Real Ale, Real Music

We were unable to see much live music this year due to you-know-what but it did not mean that there wasn't any good music about, quite the opposite. Here is my annual round-up of the best of the year.... It could have been the year the music died. Starved of gigs, tours cancelled, venues closed. Income streams dried up, new releases delayed. The support structure that oils the wheels of the industry rendered silent. Furlough payments not applicable. Singing not allowed to reduce the spread. A vital part of our culture left to wilt. Government-funding and Arts Council grants eventually came to many venues, but not all, and as a result many are facing a very uncertain future. Close to me in Halifax, for example, the town's first purpose-built venue in decades, The Lantern, where I saw the only gig I paid for this year when Liverpool band She Drew The Gun came to town, was identified as being one of the 30 most at-risk sites in the country, and like many others, have launched a cr

I often do a summary at the end of the year covering the best beers I have drunk and the best pubs I have visited during the previous 12 months. But what can I say about 2020? A very disrupted year with many disappointments and setbacks. Here's some thoughts.... Back in the 1950's, an Australian singer, Slim Dusty, had a big hit with a song called A Pub With No Beer, which told of the misery facing drinkers when they turned up at their local pub to find that there was no beer on sale. For much of this year, beset by lockdowns and the restrictions of the tier system it has been a case of no pubs open in which to have a beer. And so for regular pub goers like myself it has been a big change of lifestyle. Early on in the first lockdown, I dug out and dusted down an old tall stool and positioned it in my kitchen so I could replicate sitting at the bar as I had an after-work beer, with work now located a short commute away up a flight of stairs. Wasn't the same as the Stalybridg

The Christmas we apparently deserve this year is one where we are slaves to the inconsistent, irrational Tier system. Or so it seems, as Covid, the gift that keeps on taking and then some, holds sway despite falling rates in previous hot spots and the imminent coming of the vaccine.... I shared a blog I wrote around 12 months ago on social media the other day, and in re-reading this tale of the pre-Christmas build-up , with its heady mix of shopping, a gig, and, primarily, visits to several pubs and bars, I was also saying how miserable and depressing the prevailing atmosphere of the time was. "And I think that this year with the country in its most miserable and fractured state that I can ever remember, Christmas can't come soon enough for so many of us"  - I wrote in naive ignorance, totally oblivious to the delights that 2020 would, and continues to, deliver.  This year, unless you are lucky enough to live in Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly, the Isle of Wight, and now He