Sounds good to me?

Evening,

    I was reading Tandleman's post about background music in pubs yesterday here and it reminded me of quite a few pub music experiences, not all of them good. So as not to post the longest ever comment I thought I'd paint a few aural pictures for you ont blog instead.

Springfield, not Illinois

On Broomspring Lane in Sheffield, surprisingly near my first pre eighteen drinking haunt the West End, was a small traditional Kimberley pub called the Springfield Tavern. Strangely empty at times you'd expect it to heave, this was a proper locals pub with pool and darts on the left and, well, erm, I can't really say, as I only ever went to the bar, and then in the room on the left.

This is because the left hand side housed the pool table, the jukebox, and was the perfect space to fit in a gaggle of (now mostly not underage) teenage drinkers who had fallen out with the West End. We didn't really mingle, we had nothing to share and likely very little to convey other than our involved and over emotional trauma's and stories of gigs played by obscure bands that we had been to or could never hope to afford to attend. We looked alien in this environment. We may as well have spoken alien, and we probably smelled like aliens. Were there a less suitable hostelry to essentially "adopt" as our new home, I can't really imagine what it would be in that area. Except maybe the Hanover.

Anyhoo, the Springfield no doubt got on with its business quite happily for the hours following and preceding 8 til 11PM on a Friday, but in that short window of opportunity, normal service was disrupted by a skulking dishevelled mass that would appear and divide the pub into two strictly delineated halves. And we had the jukebox.

Of course, having something that offers you precisely nothing that you want is no prize I can assure you. Whether by accident or design the Springfield had managed to assemble a bank of musical archaeology that was too old to be ironic, or too recent mainstream to be tolerable. We had the desire to stamp our sandalwood and death metal (odd combo I know) footprint on the pub though, and plans to oust us using poor music choice were to  backfire.

Every Friday night for about a year, we played just two tracks. Manic Street Preachers "Suicide is Painless" (Theme from M.A.S.H), and Iron Lion Zion by Ziggy Marley. Two opposites of style and taste, not particularly to anyone's liking, but better than the reams of Jim Reeves and Neil Diamond which seemed to be the only other choices. We were happy in our group, eking out minute quantities of alcohol and clubbing small change together to get drinks for those who were in danger of being asked to leave for not having a drink, and steadfastly never using the pool table (we needed the change for the jukebox see).

In the end this protracted war of music ownership fizzled out as we moved on to pastures new and the group slowly grew apart. No doubt throughout that time the same regulars continued to take their usual seats at the bar and round the tables to the right, and afterwards raised a toast to a Friday night without reggae or film theme rock. Hopefully, but not necessarily, they enjoyed the warm irony of a song about suicide played so frequently that you wanted to take your own life.

Sadly I read on the Internet where everything is true, that the pub had cosed down and been converted into flats. Ironically, flats probably built to house the students who swarming around the nearby streets must have stared down Broomspring Lane from Glossop Road, and spotted, without I suspect ever venturing into, the Springfield Tavern.

 Washington, neither in Washington State nor Tyne and Wear

In a time long long ago the Washington on Wellington Street used to open during the day. It was certainly always open around 5 or 6 o clock when I left work. As such it was, as well as one of my favourite dinnertime haunts, being so close to Charter Row, also one of my favourite meeting places for a night out. One night in the cold early months of the year I was meeting Rox for a few beers.

Rox was always late. It was just how the passage of time worked when our lives overlapped. So I was keen not to get there early, but I have this innate fear that I will be late on the only occasion when someone has gone to the trouble, (quite significant trouble it would be in this case) to arrive on time. So I strode in at 17.25 to meet her at 17.30. In reality I expected her for 18.00, and got myself a pint of disconcertingly nice yellow Moonshine.

One of the reasons I think the Washy started closing in the afternoon was painfully obvious as I sat supping my pint. The lass behind the bar had her I-Pod on, so bored was she with the lack of bar action, and I was the only one in until five minutes before I expected my drinking partner to arrive, when, as if to mock me, a procession of single visitors arrived, noisily letting the door close behind them to prick my interest, only to congregate one by one into a joyous throng.

Even if you mentioned to people that you intended meeting them at the Washy at something like 6 o clock they refused to believe it would be open, so there was no chance this would ever catch on. That evening, one of the last times I remember it opening in the late afternoon, it seemed a fitting dirge would be played to signal the demise of its frivolous all day opening.

Prior to the commotion I was trying hard to not pay attention to the music. The Washington has a good reputation in this respect, but usually when its blasting out at full volume sometime around 2 in the morning. At this time, all I could hear were the dulcet, depressing and wearyingly uninspiring tones of Dido.

In the room on the right it was moodily lit, and cold. It was raining outside, and the scene I found myself in was like a rubbish but very long music video featuring a lonely man drinking by himself, amidst a miasma of mounting unhappiness. Most of my pint (which I was trying to drink slowly) and three tracks in I couldn't cope anymore. I sprang from my seat and went to the bar to implore the lass to change the music.

Having explained that the music choice was forcing me to perform an unpaid role in a maudlin backlit advert for being stood up, she flicked a switch and a new track came on. It was quite upbeat, it seemed far less morose, and so I sat back down a little happier. Alas, this was just the end of one album. The last track. Next, it was Portishead.

Now I like Portishead, but this was becoming a bad joke. I seemed to have somehow teased the most depressing music available out of the Washington's collection and was now worrying that my mood would start reflecting the music and vice versa. When I explained my predicament the lass behind the bar laughed in a kind of half sympathetic half mocking way and put on something so jangly jolly and non descript that I almost laughed back, then sat down with my pint once again to await the arrival, at 18.20, of Rox.

It seems that the background music plays an important role in pubs, whether you want it on at all or not. If you are running a pub, whether or not the pub is busy or empty, you've got to think about the mood you wish to convey - and that applies to the horrors that may lurk in your jukebox.

If only they'd had a copy of "Tired of Waiting" by No Meanz No to play in the Washy that night....

Wee Beefy

What's Brewed

Hello,
  
    earlier in the week WF gave me a copy of his latest What's Brewing to read. I had a flick through, and was surprised to find that, erm, I kind of knew all the news already.

Old News?

This was a bit of a shock. Granted I am spending more and more time reading about beer on the Internet, but it was surprising to what extent the online world had covered these stories already. When I read Beer Matters there are always snippets of pub info or brewery news that I haven't picked up on, or clarifications about rumours doing the rounds in the pubs.

Yet Beer Matters is really the local What's Brewing. All local CAMRA mags carry a few stories borrowed from CAMRA HQ or campaigns teams, but then fill the rest of their copy with relevant local details. That the editor is prevalent on Sheffield Forum may or may not be relevant here, (I could likely create a whole new blog called "Beer Rumour Mill" based on stuff read on there) but WB (that's What's Brewing, not mi sen) seems to be a slightly redundant read in the Internet age.

The Smoking Gun (and other stories)

So does this mean the Internet has killed What's Brewing? Or have the restrictions of publishing and the printed medium simply made the internet and its hosted content the only viable means of communicating up to date knowledge and information?

Well, I can see straight away this may form part of an endless debate on the merits of paper versus webpage but in order to clarify, I am interested purely in the web's role in writing about beer.

Firstly, lets not forget, not everybody is on the Internet. Not everyone can get on the Internet. Not everyone would entertain the idea of getting on the Internet (ironically, one person I have in mind is Wee Fatha, who of course bequeathed the copy of WB that started this idea going). So before we even look for an answer to the above, I'm not suggesting CAMRA or any other organisation stop printing altogether. Lest we forget, the interneet is a mere bairn in comparison to the printed word, a suckling one at that. And its a long way from perfection.

Secondly, lets also remember, the printed word, or getting your own words printed, is arguably much more out of reach than the Internet. Setting up a blog takes 30 minutes. Getting published is a gruelling task.

I have tried to get printed a few times. Not very successfully. In fact, that's kind of dressing it up a bit. In my first foray I contributed some spoof articles to a comic (described rather incongruously as a fanzine) called The Pulp, in Sheffield, in the early 90's. For a start, I never got the stuff back (am over it now though, those 17 years have more or less slipped by) and only two issues were ever printed. It was a dispiritingly costly, complicated and difficult exercise, so bereft of guaranteed readership that it wasn't worth the effort.

A few years passed and I wrote up a couple of beer walks with poorly hand drawn maps that Del at the Hillsborough Hotel used to put out in his local info box for drinkers and hotel guests to use (thanks Del, by the way). Given that I never heard of any pub rambling deaths attributed to a poorly drawn route map I have to assume that even if not enjoyed, these didn't lead directly to a  loss of life.

Later on I succeeded in getting articles printed in Beer Matters. So I did get my words printed on paper and seen by real people (its weird and perhaps a little sad, but I once sat in the Fat Cat watching and listening to a couple reading one of my articles. It was simultaneously enjoyable, and interesting, and, erm, a bit unsettling - God knows what would have happened had they not liked the article!)

However, the story takes a crucial twist here. I fell out with Beer Matters because they printed parts 1 - 3 of a 5 part article I wrote about my trip to Kent,* but then the article simply stopped appearing, mid story. So annoyed was I by this snub (and the damage done to the story by what at first seemed like a 2 issue break), and then the fob offs I got about when it was to be re-published in full or even the remaining parts, I decided to set up this very blog. So this tome you read is a fruit borne of anger and disillusionment with the printed word, and the embodiment of a determination to show an editor that I could strike out on my own.

The funny thing is though, whilst the blog has afforded me great freedom and provided valuable focus of late,  frankly, I would give my right arm to see my work printed on good old fashioned fine smelling paper. A Wee Beefy book? Come on! That would be like a dream come true.

So arguably, it isn't the case that one of the Internet or the printed word kills the other, but actually that they are both equally essential, often to each other, but in their own different way. 

I am not going to get rid of any of my books even if E-books come to contain every copy ever printed - I will still have my old tattered copies of the GBG, and my copy of "The Death of the British Pub" by Christopher Hutt. Also, Beer Matters still gets almost all its articles by email, and PR info is sent by email, which then ends up forming the basis of printed material, so there is still a working relationship between the two mediums.

And if I was writing a book about beer or pubs, I would need the Internet, if nothing else to aid planning of trips to places I may wish to write about. For example, on my first list of Britain's National Inventory pubs, the Cider House entry simply said " Cider House (Monkey House) Defford. I tried directory enquiries, as you would, and they had no number. The wanted something as absurd as an address for a start. I even went through Defford in the car with Wee Keefy and still contrived to miss my destination even with a description provided by the pub 400 yards up the road. Now you can look on the inventory website and I'd be amazed if you didn't find it (always assuming you heeded the opening times!).

And finally, the Internet continues to be a forum for inspiration provided by books. Tandleman and Boak and Bailey and Curmudgeon all recently posted about or commented on a book called "The Traditional English Pub" by Ben Davis, from 1981. (see Tandleman and the book about pub design ). A fine example of the printed word being brought into the dizzying theatre of the worldwide web to everyone's benefit.

Now I'll just re-read that WB article about online updates......

Wee Beefy

* Wee Beefy's Kentish Casks was my first ever post. Awwww. It's on the list down the side.