records."
(Interview by Nick Modern, Sluggo magazine)
Doug Yule describes how Sterling left the band in 1971 (from Velvet Underground fanzine, Fierce Pup Productions and Sal Mercuri. Picture from this source)
"Sterling is standing in the airport in Houston. Next to him is an empty suitcase, a fact at that moment known only to himself. He stops the progress of the group towards the gate with the announcement that he will not be returning to New York with us, he is going to Austin in a few days to begin a fellowship there, to return to school and complete his education.
"This is the last time I will ever see Sterling. I will not know until he dies twenty five years later that he acquired a degree in Medieval Studies and picked up a tugboat captain's license."
Interviews from Velvet Underground website
THE FALL: BANANA SPLIT
Scowling curmudgeon in Oxfam leathers
Busts up with band in banana republic
June 2006: The Fall have split up on a US tour for the second time.
Three members of the band flew out of the country after their May 7 gig was cut short when a member of the support band chucked a banana at Smith and he ran off stage to fight him in the car park.
Three members of labelmates Cairo Gang (described as Chicago dirge rockers) were drafted in for the next gig two days later and are staying as permanent members. Their UK debut will at The Fall's 30th anniversary on June 10.
Here's what happened, according to Cole Coonce, from LA City Beat:
Tour reports were rife with incidents of Smith pouring a beer on his tour manager's noggin and also using his head as an ashtray, all while the poor tosser drove the van down the interstate and tried not to crash.
Moreover, at that night's show (May 7), a member of the opening act assaulted Smith with a half-eaten banana and the band played on while MES chased the banana-assassin into the parking lot, where a scuffle ensued.
This mayhem, coupled with Smith's notoriously fascistic task-making, had forced “the lads” (as he called his backing group) to skulk away under the cover of darkness and catch an aeroplane back to Old Sod.
Smith and wife/synthesist sidekick Elena Poulou endeavored to fulfill contractual obligations and finish the tour.
The Fall's record label solicited as replacements a trio of alt-dirge rockers out of Chicago (The Cairo Gang), who were hot-lapped into San Diego in time for the Fall's booking at the House of Blues, and – ka-pow ka-pow ka-pow – quick as a repeating rifle, the notion of the Fall being a platoon system was, in fact, realized.
Luckily for the new lads most of the Fall's latest songs are mere exercises in two-note rock riffs pounded into a repetitive groove, which serves as a foundation for Smith to free-associate lyrically, with gems such as “Dolly Parton and Lord Byron/They said patriotism is the last refuge/But now it's me” or haikus to that effect.
Smith is a chaos-monger and a lush, and when the chips are down, he will find a way to turn over the card table. This night (May 13 Knitting Factory, LA) was true to form, as the joint was packed like a bowl of sweaty oatmeal with a legion of fervent Fall disciples, who waited for the gospel from their maniacal messiah.
Instead of a pointed, galvanizing performance that would send the faithful to postmodern Valhalla, Smith showed up drunk, staggering and slurring through a rambling collection of dirges. For the duration, he was squint-eyed sauced, stumbling and unintelligible. The “band” struggled to find its cues and vainly tried to follow his meanderings.
Methinks “the lads” had the right idea when they deserted their leader in Phoenix.
This, and the flyer for the LA after-show party, is from the unofficial Fall website, formerly the official Fall website until Mr Smith took exception to the message board earlier this year. He gave an interview to an LA paper before the gig, praising the (old) band - "They're very on form".
GO-BETWEEN MCLENNAN DIES
May 2006: Founder member of The Go-Betweens Grant McLennan has died in his sleep, apparently of a heart attack. He was just 48.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian, he was planning a large party at his Brisbane home on the night he died (May 6) and had gone for a lie-down as he was feeling unwell. He was later found dead by party guests.
The Go-Betweens most recent album had been their most successful, EMI had bought ther back catalogue providing him with financial security and he was in love with a lass and about to be engaged.
He formed the band in 1977 at university with songwriting partner Robert Forster who said: "The last six months was the happiest I had ever known him."
They released their first LP in 1981, split in 1989 and reformed in 2000.
Pic from Go Betweens website
MRS PILGRIMM
Layers of metronomic cello
topped off with sauce
New LP: Alone Queen
Downloads:
Tickle it lovely
Drop my name
Gotta get down
Picture/More info:
Official Mrs Pilgrimm website
Her record label
MISTY'S BIG ADVENTURE
Set the controls to jaunty
Downloads from SL Records:
Two songs and a video
Videos from Fortmark Films:
Story of Love/Hey Man
The lovely P and I are getting hitched later this year and there are two vital things we've got to do - never mind frocks and vows, there's got to be real ale and top tunes!
The ale is sorted and we've found a DJ who'll play what we want. We saw him when we went to a wedding in Manchester where the bride was dancing magnificently to The Stooges.
So we've got 3-4 hours and we want people on that dancefloor straight away cos a lot of the time people wait for everyone else to dance and half the night's gone. So it's got to be all thrillers and no fillers - but how to get in all our favourites that are danceable and ensure we're not missing anything?
We keep hearing great songs on the radio that we'd forgotten. Our pal Rosh lent us one of those Guinness chart books and then played a selection of lost classics (Bananarama and Blondie sounded fantastic).
My favourite band is The Velvets and while it would great to have the 40 minute live version of Sister Ray/Foggy Notion, I don't think anyone else would. Neither would The Gift ('His head split gently in the morning sun, sending little rhythmic arcs of blood spurting'). But would people get up to What Goes On or Temptation Inside Your Heart?
Is there a Half Man Half Biscuit danceable wedding song? 24 Hour Garage People for a singalong?
And what about The Super Furry Animals? And Jonathan Richman?
Some of our favourite joint songs are inappropriate - Tempted (by the fruit of another) - Squeeze, and Something Better Change by The Stranglers. And I am Kloot? ('There's blood on your legs, I love you')
So here's our rough guide - but are we missing anything?
Early 80s uni stuff (Smiths - Hand in Glove?, Bananarama - Venus?, Violent Femmes - Gone Daddy Gone? Kiss Off? Bunnymen's Never Stop. A bit of Squeeze and Ian Dury). Cure's Inbetween Days would be a good opener to the whole shebang I reckon.
Madchester - Mondays' Step On/Kinky Afro, Roses' I Am The Resurrection, Charlatans' The Only One I Know/Sproston Green. Plus, from the same era - Cud's Rich and Strange, Weddoes' Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft
Britpop - Parklife Blur, Wonderwall Oasis, Common People/Babies - Pulp
Sixties - Stones Jumpin Jack Flash/Hony Tonk Woman/Can't Always Get What You Want.
Georgie Fame - Yeh Yeh
East Listening singalong for last half hour? Green Green Grass of Home Tom Jones, I Love You Baby Andy Williams. Plus Catatonia Mulder and Scully/Thank The Lord I'm Welsh.
Then there are a few stand-out songs - Brimful of Asha Cornershop, Groove is in the Heart, Edwyn Collins' Never Known a Girl Like You Before. Belle and Sebastan's got to be in there - Boy With The Arab Strap I reckon
There's got to be some Badly Drawn Boy in here as well for the lovely P...mmm.
So are we missing anything? Any requests?
The wit and wisdom of Mark E SmithApr 2008: OK, he's bit of a miserable bugger with a chip on his shoulder and attracts a lot of uncritical male fans (like The Smiths and Half man Half Biscuit), but he's one of the few famous people who's stayed true to himself over the years and he's hilarious.
Here's a few quotes from his autobiography, Renegade, from The Guardian.
Sex
The older I get, the more I remember things my dad used to say to me, things like, "If you're feeling too sexy, have a glass of water and a run round the backyard."
Why he sacked Mark Riley
He was getting out of hand - wanting to do Totally Wired twice a night, playing Container Drivers with his cowboy hat.
Footballers
Beckham and Lampard look like they've just got ready for bed after polishing off their mam's supper on a Sunday night.
Madonna
Spending two million sampling Abba's Gimme, Gimme, Gimme. What's the point? If you spent a week working at it you could whistle a tune as good as that. It's not just her, though, they're all bone idle.
Smoking
I'm annoyed by the lack of smoking on TV. We should have more ashtrays on morning TV, and presenters wheezing.
Dinner party chez Smith
I only have three chairs in the house: one for the wife, one for me, and one for a guest. No more. One guest at a time - that's my philosophy. You don't want your house turning into a hippy commune.
Students
They've all got foppy fringes
Pic: Me
ARTISTE OF THE MONTH - LIONHEART BROTHERS
March 08: Joyous tunes with a psychedelic tinge - '50 Souls and a Discobowl' sounds like Belle and Sebastian, 'Lead me to the waters' is a little bit Spiritualized. The Brothers are from Norway and are at the Night and Day, in Manchester, on March 31.
FEATURED ARTISTES
I'm not listening to enough new stuff so I decided to track down what's on at the Night and Day, in Manchester, the Brudenell and Packhorse, both in Leeds, (who are all good at showcasing interesting new stuff) and myspace them.
So here's my favourites for November 07:
Sky Larkin Leeds based but with a poshish woman singing, they remind me of Sleeper.
Jim Bianco - thankfully no relation of Mat, more a cousin of Tom Waits, with some swing/blues slowies. You can imagine him playing at 3am in a New York bar.
Sons and Daughters - echoes of choppy post punk chords of Fire Engines and Josef K with some lovely Glaswegian vocals.
THE LANCASHIRE HOTPOTS
Spoofing awful Lancs folk bands like The Houghton Weavers and Fivepenny Piece, with Fred Dibnah vocals and lyrics such as this (to the tune of the Okey-cokey):
Oh no, he's turned emo
He's dressin' like a goth and he's let himself go
He used to be listening to Simply Red
But now he's listening to Fall Out Boy instead
EMILY DRUCE
Face of an indie singer, voice like Memphis Minnie.
Oct o7: Emily has joined forces with the Yorkshire based Swing group 'Dizzy Fingers' to perform popular songs of the 30's and 40's and they've got a sold-out gig at Marsden Jazz Festival (and my mate tells me she's doing a version of Pale Blue Eyes.
News from website, June 07: "Emily Druce and co-front man Steve Jones are in the throes of recording an album of original songs with their new band The Why & Wherefores.
The Why & Wherefores plays cool contemporary blues, swinging all the way from roots to rockabilly.
It's a dynamic five piece band featuring a tuba taking up the bass lines, a truly funky drummer, soaring lap steel, dirty, pretty guitar from Steve (plus vocals and harmonica) and gorgeous, gritty vocals from Emily(plus guitar, fiddle and mandolin)
As well as recording at Touchwood Studios in Leeds, Bruce from Touchwood is recording a live set at The Albert in Huddersfield on Friday 27th July 2007.(entrance free !).
The new album will be recorded by mid August and released in autumn 2007."
Tour dates 2007:
Tunes:
HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT
Britain's most sarcastic band
BEST SONG TITLES:
1 Outbreak of Vitas Gerulitis
2 99 Per Cent of Gargoyles Look Like Bob Todd
3 Dead Men Don't Need Season Tickets
4 We Built This Village on a Trad Arr Tune
5 Tending the Wrong Grave for 23 Years
6 13 Eurogoths Floating in the Dead Sea
7 Joy Divison Oven Gloves
8 Improv Workshop Mimeshow Gobshite
9 Paintball's Coming Home
10 The Len Ganley Stance
If I was a linesman, I would execute defenders who applauded my offsides
Peel Sessions:
I went to see the Bootleg Beatles as the bootleg Mark Chapman
Cammell Laird Social Club alternative LP titles:
And you will know us by the trail of bread - The Ducks
Charlie Drake sings Nick Drake
James Alexander Gordon yodels Division 2
Crunchy the donkey brays Elgar
Jack Charlton reads the Book of Job
The Stooges of Humber - You're pretty face is going to Hull
WEDDING PRESENT IN HOLMFIRTHMay 07: I must have seen the Weddoes/Cinerama about 10 times since the late 80s but I wouldn't have gone to this gig if Richard, King of Otley hadn't asked me. The Weddoes' 'comeback' tour show at the Leadmill was such a disappointment and the new songs rather dull. That's the thing with the Weddoes, you can see them at a run of gigs and they're exhilarating or they get drearier and drearier at each gig. I'm glad I went to Holmfirth, this was one of the Weddoes' best gigs.
It's only Gedge now and some young pups half his age - when I say 'only Gedge' it's a bit like saying only Mark E Smith in The Fall. Maybe I was a bit disappointed at the Leadmill gig that the original band hadn't got back together.
Anyway Gedge is a lot more cheerful than he was at the Leddy and he's in blinding form, zipping through the set with his excellent band. His thick thatch is drifting towards V-shaped baldness, matched by the wilting quiffs and bald spots in the moshpit. The rest of us 30 and 40 somethings are resting our ageing limbs in the comfy former cinema's seats.
The Weddoes' template is untouched. A man with a pleasingly braying voice (who occasionally looks like John Major's trendier younger brother) talks over his disappointment at catching his lover in bed with someone, or his longing for someone unobtainable, or the rather excellent sex he's been having. Meanwhile What Goes on by The Velvets is played at various speeds.
There's a smattering of favourites from the last 20 years, including one Cinerama song, and two promising newies - one with the title What I Like Best About You is Your Girlfriend, which Gedge says is a classic 'Gedge' title although his drummer's told him it's the title of an old Specials song (I think he's right).
The Weddoes are on the up again and I won't need persuading to go to the next gig.
UPDATE June 07: To mark the 20th anniversary of the release of George Best,the Wedddoes are playing the whole LP live and recreating the tour of the time (or as near as damn it) - Manchester Uni on October 26th, Liverpool Academy on 27th.
Blurred cameraphone pic - Me.
MIK ARTISTIK'S EGO TRIP
April 2007: There's a hard-looking bald man in a loud shirt singing "Gulliver..Gulliver" in front of the small crowd at the Zephyr Bar, in Huddersfield. He's staring straight ahead, unblinking. "Gulliver...Gulliver". There's a few nervous laughs - is he funny or scary? "Gulliver..Gulliver..he were a big lad."
The place erupts. It's Mik Artistik and his band (or statement of life) Ego Trip. Think Brian Glover sings John Cooper Clarke and Half Man Half Biscuit and you're somewhere near. He compares himself to Wild Man Fischer and Charlie Chuck. He's a 52-year-old grand-dad from Armley and he's hilarious.
'Joyce Grenfell's teeth exploded in my face' is the title of one song.
'Sculpture Workshop' has the chorus 'Don't bring your son to the sculpture workshop, he copies what I do'.
Another song is about finding a dipstick in Roundhay and deciding to build a car around it.
'Birdbath' is reworking of an old rock 'n' roll tune 'Birddog' - 'Johnny was a birdbath/He's a door'.
And 'Turning into Dad' (to the tune of 'Walking in the Air') is a touching song about his Irish dad - 'He was a f***ing brute/He told me what to do/I didn't pay any attention and went to listen to Santana'.
Halfway through the gig, I suddenly recognised him - he was the man who drew portraits on brown paper bags at the Grove Festival in Leeds about five years ago. He was also the man who got up on stage at this festival and sang 'Caught in your straps' to the tune of 'Caught in a trap' and 'My daughter sells shoes' (he said after the gig that this song was a one-off).
According to the BBC, he's been gigging as a band since 2004 and the guitarist and bassist who backed him did a cracking job.
He's done three LPs (I think), been an extra (on Phoenix Nights, he was one of 'alternative' comedians) and a stand-up. He's at Glastonbury in June and in West Yorkshire pubs before.
And he says he's not hard. Go and see him and buy his LPs
RETURN OF THE RHYTHM SISTERSSaturday, Saturday, Sunday, Sunday, Lazy Leeds afternoons
March 07: Mandi and Debi Laek have announced the release of their third album 20 years after the first one - Road to Roundhay Pier.
But goodness knows what they've been up to in recent years, there's nothing on their official or MySpace websites.
I played the Roundhay Pier album death when it came out. The sisters' vocals were instantly recognisable and irresistible with memorable choruses backed by some acoustic, occasionally slide, guitar.
They had also the winning combination of looking sultry and bolshy - and one of them wears specs, hurrah!
The new LP's called Tell Me How Long The Boat's Been Gone and is supposed to be similar to Roundhay Pier. No gigs due.
'GLASTONBURY' DOESN'T COME TO HUDDERSFIELD
May 2007: It's off! Organisers have decided to call it off before the licensing application went before council. Worryingly, council officers had given no recommendation either way and whingeing villagers had set up petitions complaining that the festival would be a cross between Altamount and a Viking raid when it would probably have been full of Bob Harris-types with pipes and slippers.
March 2007 update: Huddersfield's answer to Glastonbury takes place in Farnley Tyas, near Honley, this summer with The Proclaimers, Badly Drawn Boy and The Levellers starring.
Song07 is on July 27-29. On July 28 order of bands is Proclaimers, Badly Drawn Boy, Paul Brady, Duke Special, Holmes Brothers, Nizlopi and others.
On July 29 it's Levellers, Seth Lakeman, Calexico, Cara Dillon, Chris Difford, Paul Burch, Thea Gilmore.
£80 for whole shebang, £45 for Sat/Sun day tickets. No licence yet and 250 residents have signed a petition to oppose (traffic, noise blah-blah nimbys!)
BEST LPS OF 2006
Dec 2006: Word magazine did a great feature about Dadrock this year in which dads sneeringly dismiss their offspring's choice of music with phrases such as "of course this sounds just like Gang of Four from 25 years ago". I must admit I feel like that when I listen to My Chemical Romance (watered-down marchalong punk with added eyeliner) and even the Arctic Monkeys.
So here's my Top 10 for this year. I have to confess it's the top 10 of all CDs I bought this year as I haven't heard enough decent new stuff - Hot Chip, The Raconteurs and Cat Power did nothing for me and Bob Dylan and Neil Young will always be crap.
1 Lily Allen - Alright Still: Feel a bit "getting down with the kids" about this one but her hilarious "bovvered" lyrics sung around some catchy ska riffs made this my favourite this year.
2 Belle and Sebastian - Life Pursuit: Showed how patchy their previous LP (Dear Catastrophe Waitress) was. Songs on this LP ranked with the best of their early stuff.
3 Meic Stevens - Disgwyl Rhywbech Gwell i ddod: The Welsh folk legend has been fined £500 today (December 15) for threatening to shoot a Pembrokeshire landlady. I bought this compliation of his early stuff (from 1968-1979) a few months earlier and it's fantastic - blues, folk, psychedelia, pub sing-a-longs and more formal choral stuff.
4 Sparks - Hello Young Lovers: They creeped me out in the 70s but this was a revelation. Amusing songs based on repetitive riffs and lyrics ("Here Kitty, Kitty") which occasionally outstay their welcome.
5 Cud - Rich and Strange Anthology: Triumphant return for the Yorkshire band who were overshadowed by Madchester and Britpop.
6 Dominic E Collins - Canadian Geese Over Ancoats Skies: Compared mistakenly with Mike Harding, Dominic has a Manc-as-they-come voice, an acoustic guitar and songs about his local pie shop, among other things.
7 Zero 7 - The Garden: Two very different vocalists (Jose Gonzalez and Sia Farler) mean this album is divided into slow moody songs and quicker sing-a-long stuff.
8 Van Morrison - It's Too Late To Stop Now: I bought this 1974 live double after reading Johnny Rogan's critical biography of the grumpy maestro this year. This was one of the LPs Rogan recommended and he was right.
9 Arctic Monkeys - Whatever... Great lyrics and distinctive vocals lift this above the usual punk-lite tunes.
10 North by North West: Liverpool and Manchester bands of the late 70s/early 80s. The obvious choices plus some forgotten gems such as Blue Orchids' Work.
CUD-FATHERSSept 2006: On the way to the Leeds Irish Centre to see the Cud band for the first time in 12-13 years, Radio 1's Zane Lowe (the most serious man ever) was bigging up some achingly trendy band called Tram, Tram, Tram (or something) and then played their song and it sounded like.. the Knack's My Sharona.
And then I saw Cud. Knocking seven bells of shit out of all the angular-haired punk-funk retreaders from London or the US.
Was Carl's voice up for it? Would new guitarist Felix fill the considerable boots (Hey Boots!) of the assistant headteacher from Tadcaster? Would the band gel like the greasiest Ted?
Yes, yes and yes! Carl bellowed like a moose, holding a note like Pavarotti. Felix is the indie Jimi Hendrix and the band were tighter than a gnat's chuff.
Starting with Purple Love Balloon they mixed their big hitters with some rarely played early stuff. There was a fantastic middle section featuring Love in a Hollow Tree, Hey Boots and Robinson Crusoe.
Rumours that Carl had finally lived up to the fat bastard taunts were wide of the mark. He looked more Vegas Elvis than Johnny Vegas.
He was having a great time as were the rest of the band and the audience who in Cud gig-style were dancing on stage. I'll never forget three blokes singing "Things get worse when you get older", from I've Had It With Blondes, looking like three butchers who'd owned a shop for 20 years.
The four-song encore was a bit of wind-down as they'd done all the hard work, although they made Jethro Tull's Living in the Past sound like Mission Impossible.
Yes Carl's voice and some of the songs do sound samey but there's no-one like Cud. You can hear snatches of Jonathan Richman, the Stones and the Weddoes but if they were a new band now Zane Lowe would be creaming his pants.
Cud will be wowing the festivals next year (apparently). Can't wait!
UPDATE May 2007: Cud playing Glasto, third on bill on some smallstage behind Ned's Atomic Dustbin and Back to the Planet (lovely, strapping ginger singer!)
Thanks to
GIGS JULY - AUGUST 2006August 2006: A bumper crop of gigs over the past two months - most of them good, all of them interesting.
Highlight was Jeffrey Lewis (www.thejeffreylewissite.com, pictured -he really is this tall)at the Polish Catholic Centre in Sheffield (August 25). One man, one acoustic guitar, one comic book. Simple tunes which rattle along at a fair lick, crammed with laugh-out lyrics sung in a hangdog voice.
There's something Woody Allen-esque about his longing for unavailable women, worries about his health and his self-deprecating cracks about himself. As he says, he's not even a glass half-empty person, he's glass half-full - half-full of nothing. There's also some delightful rhymes - on one song about a dead pig he sings: "He's called Jonathan or Jason/It depends which way he's facin'"
On three songs he holds up a comic book to accompany him. Two of the songs are B-movie stuff - one about a brain which grows bigger and bigger until it rampages through a city and another about a walking hand which offends a bus-full of nuns. The third is a dead straight history of communism in China!
Support came from Benjamin Weatherill who looks like Bernard Sumner circa Joy Division but covers Irving Berlin and Nat King Cole in a high quavery voice while playing guitar and banjo. Fragile and folky.
Then there's David Thomas Broughton who, like several solo artistes, has one of those devices which means he can record a riff and play another on top. Early on this was a discordant mess but it gradually came more compelling as he wandered through the crowd, singing snatches of Leonard Cohen songs in a voice which sounded a blood-and-thunder preacher or the two aromatherapists in Vic and Bob.
A fortnight earlier I was in Hebden Bridge for a beer festival at the Trades Club and there was an unexpected treat - Nell Bryden (www.nellbryden.com), pictured, a Brooklyn singer songwriter with a powerful soaring voice and some nice blues touches on her acoustic guitar.
She looked completely at home with the hustle and bustle in the hall - children crying, dogs yawning and fat blokes creaking their chairs to get another Moorhouses from the bar (ahem).
She even called me sweety when I bought her CD off her later. I don't think anyone's called me sweety before - mind you I was dressed as a Mars Bar at the time.
It was also great to be in Hebden Bridge, one of those attractive, rather dour West Yorkshire towns enlivened by a splash of lefty-Glastonbury colour. Where other towns have Poundlands, Hebbo (as no-one calls it) has a CD shop full of 60s and 70s obscurities run by a jolly long-haired chap. Where some schools are covered in grafitti, Hebden's is covered with a huge mural.
What a pity there's no decent boozer. There are two pubs in the Good Beer Guide - one's a bit pokey, the other's restauranty. The Trades Club is about the best and you can sign up for a tantric astrology or clay oven making if you so desire.
On August 7 I was in the Packhorse in Leeds, one of my regular haunts when I lived in the city as it put on some excellent gigs along with the Brudenell Social Club.
There were four acts on that night - three were connected and appeared to be from the Brighton area.
Anyone calling themselves Kevin 2 Sheds (www.threeface.co.uk/kevin2sheds) with an album called 'Mark Knopfler Taught Me Everything I Don’t Know' sounds brilliant. He looked like a young John Otway or Super Hans from Peep Show, but he was never more than mildly amusing.
He was backed by the next act, Pog (www.worldofbeardandpog.co.uk/pogwash/menu.html) a brother and sister act on acoustic guitar and acoustic bass, who occasionally sounded like Violent Femmes without the lyrics to match.
Pog also supported MC for the night and third act Philip Jeays (www.jeays.com) who looks Peter Cook and sings occasionally laugh-out loud songs in a melodramatic Scott Walker/Jacques Brel stylee. The highlight was a song about being on his deathbed, listing all the people he hated with the chorus "Fxxx you!" He got the biggest cheers of the night.
All three acts were light-hearted, knockabout stuff and the final act bucked the trend but was enthralling.
Simon Siddol loves the minor chords and the big pauses on his electric piano, sounding like Lou Reed's Berlin occasionally, although Siddol has a deep, rich voice which sometimes veers off into a Tom Waits-rant. It was a pity he was on so late as many people had to leave during his set.
And finally Shona Morrison, Van's daughter, at the New Roscoe in Leeds. Too Alanis Morrisette for my liking. She was at her best when her band went bluesy and she did a lovely cover of her dad's song Sweet Thing.
CUDHead full of loose change
July 2006: One of the great live bands of the 90s have released a greatest hits double and the band (minus guitarist Mike Dunphy) have reformed to play some gigs - their first as Cud for 11 years.
Carl Puttnam's voice was always a blessing and a curse for the band as it was easy to recognise one of their tunes, but as he barked out one note (but what a note!) some of the songs sounded very samey.
This didn't seem to matter as much live where their relentless tunes were exhilarating, but the best songs were the ones where they varied the pace a bit - Robinson Crusoe, Love in a Hollow Tree, Hey Boots and Rich and Strange.
They did five dates earlier this month (August) and have added five more, including two supporting "a chart act", and a final gig at Leeds Irish Centre on September 19.
It's their homecoming gig as the band met at Leeds Poly, forming in 1985. They hit their stride at the end of the 80s and had two Top 30 hits in the early 90s with A&M but they were overshadowed somewhat by the Madchester scene - neither indie-trendy or mainstream enough - and split in 1995.
I saw them at the Leadmill, in Sheffield, and Manchester International 2 and I think the NME gig review below is from that Manchester gig:
Udderly Fab-Tastic!
Manchester International II, NME, 26 October 1991
'I LOVE you!' sings bespectacled spectacle Carl Puttnam, the Mick Hucknall you can trust, 'I luhuahu-u-uuuumhhhve yo-o-o-oul'.
His cavernous diaphragm quakes, he woos the already-sodden audience with Tom Jones-ian lungpower and Engelbert-esque melodrama. Truly, we are in an Indie Las Vegas. And the Cud band are glittering.
Outside is the coldest bastard rainy night In Manchester ever. In here, still largely unbeknownst to the music industry, Cud are happening. Warm your toes on that.
A tangible buzz permeates the air; It's like Carter at the end of last year. Teenage Fanclub this summer, Kingmaker at Reading - yes, that exciting. You come to review a concert by a band, but the sheer swell of the expectant and genned-up crowd knocks you out. These Cud fans know something and, in elitist terms, we about to be taken away from them.
So, the important question, has The Man got Cud? Hell, no. They're A&M property now, sure, they're suddenly in the overtaking lane, and they can have WHATEVER THEY WANT (Later, Carl will delight In telling me how A&M spent a week trying to obtain the actual model of a knight an horseback, used by Anglia TV as their logo in the '70s, for the sleeve of 'Oh No Won't Do') - but the power and the possibility haven't made them giddy. It's a tighter four-piece that cook with gas.
This evening, confident. cool. together, swaggering, laughing all the time - no longer will the shorthand cynics be able to write Cud off as udder-achieving amateurs. They're done with merely singing for their supper, nowadays they're playing for their life!
Cud are the actual Idiot Joy Showband, Glam Rock for the '90s. 'Eau Water' opens the set, babbling insanely, stomping, showmanlike, on all yer near-sighted Indie codes. Cud dare to crowd-please, to exaggerate gestures, to clutch their frilly chest. And that Puttnam Voice - not for Carl the insipid, apologetic sniffing of Damon from Blur - when he goes for it he really blows for it! BOOM! BOOM! A resounding success.
A camp 'Roblnson Crusoe', a rousing 'Hey Boots', a charming 'Love In A Hollow Tree', and three now ones, 'Sometimes Rightly Sometimes Wrongly', 'Easy' and 'Pink Flamingo', which la a 'Norwegian Wood' made pulp.
Stage divers crowd the skies, about three balloons bob from head to head, Cart chuckles "Heh heh heh" uncontrollably and tells a punter who's waving his boots In the air during 'Hey Boots' that "It's not about shoes!'
Correct. an album in the New Year, America and The Drummer From Cud will leave cult status way behind him. We need stompalong, unashamed, OTT cabaret entertainment that shakes a log to Third World debt; we need Carl Puttnam In his rubbish beads; we need STARGAZERS II
Simply Cud, honey.
Andrew Collins
Picture and NME review:
JEFFREY LEWISShy New Yorker meets perfect woman. Blows it. Writes nervously-voiced, pleasingly-shambolic songs (and cartoons) about the experience
Video from Fortmark Films:
Cartoon:
Source/picture:
VELVET UNDERGROUNDJune 2006: You wait years for the first ever Velvets DVD and two come along at once - Velvet Redux, a live concert from Paris in 1993, and Under Review, featuring interviews with Mo Tucker, Doug Yule and some rare Warhol footage.
The Velvets reunion is seen as a failure by most of the mainstream media. As usual with films and music, they all tend to agree with each other and because one or two journalists criticised the reunion at the time it's slated by others now.
If the band had been inferior to their 1960s live LPs and bootlegs then I'd agree, but you just have to listen to Heroin and Waiting for the Man, arguably their key songs, and realise they had recaptured their peak form and unique abilities - tub thumping drums, relentless guitars, droning viola, pounding piano and Reed's lyrics.
I was at the Wembley gig in the same year (Jarvis Cocker was sitting nearby!) and this DVD brought it all back - the thrill of seeing the four of them together and the exhilarating versions of some of my favourite songs with subtle variations.
Cale sings vocals on Waiting for the Man and adds a lovely violin part to Pale Blue Eyes. Morrison's lead guitar work shines on Rock n Roll and White Light White Heat.
The choice of songs was my only complaint then, and it is now - no Run Run Run, What Goes On, Foggy Notion and especially Sister Ray. They could have replaced Hey Mr Rain, Beginning To See The Light and dreadful newie, Coyote.
Under Review doesn't look so promising - it's mainly journo talking heads with new interviews from Mo and Doug, some Warhol film, bits from the 1993 concert and from the Reed/Cale/Nico reunion in 1972.
But it's pretty good, especially in the way it analyses the songs (how Waiting for the Man originally sounded slow and Dylan-esque).
There's also some suitably extravagant journo claims ("Rock music started with Dylan and the Velvets") and some interesting arguments - Cale's departure benefited the band because they were able to concentrate on the songs, and the third LP was the best (Rubbish! Apart from What Goes on, Pale Blue Eyes and Some Kinda Love it's bobbins).
Gigs
Velvets' support bands included:
1968: MC5, Canned Heat (supported), Flamin Groovies, Chicago, The Nazz feat. Todd Rundgren (supported), Tim Buckley (supported), Sly and the Family Stone
1969: Grateful Dead (supported), Chicago festival (feat Byrds, Muddy Waters, Fleetwood Mac), Nice, The Allman Brothers
STERLING MORRISONVelvets guitar ace
Sterling's favourite musicians (in 1969):
The Byrds, The Kinks, Dr. John, Quicksilver Messenger Service.
But he didn't like:
Creedence Clearwater Revival ("monotonous")
Van Dyke Parks (MacArthur Park, Beach Boys producer) "I dismiss him summarily. I don't care what he does. I don't think he has the credentials. Whatever he's supposed to be doing - he isn't good enough."
Frank Zappa: "Zappa is incapable of writing lyrics. He is shielding his musical deficiencies by prolelytizing all these sundry groups that he appeals to. He just throw enough dribble into those songs, I don't know, I don't like their music."
And MC5 "I think seldom of the MC5."
(From interview with Greg Barrios, Fusionmagazine)
And in another interview, in 1980, he doesn't like New Wave:
Interviewer: Do you think New Wave is new, or is it just a rehashing of old stuff?
Morrison: I'm afraid to say what I think about New Wave.
Interviewer: Don't be. Go ahead. Please.
Morrison: I'm worried a whole lot about it. People that have known me know that the major bitch in my life has been between rock 'n' roll and folk singers. That's it.
Interviewer:Is New Wave rock 'n' roll or is it folk?
Morrison: I'm afraid it's folk singing and this pains me.
Great quote:
Why do you have such an aversion toward people who talk to you?
'Cause I read books!
On Lou Reed:
"Lou really did want to have a whole lot of credit for the songs. So on nearly all the albums we gave it to him. It kept him happy. He got the rights to all the songs on Loaded, so now he's credited with being the absolute and singular genius of the Underground, which is not true."
He loves Hendrix (who liked the Velvets), hates Dylan and lays into Zappa, again:
"If you told Frank Zappa to eat shit in public, he'd do it if it sold records."
(Interview by Nick Modern, Sluggo magazine)
Doug Yule describes how Sterling left the band in 1971 (from Velvet Underground fanzine, Fierce Pup Productions and Sal Mercuri. Picture from this source)
"Sterling is standing in the airport in Houston. Next to him is an empty suitcase, a fact at that moment known only to himself. He stops the progress of the group towards the gate with the announcement that he will not be returning to New York with us, he is going to Austin in a few days to begin a fellowship there, to return to school and complete his education.
"This is the last time I will ever see Sterling. I will not know until he dies twenty five years later that he acquired a degree in Medieval Studies and picked up a tugboat captain's license."
THE FALL: BANANA SPLIT
Scowling curmudgeon in Oxfam leathers
Busts up with band in banana republic
June 2006: The Fall have split up on a US tour for the second time.
Three members of the band flew out of the country after their May 7 gig was cut short when a member of the support band chucked a banana at Smith and he ran off stage to fight him in the car park.
Three members of labelmates Cairo Gang (described as Chicago dirge rockers) were drafted in for the next gig two days later and are staying as permanent members. Their UK debut will at The Fall's 30th anniversary on June 10.
Here's what happened, according to Cole Coonce, from LA City Beat:
Tour reports were rife with incidents of Smith pouring a beer on his tour manager's noggin and also using his head as an ashtray, all while the poor tosser drove the van down the interstate and tried not to crash.
Moreover, at that night's show (May 7), a member of the opening act assaulted Smith with a half-eaten banana and the band played on while MES chased the banana-assassin into the parking lot, where a scuffle ensued.
This mayhem, coupled with Smith's notoriously fascistic task-making, had forced “the lads” (as he called his backing group) to skulk away under the cover of darkness and catch an aeroplane back to Old Sod.
Smith and wife/synthesist sidekick Elena Poulou endeavored to fulfill contractual obligations and finish the tour.
The Fall's record label solicited as replacements a trio of alt-dirge rockers out of Chicago (The Cairo Gang), who were hot-lapped into San Diego in time for the Fall's booking at the House of Blues, and – ka-pow ka-pow ka-pow – quick as a repeating rifle, the notion of the Fall being a platoon system was, in fact, realized.
Luckily for the new lads most of the Fall's latest songs are mere exercises in two-note rock riffs pounded into a repetitive groove, which serves as a foundation for Smith to free-associate lyrically, with gems such as “Dolly Parton and Lord Byron/They said patriotism is the last refuge/But now it's me” or haikus to that effect.
Smith is a chaos-monger and a lush, and when the chips are down, he will find a way to turn over the card table. This night (May 13 Knitting Factory, LA) was true to form, as the joint was packed like a bowl of sweaty oatmeal with a legion of fervent Fall disciples, who waited for the gospel from their maniacal messiah.
Instead of a pointed, galvanizing performance that would send the faithful to postmodern Valhalla, Smith showed up drunk, staggering and slurring through a rambling collection of dirges. For the duration, he was squint-eyed sauced, stumbling and unintelligible. The “band” struggled to find its cues and vainly tried to follow his meanderings.
Methinks “the lads” had the right idea when they deserted their leader in Phoenix.
This, and the flyer for the LA after-show party, is from the unofficial Fall website, formerly the official Fall website until Mr Smith took exception to the message board earlier this year. He gave an interview to an LA paper before the gig, praising the (old) band - "They're very on form".
GO-BETWEEN MCLENNAN DIESMay 2006: Founder member of The Go-Betweens Grant McLennan has died in his sleep, apparently of a heart attack. He was just 48.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian, he was planning a large party at his Brisbane home on the night he died (May 6) and had gone for a lie-down as he was feeling unwell. He was later found dead by party guests.
The Go-Betweens most recent album had been their most successful, EMI had bought ther back catalogue providing him with financial security and he was in love with a lass and about to be engaged.
He formed the band in 1977 at university with songwriting partner Robert Forster who said: "The last six months was the happiest I had ever known him."
They released their first LP in 1981, split in 1989 and reformed in 2000.
Pic from Go Betweens website
MRS PILGRIMMLayers of metronomic cello
topped off with sauce
New LP: Alone Queen
Downloads:
Picture/More info:
MISTY'S BIG ADVENTURE
Set the controls to jaunty
Downloads from SL Records:
Videos from Fortmark Films:
Labels: Cud, Emily Druce, Half Man Half Biscuit, Jeffrey Lewis, Mik Artistik, Sterling Morrison, The Fall, Velvet Underground, Wedding Present
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
PUB NEWS
CAMRA PUBS OF THE YEAR 2007-8
May 08 update: It's that time of year when Camra branches choose their pubs of the year in the hope that their boozers go on to become the national number one.
In Huddersfield, it's a second win in a row for the Rat and Ratchet - and well-deserved too, although the Grove might have been in with a shout. Sam has taken over the pub from Dave (not the soul duo) in the past year and upheld his predecessor's high standards - good mix of beers from the Ossett empire and others, good selection of wines and ciders, friendly staff, cosy atmosphere and a good jukey.
It would have been nice for Hudds to tell us in their email how many members took part in the vote and maybe the top 20 pubs. Sheffield branch has done this and their winner is the excellent Kelham Island Tavern - an oasis in a rather bleak area of Sheff.
Nine hundred members took part in the vote. Here's the top 20:
1 Kelham Island Tavern, Kelham Island
2 Fat Cat, Kelham Island
3 Bath Hotel, City Centre
4 Commercial, Chapeltown
=5 Hillsborough Hotel
=5 Devonshire Cat, City Centre
7 Rising Sun, Nether Green
8 Sheaf View, Heeley
9 New Barrack Tavern, Hillsborough
10 Ranmoor Inn, Ranmoor
11 Wellington, Shalesmoor
12 Grouse, Longshaw
13 Harlequin, City Centre
14 Wig & Pen, City Centre
15 Coach & Horses, Dronfied
16 Dove & Rainbow, City Centre
17 Cobden View, Crookes
18 Red Lion, City Centre
19 Millstone, Hathersage
20 Fagans, City Centre
In the Heavy Woollen area (Dewsbury, Batley, Cleckheaton, Heckmondwike etc), the fabulous West Riding Refreshment Rooms wins for a third year in a row.
York’s pub of the year is Brigantes Bar & Brasserie on Micklegate, which only opened two years ago. It's one I'm not familiar with but it has good pedigree as it's part of the Market Town Taverns group, which runs Arcadia in Headingley and Bar T'at in Ilkley, among others. It was chosen from a shortlist of eight pubs of the season.
Keighley branch has explained on its website how it choose The Brown Cow as pub of the year - "quality of beer, service, atmosphere, general décor, clientele mix, value for money and support of CAMRA aims" and a it had to be in the Good Beer Guide. It's a Taylors pub, not one I've visited, but it apparently has coal fires, a collection of police hats and a ban on bad language (difficult to enforce in Keighley I'd have thought!). "Locals will chat with you" is another recommendation. Sounds good.
New ones in May include The Barons Bar, part of the Scarisbrick Hotel in Southport. This was where I did most of my drinking in my youth, a strange place in hindsight and it was, and is, a rather fusty hotel bar. It was packed with teenies in the early 80s but now is rather more sedate. Maybe it's because there are more bars these days. The beer has always been good here and the range has expanded since my big hair days.
In Halifax the winner is the Shepherds Rest in Sowerby Bridge, a Tardis-like boozer, part of the Ossett empire. Very nice place.
SUMMERCROSS UPDATE
Apr 08: Plans to knock down the Summercross pub in Otley and replace it with housing have been knocked back by Leeds Council.
STATE OF HUDDERSFIELD TOWN CENTRE PUBS
Mar 08: Something to tell the grandchildren - I've made lead letter in the Huddersfield Examiner! (March 25).
The state of Huddersfield town centre pubs has been brewing (arf, arf) for me for some time - you can't go on a pub crawl in the town centre, you can't get a decent pint of bitter in nearly all of the pubs and there seems to be a lot of bovine dickheads around.
And I have to go to Halifax to watch the rugby league.
Anyway, here's the letter:
I’VE been interested in your articles about the difficulties pubs are facing. While I sympathise with the pressures landlords face from supermarkets, the smoking ban and the pub companies, Huddersfield town centre isn’t a great place to go out for a drink because the pubs and bars, by and large, lack variety – similar selection of lagers, same football on TVs and more or less the same songs on the jukeboxes.
The only pub in town where you can guarantee to get a good pint of bitter or mild in a pleasant atmosphere is The King’s Head, or Station as it used to be known.
The Head of Steam, Albert, County, Vox and Zephyr are also decent enough, but most pubs and bars seem to be divided into ones where you have to dress up to get in or they’re a bit shabby or they lack atmosphere.
As for beer, you can get a greater variety in Tesco. There are 31 breweries in West Yorkshire, several of them within a few miles of Huddersfield – why don’t pubs be a bit more adventurous with their choice of beer?
But it’s not just beer. If I want to watch the rugby league at the weekend and have a decent pint of bitter, I have to go to Halifax.
I gave up on Huddersfield when I tried to watch a Tri-Nations game two years ago. I went round most of the pubs but they insisted on showing some “vital” game like Fulham v Portsmouth. Let’s hope that now the Giants are more popular than Town (10,000 average attendance for first four games compared with Town's last four of 7,500) that Huddersfield pubs will start using their initiative and showing rugby for a change.
If landlords think they’ll lose out by changing, they only have to look at the Grove, in Spring Grove Street and The Star in Lockwood – two former rundown pubs that have been spruced up and serve a variety of real ales. Both are thriving.
A NEW TRAIN STATION BOOZER
Mar 08: West Yorkshire is about to have another real ale pub in an old train station ticket office, with the opening of the Jubilee Refreshment Rooms at Sowerby Bridge in June/July.
It's a labour of love for Greetland brothers Chris and Andrew Wright who've waited TEN years to hack through red tape and get permission to open the disused office, which has been empty for 25 years.
They got the idea while sitting in Oxenhope station and wondering why they couldn't do the same in Sowerby Bridge, but they then had to deal with all the various rail companies and quangos to get it off the ground.
The plan is to be a caff from early mornings and stay open until 11, serving real ale from local micros and locally sourced food, and attract some of the 500 passengers who use the station every day.
Chris is a lifetime member of Camra and the brothers have run six charity beer festivals. Andrew will leave his dyehouse job to manage the pub. Chris, 46, has his own decorating business. Both are rail enthusiasts involved in a group which helped to reopen Brighouse station.
I'm sure many ale-quaffing trainspotting blokes will be willing the lads on as it sounds like a dream job (although a lot of hard work, I should imagine). The interior of the 132-year-old office is intact and hopefully it will be as attractive as the Refreshment Rooms in Dewsbury and the King's Head and Head of Steam in Huddersfield.
After the shock closure of the great Puzzle Hall nearby in January, blamed on supermarket prices, rising rents and the smoking ban, let's hope Chris and Andrew make a go of it. I'll be there!
By the way, Branwell Bronte - the Ringo Starr of the Brontes - used to work in the ticket office and was sacked for being drunk. I'm sure he'd love this.
Some info: Yorkshire Post/Halifax Courier
HUDDERSFIELD'S BEST FOR BEER - OFFICIAL!
Feb 08: Huddersfield pubs serve the best real ale in the country, according to independent group Cask Marque.
Marque inspectors made 84 local pub visits and supped 250 pints, checking they were served between 11 and 13ºC in a spotlessly clean glass, and the beer had "good clarity, a fresh aroma and a refreshing aftertaste".
The town got 19.5 out of 20. Truro was second, Twickenham third, Exeter fourth and Northampton fifth. Bristol sixth, Lancaster seventh, Plymouth eighth, Southampton ninth and Leicester 10th.
Paul Nunny, director of Cask Marque, told the Huddersfield Examiner: “We were extremely impressed by the consistent quality of pints being pulled in Huddersfield and offer our congratulations to local publicans, many of whom have already gained Cask Marque accreditation.”
It looks like Cask Marque tested boozers outside the town centre as well as in and not all them had got the Marque. There's a very strange collection of pubs which have got the award, according to the Marque's website, not all of them in the Good Beer Guide:
Berry Brow Liberal Club, Black Bull Lindley, Cherry Tree (town's Wetherspoons), High Park Bradley (never heard of it), Lloyds No 1 (another Wetherbarn), Old Mill Brighouse (Eh??? it looks nearer Bradley), Sair Linthwaite, Shoulder of Mutton Lockwood and White Cross Bradley.
So some of Hudds' best pubs - The Rat and Ratchet, The Grove, The Star and King's Head (ex Station, pictured from my Flickr site) - do not have Cask Marque, mmm. Still I'm sure they were visited for the survey and it's a great coup for the town.
To join Cask Marque, pubs have to apply and pay a £150 fee before inspectors make a couple of visits.
Of the other plcaes on the list I've only been to Bristol (strict 20 minutes supping up time), Twickenham (full of braying twats, neighbouring Richmond is nicer) and Lancaster (ex-friend threatened by yokel local for 'staring at him').
SUMMERCROSS UPDATE
Jan 08: The worst fears of campaigners fighting to keep a popular Otley pub have been confirmed.
As reported below, The Summercross closed unexpectedly in October despite attracting more customers and acclaim from Camra, and locals feared it would be converted into housing.
Surprise, surprise this has happened - Horsforth-based Chartford Homes have bought it from London company Phase 7 a month after it closed.
Chartford is preparing to submit a planning application for tradtional mews houses in keeping with the area...blah-di-blah! The fact is this was a thriving, well-kept pub - the only one on the east side of the town. What makes it worse is that Chartford were told pub trade was in decline and the landlord wanted to leave. Wrong!
Free market? It's only free for the rich, there's little choice for anyone else.
Save Our Summercross website
ALEING AND DOWNING
Dec 07: Sampling ales in Sweden, trying Britain's strongest beer, watching goth morris dancers at a Horsforth pub, listening to filthy karaoke in Southport, filling up with Fuller's at a special promotion night, getting Christmassy in Skipton, going grim up north in Sowerby Bridge and travelling on the Keighley and Worth Valley train (again)
Real ale excursions
SLUBBERS LANDLORD WANTED
Dec 07: Huddersfield's only Timmy Taylors pub - The Slubbers Arms - is looking for a new landlord.
The Good Beer Guide pub has a To Let sign outside and according to taylor's website they are looking for "an operator who is passionate about cask ale and up keeping the traditions of a good pub" and some one who can develop the food side.
Rent is £15,080 a year, business rates are £11,250 and there's £14,800 to find for fixtures and fittings.
The pub is a fantastic end-of-terrace, cheese wedge shape, crammed with football and rugby programmes and other memorabalia (the Galpharm Stadium is down the road) and some old-fashioned eccentric fittings and furniture that look like they belong in an antiques shop.
A chance to try the excellent mild Golden Best, Ram Tam and other Taylor's brews although opening times are often unpredictable (closed on a Sunday afternoon).
STEAMING INTO SUPERMARKETS
Dec 07: The Head of Steam chain (branch in Hudds station) is taking on the supermarkets by offering free pints and bottles if you buy a certain number of pints.
For example if you buy a pint of Thwaites you get a card which is marked for every pint you buy and if you buy six pints (and six marks) you get a free pint.
Caledonian, Hambleton, Black Sheep, Phoenix, Coach House, Daleside, Copper Dragon, Little Valley, Old Bear and Castle Rock are also taking part in the scheme and Castle Rock are adopting it in their own pubs.
The company's Stuff the Supermarkets campaign is a worthy attempt to take on the supermarkets which the Head of Steam blames for "irresponsible policy of selling alcohol very cheaply, fuelling binge drinking and anti-social behaviour".
Mmm...bit of pot and kettle here maybe, although it's a shame pubs are always getting the blame for drunkenness when some people are pissed up from shop booze before they go out.
Good idea from the chain (it's a bit like coffee shops). It's a shame that the Hudds Head of Steam occasionally lets itself down with the quality of its beer.
KING RAT STEPS DOWN
Oct 07: Farewell Dave, landlord of the Rat and Ratchet, in Huddersfield. He's stepping down after two years at the helm.
The Rat was always regarded as one of Hudds' best boozers as the previous landlord brewed his own ale.
Ossett Brewery took it over, spruced up the place and after a few months Dave stepped in and made the Rat the best in town - the beer range is varied but never too obscure with a few stalwarts alongside some carefully chosen guests, with milds a speciality to meet customer demand.
Dave spiced up the jukey with some sad metal but good sixties stuff, had a fiendishly complex quiz (pictures of guess the herb) and attracted a younger crowd while not appearing to alienate most of the regulars.
The pub was packed most weekends, won Hudds Camra's pub of the year and mild pub of the year. Dave is staying with Ossett and the Rat is believed to be in safe hands with its new landlord. Good luck Dave!
REFRESHMENT ROOMS STAGE UNDER THREAT
Oct 07: The outdoor stage area of the West Riding Refreshment Rooms, in Dewsbury train station, may be in jeopardy because the canopy is constructed within a listed building.
One planning application has already been refused and the pub is trying to work with the planning committee to resolve outstanding issues. The pub is urging everyone who has an interest in retaining the stage to contact Kirklees planning dept before October 30.
This would be a great shame as the stage is an attractive addition to the pub and is in part of the car park.
SHOCK CLOSURE OF POPULAR OTLEY PUB
Oct 07: One of Otley's most improved pubs for real ale is to close this month.
The pub is an attractive honeycoloured stone building on the outskirts of town. Last year, it was selling average Black Sheep. This year it's got its Cask Ale Marque, praise from local Camra branches, more punters and King Richard of Otley is behind the bar.
It seems that, out of the blue, some twatting London property developers who own the pub have decided not to renew the lease and there are rumours they'll use the site for housing. Typical - take the money and sod the community.
Here's a report from the Wharfedale and Airedale Observer:
Barry and Pamela Mills, who took over the Summer Cross in March 2006, have been told their lease will not be renewed. Over the past 18 months the couple have successfully worked to make the business a success, winning two awards.
They were stunned to receive a telephone call from County Estate Management - the agents for the owners - last month telling them their lease would not be renewed.
Mrs Mills said: "We expected to get another year's lease but the property company in London that owns the place have just informed us by phone to say they are not renewing the lease and that's that. I asked what they were doing with it and they said nothing' so we really don't know.
"But I have heard that sometimes this kind of thing happens and they leave the pub closed until it falls into rack and ruin, and don't renew its licence, until the local council finally says okay you can knock it down. We've already had people around measuring the place and surveyors coming to have a look.
One of the pub's customers, Otley MP Greg Mulholland, a member of the All Party Parliamentary Beer Group, has responded by launching a Save the Summer Cross campaign.
YORKSHIRE PUB OF THE YEAR IS....
Oct 07: Kelham Island Tavern, in Sheffield. Good pub in a rather dingy industrial area of Sheff which now opens all day.
Ten ales in two atttractive old-fashioned rooms. The pub is up against 15 others in other regions for Camra's national pub of the year. Result announced next year.
(Greater Manchester regional winner is New Oxford, in Salford).
Jan 08 update: No luck for Kelham Island. The four finalists are The pubs up for the title of CAMRA National Pub of the year 2007 are:
Turks Head, 49-51 Morley Street, St Helens,
Land of Liberty, Peace and Plenty, Long Lane, Heronsgate, Hertfordshire,
Old Spot, Hill Road, Dursley, Gloucestershire,
Blue Peter Hotel, Kirkcolm, Dumfries; Galloway.
Feb 08 update: And the winner is: The Old Spot - a fine pub according to my Gloucestershire snout Mr Quanters
OSSETT TAPS OFF
Aug 08: Wakefield's famous brew pub Fernandes Tap has been snapped up by Ossett Brewery - but Fernandes brews will continue and the downstairs part of the pub (currently an old shop) is to developed. It's Ossett's 10th pub.
Fernandes is a fine pub and it's good to see the beers will be continued to be made (sounds like Ossett has the same arrangement with the Riverhead pub and beers in Marsden). The Tap is also rather cramped and will be good to see get another room and a proper downstairs entrance rather than the miserable set of stairs at present.
RAT ON A ROLL!
June 07: The Rat and Ratchet has been named Huddersfield's best pub for mild beer, its second award in a month from the Campaign For Real Ale.
The boozer was given the award by Camra after a vote by drinkers and it comes just weeks after it was named Pub Of The Year by the branch.
The award comes after the pub hosted a festival on May 5 to celebrate National Mild Month with only milds on pump
Well-deserved awards for the Rat. As I've written before, this is the best pub in Huddersfield and the Camra branch has taken too long to recognise it as such. They're usually split between The Star and The Station - two very different pubs.
The Rat is a handsome pub with a good selection of northern, dark ales, friendly service with a great jukey.
HAPPY GREETLAND
June 07:The Greetland Community & Sporting Association in the village of Greetland, near Halifax, is Camra's Club of the Year 2007.
The club steward, Mr Ian Sinclair said: "The secret to the success of the club is simple. We scour Britain for the best real ales in the land and make sure they are always in peak condition when they are served. Our members love the fact we have six handpumps on permanently with the finest ales."
Other finalists in the competition were:
Ø Cheltenham Motor Club, - Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Ø Coombs Wood Sports & Social Club - Halesowen, West Midlands
Ø Dartford Working Men' Club, - Dartford, Kent.
CAMRA BRANCHES PUBS OF THE YEAR 2007
Bradford - The Junction, Baildon (second year running)
Halifax - Red Rooster, Brighouse
Huddersfield - Rat and Ratchet
Leeds - Guiseley Factory Workers Club, Guiseley
Sheffield (city) - Kelham Island Tavern (fourth year running)
Sheffield (district) - Cheshire Cheese, Hope
York - Blue Bell
CAPITALIST VULTURES CIRCLE OVER MARX'S LOCAL
April 07: The Crescent, in Salford, is up for sale and although it's being sold as a pub and is Grade 2 listed, it's possible that it could be knocked down to make way for houses or offices as it's in a development area.
This was the boozer where Marx and Engels used to sup in the 1860s. Engels lived in the area to gather evidence for his book 'The Condition of the Working Class in England' and he formed a formidable team with Marx in the local quiz league.
PIGEONS IN FLIGHT
March 07: The fabulous Three Pigeons in Halifax has won a national Camra/English Heritage conservation award and has been named the best back street boozer in Britain (along with a pub in Kent), while the equally good The Works, in nearby Sowerby Bridge, has won Camra's national conversion to pub award.
The Three Pigeons is a wonderful four room pub, cosy decor, comfy seats and being an Ossett pub has plenty of good ales. The Works by contrast turns an old workshed to a big modern boozer.
On The Three Pigeons, the judges said: “Opened in 1932, the original architects Jackson and Fox opted for an eclectic mix of neo-Georgian and then highly-fashionable Art Deco. Sold as a free house in the 1980s, the pub was resold to the Izakaya Pub Company, trading as Ossett Brewery, in 2005.
“The careful refurbishment recently carried out is exemplary The original multi-room plan has been retained - as has the engaging painted ceiling in the central hall - and the splendid tiled fireplace insets and oak-veneered bar counter, all dating from the 1930s, have been given a new lease of life. The whole effect is distinctly warm and welcoming, conjuring up exactly what visitors to Britain would imagine a pub to be. Perhaps most impressively, all of the new work has been executed on a shoestring budget, demonstrating that enthusiasm and sensitivity are often far better for old buildings than bulging corporate wallets and planning strategies.”
Of The Works, the judges said: “Originally an engineering workshop dating back to the end of the nineteenth century, this basic interior has been treated simply but effectively by local architects Hawden Russell. There is no artifice here, nor any fake history, but merely a very individual, multi-functioning building. The whole interior has been brought together visually by the well-chosen historic fittings bought by the owner on ebay. Altogether a good example of what can be done to bring a problem building, which seemed to have no obvious future, back to a highly successful commercial life.
Joe Goodwin Award for the best street-corner local to be shared between Three Pigeons and Prince of Wales, In herne Bay
The judges said: “This award in memory of the former CAMRA chair, goes jointly to The Prince of Wales in Herne Bay and the Three Pigeons in Halifax. These two old pubs, which together epitomise the best in traditional pubs, show how updating an old interior need not mean eradicating its unique charm or ignoring local customers favour of imposing a short-lived corporate identity derived from national focus groups. This proves a small budget, wisely and thoughtfully applied, can do wonders.”
OSSETT TAKES OVER RIVERHEAD
Dec 2006: Ossett Brewery has taken over The Riverhead in Marsden, but the pub will still be allowed to brew its own beers.
The Riverhead opened in a former grocer's shop in the centre of the village in 1995 and has a range of bitters, milds, porters and stouts, named after reservoirs. It's strangely been excluded from the Good Beer Guide for the last two years.
Ossett, which owns eight pubs in west Yorkshire, will sell its own beers in The Riverhead alongside existing brews.
Info: Hudds Examiner. Pic: Riverhead website
STATION TO OPEN TIL 3?
Dec 2006: Good Beer Guide pub The Station Tavern, in Huddersfield, wants to open until 3am.
The pub, which is sited in the train station and was a former
station licensed refreshment room, would open from 9am with cafe facilities, if its application is successful. At present it usually closes at 11pm even at weekends.
It would also change its name to the Kings Head.
The Station's ale is spot-on and the staff are friendly and most of the customers are too, although there's a few ageing hard men in there.
ANVIL'S THE BEST IN THE PREMIERSHIP
Oct 2006: Readers of the excellent Football and Real Ale Guides have voted the Anvil in Wigan as the best pub in the Premiership.
Fans of each division chose their favourites pubs in the guides, with the Bridge Beir Huis, in Burnley the Championship winner and the Fighting Cock in Bradford top of Division One. The Birbeck Tavern in Leyton is the Division Two winner.
The Anvil and Fighting Cock are both excellent pubs and both good places to watch the rugby league as well.
The best real ale towns/cities per division were Newcastle, Derby, Nottingham and Peterborough.
Stedders, author of the guides, has come up with a brilliant but simple idea - four books covering teams in the four divisions with five real ale pubs per town/city. Attractively designed and well-written.
Picture from website www.footballandrealaleguide.co.uk
CAMRA PUBS OF THE YEAR
Oct 2006: Every year Camra asks its 16 regional branches to choose its pubs of the year and Yorkshire pub of the year is the great West Riding Refreshment Rooms, in Dewsbury train station.
Vale Cottage, in Gorton was voted best pub in Greater Manchester; Wasdale Head Inn, Wasdale Head, Cumbria is best in the north west, and the Bhurtpore Arms, in Aston, Cheshire is best in Merseyside and North Wales.
They'll all find out if they're national pub of the year early next year.
Feb 2007: Dewsbury into last four, up against Failford Inn, in South Ayrshire, The Dove Street Inn, Ipswich and the Tom Cobley Tavern, Spreyton, Devon. And the winner is...sadly the Tom Cobley, West Riding is runner-up.
BOWLING GREEN- R.I.P.
September 2006: One of Britain's greatest and most unusual pubs has closed and, after fears it could be converted into flats, it is to become a Wetherspoon's.
The Bowling Green, in Otley, always had a great selection of real ales, but what made it special was the paraphanalia/junk which crammed the pub - stuffed snarling badgers, gas masks and a skeleton were among the 3,500 items inside. Customers even brought their own unusual items and left them in the pub.
The landlord, Trevor, was a rather forbidding character with his big hat, bushy beard and unblinking stare. It looked like you had to pull a thorn from his paw to get on with him.
Last year, he got planning permission for a flat conversion but regulars were expecting him to leave in a few years. Instead, they only got a few days' notice and the pub shut at the end of August. It says "Closed for refurbishment" on the door and Trevor told the Wharfedale and Airedale Observer he isn't allowed to say what the new developers will do exactly. (It later transpired that Wetherspoon's have bought it)
The 61-year-old is retiring after 40 years in the pub trade. He's been running the Bowling Green with his partner Judith for 25 years.
Wetherspoon's are likely to keep the name but will be serving food, converting outbuildings to extend the pub and opening til 1am. In a way it's a mixed blessing, as Trevor himself says in the Wharfedale and Airedale Observer, other pubs are terrified of Wetherspoon's.
The landlord of Otley's Black Swan apear to confirm these fears saying the cheap drink will attract trouble-making "outsiders" and added: "In my experience some Otley folk don't take too kindly to people from places like Guiseley coming in to drink. It is a recipe for disaster."
There'll be no snarling badgers or any other stuff in the pub. Trevor had auction for all the unusual artefacts on September 23 which attracted hundreds of people.
A ten foot long crocodile sold for £700, a wild boar's head for £240 and a coffin, complete with skeleton, went to start a new life as a filming prop while various stuffed foxes picked up anything between £30 and £50.
Why was the pub filled with paraphanalia? Apparently people started bringing various objects when the pub's DJ had an unusual objects competition.
And, as you can see from the comment below, the stuffed badger sparked a great chat-up line when my mate asked two women in the pub who would win in a fight between a badger and an otter.
Picture: Leeds Camra
HUDDS' NEW REAL ALE PUB
June 2006: The Grove, a corner pub on the outskirts of the town centre, has reopened as a real ale boozer.
I'd never been in before, it always looked slightly ropey, but it's a handsome enough building with traditional Hudds yellow brick and big bay windows. The new landlord has added some hanging baskets.
He says he hasn't changed the two-bar structure inside but changed everything else and he's done a grand job with big sturdy tables and comfy dining room-type chairs, old fashioned cartoons on the walls and pub paraphanalia on shelves higher up.
There are eight real ales, including two Timmy Taylors, four obscure continental lagers and two real ciders on draught plus plenty of bottles.
The beer is in good order. On first visit it was a bit warm but now it's up to Rat/Star standard. The Grove is handy for these pubs as it's diagonally opposite the bus station on the other side of the ring road.
No food, no TV, no music, late opening. Worth a visit.
ALBERT REVIVAL!
April 2006: The Albert pub has reopened after suddenly closing in January and looks.....exactly the same!
Well the ceiling looks different - corkboard colour - and everywhere's been painted but the layout, furniture and - most importantly - the glass and wood partitions are still in place.
When it closed under mysterious circumstances earlier this year there were fears this could all be ripped out and we could have another chrome and creamflow hell.
The landlord and landlady are from the Railway, in Berry Brow, a Good Beer Guide pub with a splendid Dalmatian.
For the Albert, they are promising eight ales,jazz night etc.
FIELDHEAD BLUES
April 2006: The couple who've made my local such a good place are leaving on Sunday after 10 years.
Russell and Lorraine Beverley go out on a high as the Fieldhead (in Quarmby near Huddersfield) has been named pub of the season for winter by Huddersfield's branch of the Campaign for Real Ale.
Russell has been brewing his own Empire range of tasty light bitters over the past couple of years and he's setting up his own brewery in Slaithwaite.
There've been rumours that Punch Taverns wouldn't allow him to brew his own ales at the Fieldhead - the corporate tossers.
PROTECTION FOR BRITONS
March 2006: The licensee of Manchester's Grade 2 listed gem The Britons Protection has denied the pub is being demolished - but there are talks about moving it 15 feet!
Reports in the Manchester Evening News had suggested it would be demolished to make way for flats/offices with the promise that the pub would be built elsewhere.
The licensee says it may be moved 15 feet into the space between the pub and Jury's Hotel. Such a move would only take 24 hours apparently. Mmmm...
The Britons is a beautifully preserved boozer, a narrow bar at the front and two bars at the back full of odd nooks and crannies and wooden panelling to give it a warm, homely feel.
It would be a disaster to build more yuppie flats and get rid of the buildings and pubs that give Manchester its unique identity - just like they replaced second-hand rummage emporium the Corn Exchange with the antiseptic designer fluff floggers in The Triangle.
Picture: Camra
May 08 update: It's that time of year when Camra branches choose their pubs of the year in the hope that their boozers go on to become the national number one.
In Huddersfield, it's a second win in a row for the Rat and Ratchet - and well-deserved too, although the Grove might have been in with a shout. Sam has taken over the pub from Dave (not the soul duo) in the past year and upheld his predecessor's high standards - good mix of beers from the Ossett empire and others, good selection of wines and ciders, friendly staff, cosy atmosphere and a good jukey.
It would have been nice for Hudds to tell us in their email how many members took part in the vote and maybe the top 20 pubs. Sheffield branch has done this and their winner is the excellent Kelham Island Tavern - an oasis in a rather bleak area of Sheff.
Nine hundred members took part in the vote. Here's the top 20:
1 Kelham Island Tavern, Kelham Island
2 Fat Cat, Kelham Island
3 Bath Hotel, City Centre
4 Commercial, Chapeltown
=5 Hillsborough Hotel
=5 Devonshire Cat, City Centre
7 Rising Sun, Nether Green
8 Sheaf View, Heeley
9 New Barrack Tavern, Hillsborough
10 Ranmoor Inn, Ranmoor
11 Wellington, Shalesmoor
12 Grouse, Longshaw
13 Harlequin, City Centre
14 Wig & Pen, City Centre
15 Coach & Horses, Dronfied
16 Dove & Rainbow, City Centre
17 Cobden View, Crookes
18 Red Lion, City Centre
19 Millstone, Hathersage
20 Fagans, City Centre
In the Heavy Woollen area (Dewsbury, Batley, Cleckheaton, Heckmondwike etc), the fabulous West Riding Refreshment Rooms wins for a third year in a row.
York’s pub of the year is Brigantes Bar & Brasserie on Micklegate, which only opened two years ago. It's one I'm not familiar with but it has good pedigree as it's part of the Market Town Taverns group, which runs Arcadia in Headingley and Bar T'at in Ilkley, among others. It was chosen from a shortlist of eight pubs of the season.
Keighley branch has explained on its website how it choose The Brown Cow as pub of the year - "quality of beer, service, atmosphere, general décor, clientele mix, value for money and support of CAMRA aims" and a it had to be in the Good Beer Guide. It's a Taylors pub, not one I've visited, but it apparently has coal fires, a collection of police hats and a ban on bad language (difficult to enforce in Keighley I'd have thought!). "Locals will chat with you" is another recommendation. Sounds good.
New ones in May include The Barons Bar, part of the Scarisbrick Hotel in Southport. This was where I did most of my drinking in my youth, a strange place in hindsight and it was, and is, a rather fusty hotel bar. It was packed with teenies in the early 80s but now is rather more sedate. Maybe it's because there are more bars these days. The beer has always been good here and the range has expanded since my big hair days.
In Halifax the winner is the Shepherds Rest in Sowerby Bridge, a Tardis-like boozer, part of the Ossett empire. Very nice place.
SUMMERCROSS UPDATE
Apr 08: Plans to knock down the Summercross pub in Otley and replace it with housing have been knocked back by Leeds Council.
STATE OF HUDDERSFIELD TOWN CENTRE PUBS
Mar 08: Something to tell the grandchildren - I've made lead letter in the Huddersfield Examiner! (March 25).
The state of Huddersfield town centre pubs has been brewing (arf, arf) for me for some time - you can't go on a pub crawl in the town centre, you can't get a decent pint of bitter in nearly all of the pubs and there seems to be a lot of bovine dickheads around.
And I have to go to Halifax to watch the rugby league.
Anyway, here's the letter:
I’VE been interested in your articles about the difficulties pubs are facing. While I sympathise with the pressures landlords face from supermarkets, the smoking ban and the pub companies, Huddersfield town centre isn’t a great place to go out for a drink because the pubs and bars, by and large, lack variety – similar selection of lagers, same football on TVs and more or less the same songs on the jukeboxes.
The only pub in town where you can guarantee to get a good pint of bitter or mild in a pleasant atmosphere is The King’s Head, or Station as it used to be known.
The Head of Steam, Albert, County, Vox and Zephyr are also decent enough, but most pubs and bars seem to be divided into ones where you have to dress up to get in or they’re a bit shabby or they lack atmosphere.
As for beer, you can get a greater variety in Tesco. There are 31 breweries in West Yorkshire, several of them within a few miles of Huddersfield – why don’t pubs be a bit more adventurous with their choice of beer?
But it’s not just beer. If I want to watch the rugby league at the weekend and have a decent pint of bitter, I have to go to Halifax.
I gave up on Huddersfield when I tried to watch a Tri-Nations game two years ago. I went round most of the pubs but they insisted on showing some “vital” game like Fulham v Portsmouth. Let’s hope that now the Giants are more popular than Town (10,000 average attendance for first four games compared with Town's last four of 7,500) that Huddersfield pubs will start using their initiative and showing rugby for a change.
If landlords think they’ll lose out by changing, they only have to look at the Grove, in Spring Grove Street and The Star in Lockwood – two former rundown pubs that have been spruced up and serve a variety of real ales. Both are thriving.
A NEW TRAIN STATION BOOZER
Mar 08: West Yorkshire is about to have another real ale pub in an old train station ticket office, with the opening of the Jubilee Refreshment Rooms at Sowerby Bridge in June/July.
It's a labour of love for Greetland brothers Chris and Andrew Wright who've waited TEN years to hack through red tape and get permission to open the disused office, which has been empty for 25 years.
They got the idea while sitting in Oxenhope station and wondering why they couldn't do the same in Sowerby Bridge, but they then had to deal with all the various rail companies and quangos to get it off the ground.
The plan is to be a caff from early mornings and stay open until 11, serving real ale from local micros and locally sourced food, and attract some of the 500 passengers who use the station every day.
Chris is a lifetime member of Camra and the brothers have run six charity beer festivals. Andrew will leave his dyehouse job to manage the pub. Chris, 46, has his own decorating business. Both are rail enthusiasts involved in a group which helped to reopen Brighouse station.
I'm sure many ale-quaffing trainspotting blokes will be willing the lads on as it sounds like a dream job (although a lot of hard work, I should imagine). The interior of the 132-year-old office is intact and hopefully it will be as attractive as the Refreshment Rooms in Dewsbury and the King's Head and Head of Steam in Huddersfield.
After the shock closure of the great Puzzle Hall nearby in January, blamed on supermarket prices, rising rents and the smoking ban, let's hope Chris and Andrew make a go of it. I'll be there!
By the way, Branwell Bronte - the Ringo Starr of the Brontes - used to work in the ticket office and was sacked for being drunk. I'm sure he'd love this.
Some info: Yorkshire Post/Halifax Courier
HUDDERSFIELD'S BEST FOR BEER - OFFICIAL!Feb 08: Huddersfield pubs serve the best real ale in the country, according to independent group Cask Marque.
Marque inspectors made 84 local pub visits and supped 250 pints, checking they were served between 11 and 13ºC in a spotlessly clean glass, and the beer had "good clarity, a fresh aroma and a refreshing aftertaste".
The town got 19.5 out of 20. Truro was second, Twickenham third, Exeter fourth and Northampton fifth. Bristol sixth, Lancaster seventh, Plymouth eighth, Southampton ninth and Leicester 10th.
Paul Nunny, director of Cask Marque, told the Huddersfield Examiner: “We were extremely impressed by the consistent quality of pints being pulled in Huddersfield and offer our congratulations to local publicans, many of whom have already gained Cask Marque accreditation.”
It looks like Cask Marque tested boozers outside the town centre as well as in and not all them had got the Marque. There's a very strange collection of pubs which have got the award, according to the Marque's website, not all of them in the Good Beer Guide:
Berry Brow Liberal Club, Black Bull Lindley, Cherry Tree (town's Wetherspoons), High Park Bradley (never heard of it), Lloyds No 1 (another Wetherbarn), Old Mill Brighouse (Eh??? it looks nearer Bradley), Sair Linthwaite, Shoulder of Mutton Lockwood and White Cross Bradley.
So some of Hudds' best pubs - The Rat and Ratchet, The Grove, The Star and King's Head (ex Station, pictured from my Flickr site) - do not have Cask Marque, mmm. Still I'm sure they were visited for the survey and it's a great coup for the town.
To join Cask Marque, pubs have to apply and pay a £150 fee before inspectors make a couple of visits.
Of the other plcaes on the list I've only been to Bristol (strict 20 minutes supping up time), Twickenham (full of braying twats, neighbouring Richmond is nicer) and Lancaster (ex-friend threatened by yokel local for 'staring at him').
SUMMERCROSS UPDATE
Jan 08: The worst fears of campaigners fighting to keep a popular Otley pub have been confirmed.
As reported below, The Summercross closed unexpectedly in October despite attracting more customers and acclaim from Camra, and locals feared it would be converted into housing.
Surprise, surprise this has happened - Horsforth-based Chartford Homes have bought it from London company Phase 7 a month after it closed.
Chartford is preparing to submit a planning application for tradtional mews houses in keeping with the area...blah-di-blah! The fact is this was a thriving, well-kept pub - the only one on the east side of the town. What makes it worse is that Chartford were told pub trade was in decline and the landlord wanted to leave. Wrong!
Free market? It's only free for the rich, there's little choice for anyone else.
Save Our Summercross website
ALEING AND DOWNING
Dec 07: Sampling ales in Sweden, trying Britain's strongest beer, watching goth morris dancers at a Horsforth pub, listening to filthy karaoke in Southport, filling up with Fuller's at a special promotion night, getting Christmassy in Skipton, going grim up north in Sowerby Bridge and travelling on the Keighley and Worth Valley train (again)
SLUBBERS LANDLORD WANTED
Dec 07: Huddersfield's only Timmy Taylors pub - The Slubbers Arms - is looking for a new landlord.
The Good Beer Guide pub has a To Let sign outside and according to taylor's website they are looking for "an operator who is passionate about cask ale and up keeping the traditions of a good pub" and some one who can develop the food side.
Rent is £15,080 a year, business rates are £11,250 and there's £14,800 to find for fixtures and fittings.
The pub is a fantastic end-of-terrace, cheese wedge shape, crammed with football and rugby programmes and other memorabalia (the Galpharm Stadium is down the road) and some old-fashioned eccentric fittings and furniture that look like they belong in an antiques shop.
A chance to try the excellent mild Golden Best, Ram Tam and other Taylor's brews although opening times are often unpredictable (closed on a Sunday afternoon).
STEAMING INTO SUPERMARKETS
Dec 07: The Head of Steam chain (branch in Hudds station) is taking on the supermarkets by offering free pints and bottles if you buy a certain number of pints.
For example if you buy a pint of Thwaites you get a card which is marked for every pint you buy and if you buy six pints (and six marks) you get a free pint.
Caledonian, Hambleton, Black Sheep, Phoenix, Coach House, Daleside, Copper Dragon, Little Valley, Old Bear and Castle Rock are also taking part in the scheme and Castle Rock are adopting it in their own pubs.
The company's Stuff the Supermarkets campaign is a worthy attempt to take on the supermarkets which the Head of Steam blames for "irresponsible policy of selling alcohol very cheaply, fuelling binge drinking and anti-social behaviour".
Mmm...bit of pot and kettle here maybe, although it's a shame pubs are always getting the blame for drunkenness when some people are pissed up from shop booze before they go out.
Good idea from the chain (it's a bit like coffee shops). It's a shame that the Hudds Head of Steam occasionally lets itself down with the quality of its beer.
KING RAT STEPS DOWN
Oct 07: Farewell Dave, landlord of the Rat and Ratchet, in Huddersfield. He's stepping down after two years at the helm.
The Rat was always regarded as one of Hudds' best boozers as the previous landlord brewed his own ale.
Ossett Brewery took it over, spruced up the place and after a few months Dave stepped in and made the Rat the best in town - the beer range is varied but never too obscure with a few stalwarts alongside some carefully chosen guests, with milds a speciality to meet customer demand.
Dave spiced up the jukey with some sad metal but good sixties stuff, had a fiendishly complex quiz (pictures of guess the herb) and attracted a younger crowd while not appearing to alienate most of the regulars.
The pub was packed most weekends, won Hudds Camra's pub of the year and mild pub of the year. Dave is staying with Ossett and the Rat is believed to be in safe hands with its new landlord. Good luck Dave!
REFRESHMENT ROOMS STAGE UNDER THREAT
Oct 07: The outdoor stage area of the West Riding Refreshment Rooms, in Dewsbury train station, may be in jeopardy because the canopy is constructed within a listed building.
One planning application has already been refused and the pub is trying to work with the planning committee to resolve outstanding issues. The pub is urging everyone who has an interest in retaining the stage to contact Kirklees planning dept before October 30.
This would be a great shame as the stage is an attractive addition to the pub and is in part of the car park.
SHOCK CLOSURE OF POPULAR OTLEY PUB
Oct 07: One of Otley's most improved pubs for real ale is to close this month.
The pub is an attractive honeycoloured stone building on the outskirts of town. Last year, it was selling average Black Sheep. This year it's got its Cask Ale Marque, praise from local Camra branches, more punters and King Richard of Otley is behind the bar.
It seems that, out of the blue, some twatting London property developers who own the pub have decided not to renew the lease and there are rumours they'll use the site for housing. Typical - take the money and sod the community.
Here's a report from the Wharfedale and Airedale Observer:
Barry and Pamela Mills, who took over the Summer Cross in March 2006, have been told their lease will not be renewed. Over the past 18 months the couple have successfully worked to make the business a success, winning two awards.
They were stunned to receive a telephone call from County Estate Management - the agents for the owners - last month telling them their lease would not be renewed.
Mrs Mills said: "We expected to get another year's lease but the property company in London that owns the place have just informed us by phone to say they are not renewing the lease and that's that. I asked what they were doing with it and they said nothing' so we really don't know.
"But I have heard that sometimes this kind of thing happens and they leave the pub closed until it falls into rack and ruin, and don't renew its licence, until the local council finally says okay you can knock it down. We've already had people around measuring the place and surveyors coming to have a look.
One of the pub's customers, Otley MP Greg Mulholland, a member of the All Party Parliamentary Beer Group, has responded by launching a Save the Summer Cross campaign.
YORKSHIRE PUB OF THE YEAR IS....
Oct 07: Kelham Island Tavern, in Sheffield. Good pub in a rather dingy industrial area of Sheff which now opens all day.
Ten ales in two atttractive old-fashioned rooms. The pub is up against 15 others in other regions for Camra's national pub of the year. Result announced next year.
(Greater Manchester regional winner is New Oxford, in Salford).
Jan 08 update: No luck for Kelham Island. The four finalists are The pubs up for the title of CAMRA National Pub of the year 2007 are:
Turks Head, 49-51 Morley Street, St Helens,
Land of Liberty, Peace and Plenty, Long Lane, Heronsgate, Hertfordshire,
Old Spot, Hill Road, Dursley, Gloucestershire,
Blue Peter Hotel, Kirkcolm, Dumfries; Galloway.
Feb 08 update: And the winner is: The Old Spot - a fine pub according to my Gloucestershire snout Mr Quanters
OSSETT TAPS OFF
Aug 08: Wakefield's famous brew pub Fernandes Tap has been snapped up by Ossett Brewery - but Fernandes brews will continue and the downstairs part of the pub (currently an old shop) is to developed. It's Ossett's 10th pub.
Fernandes is a fine pub and it's good to see the beers will be continued to be made (sounds like Ossett has the same arrangement with the Riverhead pub and beers in Marsden). The Tap is also rather cramped and will be good to see get another room and a proper downstairs entrance rather than the miserable set of stairs at present.
RAT ON A ROLL!
June 07: The Rat and Ratchet has been named Huddersfield's best pub for mild beer, its second award in a month from the Campaign For Real Ale.
The boozer was given the award by Camra after a vote by drinkers and it comes just weeks after it was named Pub Of The Year by the branch.
The award comes after the pub hosted a festival on May 5 to celebrate National Mild Month with only milds on pump
Well-deserved awards for the Rat. As I've written before, this is the best pub in Huddersfield and the Camra branch has taken too long to recognise it as such. They're usually split between The Star and The Station - two very different pubs.
The Rat is a handsome pub with a good selection of northern, dark ales, friendly service with a great jukey.
HAPPY GREETLAND
June 07:The Greetland Community & Sporting Association in the village of Greetland, near Halifax, is Camra's Club of the Year 2007.
The club steward, Mr Ian Sinclair said: "The secret to the success of the club is simple. We scour Britain for the best real ales in the land and make sure they are always in peak condition when they are served. Our members love the fact we have six handpumps on permanently with the finest ales."
Other finalists in the competition were:
Ø Cheltenham Motor Club, - Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Ø Coombs Wood Sports & Social Club - Halesowen, West Midlands
Ø Dartford Working Men' Club, - Dartford, Kent.
CAMRA BRANCHES PUBS OF THE YEAR 2007
Bradford - The Junction, Baildon (second year running)
Halifax - Red Rooster, Brighouse
Huddersfield - Rat and Ratchet
Leeds - Guiseley Factory Workers Club, Guiseley
Sheffield (city) - Kelham Island Tavern (fourth year running)
Sheffield (district) - Cheshire Cheese, Hope
York - Blue Bell
CAPITALIST VULTURES CIRCLE OVER MARX'S LOCAL
April 07: The Crescent, in Salford, is up for sale and although it's being sold as a pub and is Grade 2 listed, it's possible that it could be knocked down to make way for houses or offices as it's in a development area.
This was the boozer where Marx and Engels used to sup in the 1860s. Engels lived in the area to gather evidence for his book 'The Condition of the Working Class in England' and he formed a formidable team with Marx in the local quiz league.
PIGEONS IN FLIGHT
March 07: The fabulous Three Pigeons in Halifax has won a national Camra/English Heritage conservation award and has been named the best back street boozer in Britain (along with a pub in Kent), while the equally good The Works, in nearby Sowerby Bridge, has won Camra's national conversion to pub award.
The Three Pigeons is a wonderful four room pub, cosy decor, comfy seats and being an Ossett pub has plenty of good ales. The Works by contrast turns an old workshed to a big modern boozer.
On The Three Pigeons, the judges said: “Opened in 1932, the original architects Jackson and Fox opted for an eclectic mix of neo-Georgian and then highly-fashionable Art Deco. Sold as a free house in the 1980s, the pub was resold to the Izakaya Pub Company, trading as Ossett Brewery, in 2005.
“The careful refurbishment recently carried out is exemplary The original multi-room plan has been retained - as has the engaging painted ceiling in the central hall - and the splendid tiled fireplace insets and oak-veneered bar counter, all dating from the 1930s, have been given a new lease of life. The whole effect is distinctly warm and welcoming, conjuring up exactly what visitors to Britain would imagine a pub to be. Perhaps most impressively, all of the new work has been executed on a shoestring budget, demonstrating that enthusiasm and sensitivity are often far better for old buildings than bulging corporate wallets and planning strategies.”
Of The Works, the judges said: “Originally an engineering workshop dating back to the end of the nineteenth century, this basic interior has been treated simply but effectively by local architects Hawden Russell. There is no artifice here, nor any fake history, but merely a very individual, multi-functioning building. The whole interior has been brought together visually by the well-chosen historic fittings bought by the owner on ebay. Altogether a good example of what can be done to bring a problem building, which seemed to have no obvious future, back to a highly successful commercial life.
Joe Goodwin Award for the best street-corner local to be shared between Three Pigeons and Prince of Wales, In herne Bay
The judges said: “This award in memory of the former CAMRA chair, goes jointly to The Prince of Wales in Herne Bay and the Three Pigeons in Halifax. These two old pubs, which together epitomise the best in traditional pubs, show how updating an old interior need not mean eradicating its unique charm or ignoring local customers favour of imposing a short-lived corporate identity derived from national focus groups. This proves a small budget, wisely and thoughtfully applied, can do wonders.”
OSSETT TAKES OVER RIVERHEADDec 2006: Ossett Brewery has taken over The Riverhead in Marsden, but the pub will still be allowed to brew its own beers.
The Riverhead opened in a former grocer's shop in the centre of the village in 1995 and has a range of bitters, milds, porters and stouts, named after reservoirs. It's strangely been excluded from the Good Beer Guide for the last two years.
Ossett, which owns eight pubs in west Yorkshire, will sell its own beers in The Riverhead alongside existing brews.
Info: Hudds Examiner. Pic: Riverhead website
STATION TO OPEN TIL 3?
Dec 2006: Good Beer Guide pub The Station Tavern, in Huddersfield, wants to open until 3am.
The pub, which is sited in the train station and was a former
station licensed refreshment room, would open from 9am with cafe facilities, if its application is successful. At present it usually closes at 11pm even at weekends.
It would also change its name to the Kings Head.
The Station's ale is spot-on and the staff are friendly and most of the customers are too, although there's a few ageing hard men in there.
ANVIL'S THE BEST IN THE PREMIERSHIPOct 2006: Readers of the excellent Football and Real Ale Guides have voted the Anvil in Wigan as the best pub in the Premiership.
Fans of each division chose their favourites pubs in the guides, with the Bridge Beir Huis, in Burnley the Championship winner and the Fighting Cock in Bradford top of Division One. The Birbeck Tavern in Leyton is the Division Two winner.
The Anvil and Fighting Cock are both excellent pubs and both good places to watch the rugby league as well.
The best real ale towns/cities per division were Newcastle, Derby, Nottingham and Peterborough.
Stedders, author of the guides, has come up with a brilliant but simple idea - four books covering teams in the four divisions with five real ale pubs per town/city. Attractively designed and well-written.
Picture from website www.footballandrealaleguide.co.uk
CAMRA PUBS OF THE YEAR
Oct 2006: Every year Camra asks its 16 regional branches to choose its pubs of the year and Yorkshire pub of the year is the great West Riding Refreshment Rooms, in Dewsbury train station.
Vale Cottage, in Gorton was voted best pub in Greater Manchester; Wasdale Head Inn, Wasdale Head, Cumbria is best in the north west, and the Bhurtpore Arms, in Aston, Cheshire is best in Merseyside and North Wales.
They'll all find out if they're national pub of the year early next year.
Feb 2007: Dewsbury into last four, up against Failford Inn, in South Ayrshire, The Dove Street Inn, Ipswich and the Tom Cobley Tavern, Spreyton, Devon. And the winner is...sadly the Tom Cobley, West Riding is runner-up.
BOWLING GREEN- R.I.P.September 2006: One of Britain's greatest and most unusual pubs has closed and, after fears it could be converted into flats, it is to become a Wetherspoon's.
The Bowling Green, in Otley, always had a great selection of real ales, but what made it special was the paraphanalia/junk which crammed the pub - stuffed snarling badgers, gas masks and a skeleton were among the 3,500 items inside. Customers even brought their own unusual items and left them in the pub.
The landlord, Trevor, was a rather forbidding character with his big hat, bushy beard and unblinking stare. It looked like you had to pull a thorn from his paw to get on with him.
Last year, he got planning permission for a flat conversion but regulars were expecting him to leave in a few years. Instead, they only got a few days' notice and the pub shut at the end of August. It says "Closed for refurbishment" on the door and Trevor told the Wharfedale and Airedale Observer he isn't allowed to say what the new developers will do exactly. (It later transpired that Wetherspoon's have bought it)
The 61-year-old is retiring after 40 years in the pub trade. He's been running the Bowling Green with his partner Judith for 25 years.
Wetherspoon's are likely to keep the name but will be serving food, converting outbuildings to extend the pub and opening til 1am. In a way it's a mixed blessing, as Trevor himself says in the Wharfedale and Airedale Observer, other pubs are terrified of Wetherspoon's.
The landlord of Otley's Black Swan apear to confirm these fears saying the cheap drink will attract trouble-making "outsiders" and added: "In my experience some Otley folk don't take too kindly to people from places like Guiseley coming in to drink. It is a recipe for disaster."
There'll be no snarling badgers or any other stuff in the pub. Trevor had auction for all the unusual artefacts on September 23 which attracted hundreds of people.
A ten foot long crocodile sold for £700, a wild boar's head for £240 and a coffin, complete with skeleton, went to start a new life as a filming prop while various stuffed foxes picked up anything between £30 and £50.
Why was the pub filled with paraphanalia? Apparently people started bringing various objects when the pub's DJ had an unusual objects competition.
And, as you can see from the comment below, the stuffed badger sparked a great chat-up line when my mate asked two women in the pub who would win in a fight between a badger and an otter.
Picture: Leeds Camra
HUDDS' NEW REAL ALE PUB
June 2006: The Grove, a corner pub on the outskirts of the town centre, has reopened as a real ale boozer.
I'd never been in before, it always looked slightly ropey, but it's a handsome enough building with traditional Hudds yellow brick and big bay windows. The new landlord has added some hanging baskets.
He says he hasn't changed the two-bar structure inside but changed everything else and he's done a grand job with big sturdy tables and comfy dining room-type chairs, old fashioned cartoons on the walls and pub paraphanalia on shelves higher up.
There are eight real ales, including two Timmy Taylors, four obscure continental lagers and two real ciders on draught plus plenty of bottles.
The beer is in good order. On first visit it was a bit warm but now it's up to Rat/Star standard. The Grove is handy for these pubs as it's diagonally opposite the bus station on the other side of the ring road.
No food, no TV, no music, late opening. Worth a visit.
ALBERT REVIVAL!
April 2006: The Albert pub has reopened after suddenly closing in January and looks.....exactly the same!
Well the ceiling looks different - corkboard colour - and everywhere's been painted but the layout, furniture and - most importantly - the glass and wood partitions are still in place.
When it closed under mysterious circumstances earlier this year there were fears this could all be ripped out and we could have another chrome and creamflow hell.
The landlord and landlady are from the Railway, in Berry Brow, a Good Beer Guide pub with a splendid Dalmatian.
For the Albert, they are promising eight ales,jazz night etc.
FIELDHEAD BLUES
April 2006: The couple who've made my local such a good place are leaving on Sunday after 10 years.
Russell and Lorraine Beverley go out on a high as the Fieldhead (in Quarmby near Huddersfield) has been named pub of the season for winter by Huddersfield's branch of the Campaign for Real Ale.
Russell has been brewing his own Empire range of tasty light bitters over the past couple of years and he's setting up his own brewery in Slaithwaite.
There've been rumours that Punch Taverns wouldn't allow him to brew his own ales at the Fieldhead - the corporate tossers.
PROTECTION FOR BRITONS
March 2006: The licensee of Manchester's Grade 2 listed gem The Britons Protection has denied the pub is being demolished - but there are talks about moving it 15 feet!
Reports in the Manchester Evening News had suggested it would be demolished to make way for flats/offices with the promise that the pub would be built elsewhere.
The licensee says it may be moved 15 feet into the space between the pub and Jury's Hotel. Such a move would only take 24 hours apparently. Mmmm...
The Britons is a beautifully preserved boozer, a narrow bar at the front and two bars at the back full of odd nooks and crannies and wooden panelling to give it a warm, homely feel.
It would be a disaster to build more yuppie flats and get rid of the buildings and pubs that give Manchester its unique identity - just like they replaced second-hand rummage emporium the Corn Exchange with the antiseptic designer fluff floggers in The Triangle.
Picture: Camra
Labels: Bowling Green Otley, Huddersfield real ale pubs, King's Head Huddersfield, Rat and Ratchet Huddersfield, Sheffield real ale pubs, Summercross Otley, The Grove Huddersfield, Three Pigeons Halifax
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
TRAINS
ORIENT EXPRESS? PAH!April 08: You can keep your fancy Orient Express - I got a South Pennines Day Ranger ticket with the opportunity to visit Manchester, Oldham Mumps, Rochdale, Halifax, Bradford, Huddersfield, Barnsley, Sheffield, Wakefield, Stalyvegas and most stations in between for £13.
I tried it out this month, intending to travel on the Penistone Line from Huddersfield to Barnsley, cutting across to Wakefield.
Then I was going to hop off at Mirfield to catch a relatively new Leeds to Hebden Bridge service, which, frustatingly doesn't stop at Hudds, and then catch a Rochdale train at Heb Bridge and maybe change for Oldham or head back via Manchester Victoria or Halifax.
Well it didn't quite turn out like that because, of course, I didn't want to be just hopping on and off trains, I wanted to visit a few boozers.
It took 40 minutes to get from Huddersfield to Barnsley on the lovely Penistone Line, which is like travelling through farmers' fields for most of the way. It was my first visit to Barnsley and the town has the usual frustrating mix of lovely old honey coloured buildings and a crappy modern pedestrianised shopping centre.
Most of the old buildings live on as pubs - the court house, the Drapers Market and a nice art deco building called Blah, Blah, a name which reeks of WKD and gelled-up lads with short-sleeved shirts.
My first port of call was The Gatehouse, near the station, horrible grey and red on the outside, lovely wooden floors and sofas on the inside and a good choice of beers - two Barnsleys, an Anglo Dutch from Dewsbury and a Wentworth.
I'd only chosen Good Beer Guide pubs relatively near the station but as my printer's on the blink I relied on hand-drawings from Google maps which were more like stickmen with scrawls next to them - Mr Ordinance and Mr Survey would have been turning in their graves.
Consequently I had no idea exactly how far the next pub (The George and Dragon) was and after walking about a mile out of town without seeing the turning I needed, I headed back to the station and 15 minutes later was in Wakefield Kirkgate.
I hate visiting this station, even in the day. It's a vast, impressive buildings but it's unoccupied and most of its windows either smashed or boarded up. The platforms are graffited and some have no roofs and next to the station entrance is a smashed-up pub.
The station is no doubt suffering as it's smaller neighbour, Westgate, is linked to London and the East Coast Line, but I wonder if anyone could perhaps convert part of this building into a pub.
Anyway the reason I stopped here was to see the revamped Fernandes Tap. But I was thwarted by opening times - it didn't open until 4. In search of food I found a proper old greasy spoon Othello. O! thereby hangs a tale!
Actually, nothing particularly interesting happened here. I just looked for appropriate Othello quotes on t'inters. I had a very pleasant egg, chips and teacake in the company of some old folk who appeared to use the place a base to chat the day away.
There's an Othello quote about chronicling small beer which is perhaps more appropriate as I 'd only had one pint in four hours by this time so I was eager to get into Fernandes.
The pub has been taken over by Ossett although Fernandes beers are still being made. The upstairs bar is exactly the same but they've added another bar (which was locked when I was there) and painted the outside so it doesn't look as pokey as it was before.
I'm due a longer visit but the late opening of the bar had buggered up my schedule. I'd decided early on to end at Hebden Bridge but I was thinking I probably didn't have time to go there either.
Mirfield was my next stop and the Navigation pub - a Theakstons pub with a rare chance to try Black Bull and draft Old Peculiar. The Diana inquest verdict had just happened so the TV was a bit too loud but it was a pleasant enough pub in a town which appears to be expanding rapidly, with mills becoming mews cottages, and the bulk of the housing moving away from the shops on the main road.
I decided to call it a day then and head back to Hudds. I was a little disappointed I didn't get further, at least away from the site of Emley mast - I could see when I left my home, I saw it near Denby Dale on the Pensitone Line and it was there at the end poking over a hill in Mirfield. It followed me around like Mona Lisa's eyes.
The journey would have cost me £12.55 if I hadn't bought my £13 ticket but it was still an enjoyable day and I'll probably get another ticket and try the Manchester end and get my money's worth.
TRAM TRAINS - ROLLING ON THE LINE!
Mar 08: Britain's first ever 'tram trains' are to run on the Penistone Line in a £24m trial and are expected to reduce journey times.
Five of the new machines, which can run on railway and tram lines and are widely used in Europe, will replace conventional trains from 2010 for two years.
If they're a success on this line they could be used on Leeds to Leeds-Bradford Airport.
Tram trains are lighter than regular trains, thus reducing wear and tear on tracks, and have faster acceleration and deceleration rates thus offering improved journey times.
This would be great on the Penistone Line which is a lovely for most of the 37-mile Huddersfield to Sheffield route, but takes 75 minutes.
It's almost as quck to change at Wakey and Leeds from Hudds and get the fast train. But Penistone does attract 1.2 million passengers a year, largely thanks to promotion by the volunteers of The Penistone Line Partnership and Northern Rail.
The trial will look at the environmental benefits, operating costs and suitability of the tram-trains and to see how popular the vehicles are with passengers.
The project is a partnership between the Department for Transport, train operator Northern Rail and Network Rail which will spend £15m in track improvements and alterations to the 17 stations. DfT will contribute £9m to fund the operation of the trial.
Some train forums are worried that this line is too long for this sort of thing, is a sop to the Woodhead Tunnel fiasco nearby, and won't actually run on tram lines in Sheff. And what will happen to the line alterations if trial is abandoned? But it's great news for the line.
CAR V TRAIN
Jan 08: Christmas is the one time I'm forced to hire a car and not rely on the excellent services from Huddersfield station and the speedy Transpennine trains. The lovely P is always claiming the train's more expensive and less convenient than a car, but when it cost me £55 in petrol for a five-day use of the car, including trips to Stafford and Southport from Hudds, I decided to check out the costs.
What first surprised me was a day return to Stafford and a standard return to Southport cost £22 and £24 respectively, less than the petrol. We also did mini-trips to Holmfirth, Netherton, a couple to Huddersfield town, and a three-mile drive in Lancs so I'll add £12 in bus fares to that and a couple of taxi fares (£10). A total of £68.
I hired a new Skoda Fabia which would cost me £8,000 if I bought it new, but what would the running costs be?
According to the AA, road tax would be £115 a year, insurance £396 (UK average for fully comp with 60% no claims), breakdown cover £42. The capital cost - the loss of income from the owner having money tied up in a vehicle which otherwise could be earning interest in a deposit account - is £328, while depreciation (if I was selling the car after four years) would be £1,132 a year.
That's a total of £2,013 a year and excludes any parking charges, MOT or repairs. During the hire, I spent £7 on parking. I'll add £42 a year for my MOT.
So I've got my new Skoda (£8,000)and assuming I'll sell the car after four years that's £2,000 a year. With running costs of £2,013 - that's £4,000 a year, £11 a day and five days that's £55.
Add £55 for my petrol and that's £110. Add my £7 parking and that makes £117. My MOT is, say, £1 a week if I include some repairs.
So the result is:
Train £68 Car £118. I win lovely P, a-ha-ha-ha!
SAVE THE WOODHEAD TUNNEL!
Jan 08: Chances of restoring an alternative Manchester to Sheffield rail route are under threat.
The Hadfield to Penistone section of the route closed in 1981 but most of the trackbed is in place. However the National Grid wants to put new cables in the Woodhead Tunnel section and there would be no room for a restored line in the tunnel if they did that.
Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly does not want to get involved and National Grid don't need any planning permission but as Greater Manchester's transport chief Roger Jones noted, the route would provide a valuable rail alternative on increasingly congested road and rail routes.
Mr Beeching wanted to close the other Manc-Sheff route via Hope, Edale etc but widespread protests, the reduction in coal trains and the unique way in which the route was electrified left the Woodhead line vulnerable to closure.
Campaigners say it would cost £139m to reopen the 20-mile route and take 35 mins from Manc to Sheff.
BRING BACK SKIPTON TO COLNE!
Jan 08: Campaigners hoping to restore a 11 mile rail link between the two towns have been encouraged by an independent report supporting them.
The trackbed is intact and it would help to provide a link between Preston and Yorkshire and east and west coasts.
The report, by a consulting firm using Department of Transport guidelines, said it would be financially viable to reopen the line which closed in 1970.
NEW LEEDS TO HEBDEN BRIDGE SERVICE
Dec 07: Northern have announced a new Leeds to Hebden Bridge service, via Dewsbury but not via Huddersfield unfortunately and it's a daytime only service. Trains will veer off from Mirfield to Brighouse on the 50 minute journey.
REVIVING VICTORIA
More trains could be sent to Victoria instead of Piccadilly if a proposed major shake-up of the Manchester region's rail services goes ahead.
Salford Crescent could also be built a quarter of a mile further north to allow longer trains, while little-used stations at Ardwick, Denton, and Reddish South could be closed.
The ideas come from Network Rail and are going out for consultation before firm plans are drawn up.
Between them, Manchester's stations take almost 23 million passengers a year, about 19 million of them at Piccadilly.
Paul Banks, from Network Rail, said: "The centre of Manchester is moving towards Victoria. There are lots of options where we can better distribute people around the city.
"Clearly, it is not as striking as Piccadilly is today. And if we want it to be the peer of Piccadilly it needs to be revitalised."
Guide Bridge station at Audenshaw, which is close to the M60, could become a park and ride station and passengers could go from there into the city.
Little-used Eccles station could be linked with the Metrolink stop to give train
passengers a way to travel to Salford Quays.
Dec 07: Update - £300m to be spent on improving Victoria with boomerang roof (eh?), shops etc - but exteriro will be preserved. Work could start in 2009.
Info: Manchester Evening News
HUDDERSFIELD TO LONDON
A new rail company has announced plans to run trains direct from Huddersfield to London.
York-based Grand Central Railway hopes to open the route by 2010 if it gets permission and it's economically viable.
Huddersfield passengers currently have to go to Leeds or Wakey to catch a London train and it takes about three hours.
The new route would take two hours and 20 minutes from Hudds, stopping at Guide Bridge, (between Manchester and Staleyvegas) to attract M60 commuters. Grand Central are then hoping to travel on a track which is used only once a week to Stockport and onto the West Coast line. There would be six trains a day, some of which would call Bradford, Brighouse and Halifax before getting to Hudds.
Grand Central is the company which is starting a Sunderland to London service in December and also wants separate Bradford to London, Bradford to Doncaster services.
There was a Hudds to London service in the 50s and 60s which went via Sheffield, Derby and Nottingham.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
PIES AND OTHER FOOD
UK PORK PIE CHAMPIONSHIP 2008 RESULTS
(alias Master Pork Pie Maker Competition)
1 ALLUMS BUTCHERS, WAKEFIELD
2 HINCHLIFFESS' FARM SHOP, NETHERTON, HUDDS.
3 BROSTER'S FARM SHOP, LINDLEY, HUDDS.
4 MICHAEL THEWILISS, GOLCAR, HUDDS.
47 entrants. Held at Old Bridge Hotel, Ripponden
GREAT YORKSHIRE PORK PIE, SAUSAGE AND PRODUCTS COMPETITION 2007
Nov 07: This is regarded as the World Cup of pies, probably because it's in Yorkshire but also because it's the biggest regional event of its kind with 300 butchers submitting their bangers and growlers for the judges in Bradford.
The supreme pie and supreme sausage awards are the top awards.
Supreme pie award went to Hinchliffes Farm Shop, of Sunny Side Farm, Netherton, near Huddersfield. A family butchers who've been in existence since the 1920s who attract national interest with the quality of their food (mentioned in The Times) and who are former supreme sausage award winners in this competition.
The supreme sausage championship winners are Kevin Jubb Butchers, of Little Lane, Ilkley.
The best black pudding in Yorkshire came from Arthur Haigh Butchers of Dalton Airfield Industrial Estate, in Thirsk.
Best beefburger from Sutcliffes Butchers, of Skipton.
FULL RESULTS:
SUPREME PORK PIE CHAMPION, awarded the Bob Thirsk Rose Bowl and 1,000 carrier bags (!) from William Jones Packaging – Hinchliffes Farm Shop, Netherton.
RESERVE SUPREME CHAMPION, awarded the Willis Hall Cup (of Billy Liar fame) – Woods Butchers, of Carcroft, Doncaster.
SUPREME SAUSAGE CHAMPION, awarded the ACP Packaging Shield and Lucas Ingredients products – Kevin Jubb Butchers, Ilkley.
RESERVE SUPREME CHAMPION, awarded the Devro Quaich – Elite Meats, Harrogate.
PORK PIE CLASSES
Large pork pie: 1 and the Norman Binks Cup – Hinchliffes Farm Shop, 2 Woods Butchers, 3 P&I Hopkins, Birkenshaw, Bradford.
Small pork pie: 1 and the Interbake Shield – Woods Butchers, 2 H Weatherhead & Sons, Pateley Bridge, 3 George Middlemiss & Son, Otley.
Speciality cold eating pie: 1 and the John Spencer Memorial Trophy – Woods Butchers, 2 Brosters Farm Shop, Lindley Moor, Huddersfield, 3 H Weatherhead & Sons.
SAUSAGE CLASSES
Thin pork sausage: 1 and the Oris Shield, plus products from WR Wright & Son – Kevin Jubb Butchers, Ilkley, 2 Keelham Farm Shop, Thonton, Bradford, 3 John Oxley Butchers, Leeds
Thick pork sausage: 1 and the Ripon Select Foods Shield – Elite Meats, 2 Hinchliffes Farm Shop, 3 Paul Flintoft, Kippax, Leeds.
Speciality sausage: 1 and the Gordon Rhodes Shield – Farmer Copley, Purston, Pontefract, 2 Elite Meats, 3 Keelham Hall Farm Shop.
BLACK PUDDING
1 and the Confederation Shield - Arthur Haigh, Dalton, Thirsk, 2 Woods Butchers, Doncaster 3 Drake & Macefield Butchers, Skipton.
BEEFBURGER
1 and WR Wright & Sons Shield, plus product donation by Towers Thompson – Sutcliffes Butchers, Skipton, 2 R Illingworth Butchers, East Keswick, 3 Elite Meats, Harrogate.
Results from the competition website. The event's organised by Confederation of Yorkshire Butchers Councils
ALLERGIC TO TRIPE - AFTER A LIFETIME OF EATING IT
Sept 07: A man who attained TV fame for eating vast quantities of tripe has become allergic to the offal.
Mike Madden, 51, from Honley, Huddersfield, used to eat tripe - animals' stomachs - almost every night. But last week, as he tucked into his favourite dish, he felt a tingling and soreness in his mouth. It passed after a few days, but when he tried to eat tripe again, the problem returned.
A visit to his doctor confirmed that Mike had developed an allergy to the foodstuff.
He said: “I’m devastated. I must have eaten about 1,000lbs of the stuff since I started my exploits and my body’s just rejecting it now.”
Mike used to eat so much tripe that Queensgate Market shop Quality Butchers sponsored him for his various stunts. At every TV show or magazine shoot, he had to eat at least 2lb of tripe – and at £1.50 a pound, it was costing him a packet.
Mike’s passion for tripe has seen him eat the delicacy on The Big Breakfast, appear at the 1996 Comic Relief show with Dame Edna Everage and The Spice Girls and he’s even been on German and American TV screens.
He claims the offal, which he eats raw with vinegar, is low fat and is even great for hangovers.
Mr Madden is also an inventor who's developed a weather hat, a TV aerial hat, a portable bird-feeder and a fish walker
From Huddersfield Examiner
UK PORK PIE CHAMPIONSHIP 2007 RESULTS
1 Wilson's of Crossgates, Leeds
2 Broster's Farm Shop, Outlane, Huddersfield
3 Michael Thewliss, Golcar, Huddersfield
4 Eddie Grange and Son, Slaithwaite, Huddersfield
(53 entrants)
LARD VADER
Feb 2007: A Huddersfield lecturer has won a medal for making a sculpture of Darth Vader out of fat.
Gary Schofield, 33 from Holmfirth, was awarded the silver medal in the 'Works in Fat' category at the National Hospitality Show in Birmingham.
Chefs from all over the country
(alias Master Pork Pie Maker Competition)
1 ALLUMS BUTCHERS, WAKEFIELD
2 HINCHLIFFESS' FARM SHOP, NETHERTON, HUDDS.
3 BROSTER'S FARM SHOP, LINDLEY, HUDDS.
4 MICHAEL THEWILISS, GOLCAR, HUDDS.
47 entrants. Held at Old Bridge Hotel, Ripponden
GREAT YORKSHIRE PORK PIE, SAUSAGE AND PRODUCTS COMPETITION 2007
Nov 07: This is regarded as the World Cup of pies, probably because it's in Yorkshire but also because it's the biggest regional event of its kind with 300 butchers submitting their bangers and growlers for the judges in Bradford.
The supreme pie and supreme sausage awards are the top awards.
Supreme pie award went to Hinchliffes Farm Shop, of Sunny Side Farm, Netherton, near Huddersfield. A family butchers who've been in existence since the 1920s who attract national interest with the quality of their food (mentioned in The Times) and who are former supreme sausage award winners in this competition.
The supreme sausage championship winners are Kevin Jubb Butchers, of Little Lane, Ilkley.
The best black pudding in Yorkshire came from Arthur Haigh Butchers of Dalton Airfield Industrial Estate, in Thirsk.
Best beefburger from Sutcliffes Butchers, of Skipton.
FULL RESULTS:
SUPREME PORK PIE CHAMPION, awarded the Bob Thirsk Rose Bowl and 1,000 carrier bags (!) from William Jones Packaging – Hinchliffes Farm Shop, Netherton.
RESERVE SUPREME CHAMPION, awarded the Willis Hall Cup (of Billy Liar fame) – Woods Butchers, of Carcroft, Doncaster.
SUPREME SAUSAGE CHAMPION, awarded the ACP Packaging Shield and Lucas Ingredients products – Kevin Jubb Butchers, Ilkley.
RESERVE SUPREME CHAMPION, awarded the Devro Quaich – Elite Meats, Harrogate.
PORK PIE CLASSES
Large pork pie: 1 and the Norman Binks Cup – Hinchliffes Farm Shop, 2 Woods Butchers, 3 P&I Hopkins, Birkenshaw, Bradford.
Small pork pie: 1 and the Interbake Shield – Woods Butchers, 2 H Weatherhead & Sons, Pateley Bridge, 3 George Middlemiss & Son, Otley.
Speciality cold eating pie: 1 and the John Spencer Memorial Trophy – Woods Butchers, 2 Brosters Farm Shop, Lindley Moor, Huddersfield, 3 H Weatherhead & Sons.
SAUSAGE CLASSES
Thin pork sausage: 1 and the Oris Shield, plus products from WR Wright & Son – Kevin Jubb Butchers, Ilkley, 2 Keelham Farm Shop, Thonton, Bradford, 3 John Oxley Butchers, Leeds
Thick pork sausage: 1 and the Ripon Select Foods Shield – Elite Meats, 2 Hinchliffes Farm Shop, 3 Paul Flintoft, Kippax, Leeds.
Speciality sausage: 1 and the Gordon Rhodes Shield – Farmer Copley, Purston, Pontefract, 2 Elite Meats, 3 Keelham Hall Farm Shop.
BLACK PUDDING
1 and the Confederation Shield - Arthur Haigh, Dalton, Thirsk, 2 Woods Butchers, Doncaster 3 Drake & Macefield Butchers, Skipton.
BEEFBURGER
1 and WR Wright & Sons Shield, plus product donation by Towers Thompson – Sutcliffes Butchers, Skipton, 2 R Illingworth Butchers, East Keswick, 3 Elite Meats, Harrogate.
Results from the competition website. The event's organised by Confederation of Yorkshire Butchers Councils
ALLERGIC TO TRIPE - AFTER A LIFETIME OF EATING IT
Sept 07: A man who attained TV fame for eating vast quantities of tripe has become allergic to the offal.
Mike Madden, 51, from Honley, Huddersfield, used to eat tripe - animals' stomachs - almost every night. But last week, as he tucked into his favourite dish, he felt a tingling and soreness in his mouth. It passed after a few days, but when he tried to eat tripe again, the problem returned.
A visit to his doctor confirmed that Mike had developed an allergy to the foodstuff.
He said: “I’m devastated. I must have eaten about 1,000lbs of the stuff since I started my exploits and my body’s just rejecting it now.”
Mike used to eat so much tripe that Queensgate Market shop Quality Butchers sponsored him for his various stunts. At every TV show or magazine shoot, he had to eat at least 2lb of tripe – and at £1.50 a pound, it was costing him a packet.
Mike’s passion for tripe has seen him eat the delicacy on The Big Breakfast, appear at the 1996 Comic Relief show with Dame Edna Everage and The Spice Girls and he’s even been on German and American TV screens.
He claims the offal, which he eats raw with vinegar, is low fat and is even great for hangovers.
Mr Madden is also an inventor who's developed a weather hat, a TV aerial hat, a portable bird-feeder and a fish walker
From Huddersfield Examiner
UK PORK PIE CHAMPIONSHIP 2007 RESULTS
1 Wilson's of Crossgates, Leeds
2 Broster's Farm Shop, Outlane, Huddersfield
3 Michael Thewliss, Golcar, Huddersfield
4 Eddie Grange and Son, Slaithwaite, Huddersfield
(53 entrants)
Feb 2007: A Huddersfield lecturer has won a medal for making a sculpture of Darth Vader out of fat.
Gary Schofield, 33 from Holmfirth, was awarded the silver medal in the 'Works in Fat' category at the National Hospitality Show in Birmingham.
Chefs from all over the country