When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England
The Christmas edition of The Economist had a fantastic elegy on the British pub written by their obituaries editor. This is well timed.
When I first moved to Hove I of course researched the pubs. I found several good boozers quite close. Pubs, not bars. Places for a pint and some conversation. That was years ago and I have watched as one by one they have been “renovated”. The comfortable furniture has been removed and floor space maximised for vertical drinking. The landlords have been replaced with managers. Huge TVs have been hung on the walls, the music has been turned up to quash conversation and the interesting people have gone home. In line with the hyper-commercialisation of the rest of British society the hearts of the pubs have been torn out and the cadavers assimilated into the coproate Borg culture. A modern pub’s function is to generate profit for big business.
I could go on but The Economist article is far more eloquent. It quotes the Frenchman Hilaire Belloc who said: “When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.”
The article claims that, since 2005, more than 6,000 pubs have closed and “Communal imbibing with neighbours and passers-by is fading, in favour of the glass of wine by the television alone………pubs go bust, realising more value as awkward private houses…..”. The article is beautifully written and epitomises the spirit of the pub.
“The church can go, long since the preserve of a flower-arranging few.……but the vanishing of a pub means, by common consent, the loss of the beating heart of a community, in town or countryside. A pub can become a sort of encapsulation of place, containing some small turning’s grainy photographs, its dog-eared posters for last year’s fete, its snoozing cats, its prettiest girls behind the bar and its strangest characters in front of it.”
“They hold ghosts, myths, the memory of kings; Green Men live on in them, White Horses carry Saxon echoes, Royal Oaks keep the drama of civil war and restoration……the old names won’t go. They cling on in the soil and the air, as tenacious as the past itself.”
“In the pub he met his fellow men and, with them, formed a society of musers and drinkers. He mingled with people he might not otherwise meet, had words with them, was obliged to take stock of their opinions.”
The Economist is right. There are many reasons for England to lose it’s pubs but the main reason will be that we do not care. A brief look around the web reveals that people are starting to care and the theme of saving the pubs is becoming popular.
The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Mail and The Metro have carried articles on the subject and several campaigns are under way including one by UKIP.
Axe The Beer Tax
Save the Great British Pub campaign
SunTalk Campaign to Save the Great British Pub
London Pubs on Flickr
Art Photography
Captain Beefheart dies
Tags: 6 Music, battery hens, beefheart dies, captain beefheart, Don Van Vliet, obituary, Simon Cowell, talent, Trout Mask Replica, X-Factor
Trout Mask Replica
The BBC is reporting today that the artist and musician Don Van Vliet, known as Captain Beefheart, has died in California from “complications from multiple sclerosis”.
I only ever bought the one Beefheart album, Trout Mask Replica, but I have appreciated it more and more over the years.
I recall that a few years ago Trout Mask Replica won an award for the best album of all time on some TV channel. While researching this I found that BBC 6 Music had listed it as one of the most overrated albums of all time. Beefheart’s detractors are missing out. Yes, Trout Mask Replica is not shiny and perfect like most of the music produced today but that’s the point.
Starting around the fifties or sixties recorded music became industrialised. A machine evolved to create music and sell it as a product to generate profit. To begin with this was done by “spotting” talent but today this has evolved into attempts to create talent. E.g. The X Factor. The problem with the likes of Simon Cowell trying to create talent is that Cowell has no artistic talent himself. Yes, he has the ability to spot similarities and this is what he does. He observes how talented singers sing and then tries to encourage would be talent to sing in the same manner. Consequently the “artists” which emerge are mere imitation of true talent. They can hit the notes, they can keep time but they have no artistic talent. They are the musical equivalent of battery hens. After Cowell and his team have refined and Kaizaned all their individuality out of them they resemble a Toyota more than an Aston Martin.
Even in the 60s the machine was gearing up to replace temperamental and expensive talent with clones created by the industry. One of Captain Beefheart’s achievements was to defy the system and create music which was not reliant on emulating others.
It’s interesting that, though the British press are reporting Beefheart’s death, the story has not even made the front page of The L.A. Times.
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