We're spoiled for good pubs here in Nottingham; despite the rate at which hostelries are shutting up shop, those that remain (together with a plethora of new watering holes), for the most part, are well worth a visit. And often a detour. In particular I can't recommend the Bath Inn highly enough: situated but a stone's throw from the city, in Sneinton, which, if you listen to the new owner*, is on the verge of becoming our very own Covent Garden. We'll see. All I know is they sell some great beers, the surroundings are immaculate and the craic at the bar is fierce.
* When I first met Piers Baker, the new owner (pictured above, behind the bar), I thought he looked (and sounded) very familiar; turns out he's also the only known stockist of sonic screwdrivers this side of Gallifrey.
Today's date has been in my diary for a while now: later this morning I will have a second shot of Astrazeneca in my arm. So that's me all jabbed up then. I know a few people reading this will also be double-bubbled too; so if you want to buy me a coffee (or a beer!) there's never been a better time to meet up...
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June 4th was also something of a red letter day back in 1979. On a sunny afternoon some 41 years ago Ileft my parents house withLplates on my Vauxhall Viva Rockbox - I returned a couple of hours later with said plates in a waste bin outside the Test Centre. Over a million miles later and I'm still on the road.
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But today also marks a far more harrowing anniversary. On this day in 1989 a student lead pro-democracy demonstration in Tienemen Square, Bejing, which had started peacefully seven weeks earlier, was brutally suppressed by heavily armed Chinese troops - complete with tanks. The ensuing massacre resulted in a death toll which has still to this day not been verified - but estimates put it at 10,000 minimum.
Grinding gears alert - when Blur released their eighth studio album, The Magic Whip, in 2015 it contained a (seemingly) jolly little song called Ice Cream Man. But it had dark undertones. Damon Albarn explained to Billboard magazine: "The sinister ice cream man with his white gloves. I set him in context of the (Tienemen) protest. He's a policeman and the whip is the state control. But the ice cream man is really sinister."
Blur - Ice Cream Man (2105)
When the band were promoting the album on Record Store day later that year this was how they reached out to their Californian fans - an ice cream van rocking up at various record shops selling ice cream and records. The eagle eyed among you will spot Amoeba Records - the best record store in the world, bar none. Fight me.
808 State's Pacific State*was "the song that made a nation chill out." So said some hack at the Independent; and, you know what, I think they were spot on. "Mellow but insistent beats", they went on to say, "a light garnishing of wildlife noises, and a soprano sax threading through it like a viper in the Eden undergrowth."
What then, would it sound like if a brass band got hold of it and transcribed the dots for cornets and euphoniums?
Pretty much like this I guess, from the album 'Acid Brass':
The William Fairey Brass Band - Pacific 202 (1997)
* Graham Massey - 808 State head honcho - once said "there's about 42 different versions of Pacific. Pacific 707 is the single we put out on ZTT."
1989 was a momentous year. For all sorts of reasons. The collapse of the Berlin Wall, and the Tiananmen Square massacre - to name but a couple. How trite, crass even, would it be on the back of that to say that on May 2nd - 30 years ago today - the Stone Roses released their debut album? But they did. An album so audacious it threw paint at anyone who even looked in its direction. It covered the indie rock crowd, and fair splattered the dance fraternity too. Many column inches have been given over to just how groundbreakingly awesome this was in 1989. And it was. But you don't need to read all that again today. Instead, I've chosen the track you would, if you had to explain to an alien who had just beamed up from another planet, play to him/her/it, and, in its resplendent 4' - 33" they would totally 'get it'.
