Not wanting to leave a stone unturned in its attempts to outlaw live music in pubs, the British government has apparently turned its attention to the humble pub piano, according to Terence Blacker's comment column in the Independent this week. This is what he says:
A bum note on pubs and pianos
The government's campaign against the terrible scourge of live music has taken a new turn. Publicans, club owners and restaurants can play recorded music or televised football games as loudly as they like but, according to the Culture Minister Gerry Sutcliffe, even "theoretically innocuous activities such as putting a piano in a pub" can be so disruptive that they will require a licence from a local authority.
How good it is to know that, in these times of stress and noise, the Government has its eye on that previously neglected danger to public order: the piano. (end of quote - you can find it here: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/terence-blacker/terence-blacker-spinning-out-of-control-in-the-blogosphere-1798641.html )
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
I didn't realise there were any left.
More club-style loud noise, hectic football replays on huge screens again at high volume, etc etc., = stress, boredom = more drink sunk faster. That is the *point* of jacking up the volume late on - or so at any rate a publican told me, and I don't doubt it.
This means good business for the big operators, more tax and rent revenue for HMG or what passes for local government. It is also probably the only straightforward way to get huge amounts of money back out of the underclass by legal means, or indeed any means at all. This makes HMG feel better and less liable to think their social money is going down a black oubliette, which would make the Opposition laugh at them. In today's UK, p*ssed-dom is both profit and product. It is marketed to the world as passion and vibrancy. Seriously. I rather think the world smells a rat on this one and the tourist industry has over-egged the appeal of being murdered or whatever while sampling the delights of Britain's "evening economy", but otherwise all this has a hideous rationality about it.
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
I like the 'theoretically innocuous'. Putting a piano in a pub IS innocuous. The trouble now is that it would have to come all the way from China (the piano, not the pub), because the English makers have been bankrupted by our government. Oh, and the music 'industry'.
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
I now realise how fortunate I was to enjoy my early drinking years in the 60's in Portsmouth where many pubs had pianos as the centre of an evening's entertainment. It wasn't the music celebrated on this site, but it was music of the people, and the songs meant everything to the older generation. A friend of mine who still busks on pa, played pub piano in the Grave-diggers Arms (lovely name for a pub - by the cemetery of course). Nowadays pubs are dominated by huge plasma screens (one sold every 15 seconds in the UK last year and to have them all on at the same time we would need two extra nuclear power stations.) Switch off the power and play acoustic instruments - it's our only hope!
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
I love to see a piano in a pub but please please Landlords get the thing tuned up once in a while. Like any other piece of the pub's fixtures and fittings it needs maintainance and servicing.
Maybe if pub pianos were better looked after they'd be played a bit more...then again they do take up space that could be used by two more customers. Possibly I'm being a bit cynical now.
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Two of the session pubs I go to in Bristol do not have television screens, and they turn off any background music that's on when we are ready to start.
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Ah, yes.
Taxing live music again - the people have spoken again, even if it is by remaining silent.
1.You folks elected the great "THEM" [just like over here],
2. You let them remain in power and pass their stupid laws and amendments [just like over here]
3.and when it comes home to you (ie. bites you round the butt), I do not see news bits of hundreds of people gathering in protest demanding to be heard [just like over here].
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Ah, yes.
Taxing live music again - the people have spoken again, even if it is by remaining silent.
1.You folks elected the great "THEM" [just like over here],
2. You let them remain in power and pass their stupid laws and amendments [just like over here]
3.and when it comes home to you (ie. bites you round the butt), I do not see news bits of hundreds of people gathering in protest demanding to be heard [just like over here].
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
One of the reasons I bought an electronic keyboard in the first place was that I almost never, ever saw a real piano in a restuarant or a pub or a bar or a private residence or any place at all here in the United States. After I bought the keyboard, now I had something to play music on and perform on almost anywhere and everywhere if I wanted to.
I guess the next thing the government will try to tax and demand that we buy a license for will be electronic keyboards such as mine--especially if you perform as often as I do.
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Fauxcelt - they may tax you for owning it, then again for bringing into a pub, then again for plugging it in...and probably tax you on a per note basis, after that. I wouldn't put anything past this government.
I'm shortly moving to an area where a lot of regency properties have bricked-in windows thanks to the window tax which came in about 300 years ago - so the idea of bonkers taxation is nothing new (sadly).
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
And I thought this board was frequented mostly by liberals who love being pushed around by government....Oh, I mean who love it when government pushes around other people.
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
A session I went to in a pub last year was nearly ruined by the arrival of a young man insistant on trying to accompany on the pub piano. Eventually he gave up when one of the regular and longtime players told him he wasn't up to the task. He actually turned out to be a great harmonica player though!
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
In my earlier post I may have given the impression that my personal walk through life has not included the consumption of industrial qualities of cheap and dubious alcohol for no reason at all, and that I have thus inexcusably withheld from the state the taxes and duties deriving therefrom, thereby forfeiting my right of continued existence on this earth.
I can assure all eyeballs of the state reading this that this is not the case.
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
I recently returned from a holiday in the UK, and was amazed at the continual assault on the ear drums from loud piped music in pubs and shops there. I use the term music loosely because the tapes were obviously chosen by ten year olds. In one pub during Sunday lunch there were three different big screen TVs, each one showing a different game, piped music and noisy games machines all going at once. Are the punters brain dead or something. You can't even get away from the 'boiler house music' in the loo. Yeah, we've come a long way from the days of the old piano in the corner.
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
"Pop music and sports, unfortunately, draw a bigger crowd than acoustic folk music. "
Not on Monday nights, or other trad session nights, and not in every pub at once. There's room for the niche market instead of all slugging it out for the trade of the same set of yobs
Just returned from Australia where one highlight was a wonderful small session in the back room at the Lomond in East Brunswick, Melbourne, where a local occasionally got up and made sympathetic and melodic contributions to the sets on the well-tuned piano.
However it is known as a "muso's" pub
bloke probably tuned it himself
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
'I recently returned from a holiday in the UK, and was amazed at the continual assault on the ear drums from loud piped music in pubs and shops there. I use the term music loosely because the tapes were obviously chosen by ten year olds. In one pub during Sunday lunch there were three different big screen TVs, each one showing a different game, piped music and noisy games machines all going at once. Are the punters brain dead or something. You can't even get away from the 'boiler house music' in the loo. Yeah, we've come a long way from the days of the old piano in the corner.'
But that's been Ireland for the last couple of decades, Free Reed! Where do you live? No, on second thoughts, keep that to yourself!
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Yes, Mark Harmer, I am afraid you are correct about excessive taxation by the government (on all levels--local, state, and federal). They certainly seem to go out of their way to tax anything and everything which they can get their filthy, money-grubbing hands on (including bonkers--whatever that is).
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Does anyone wonder why we threw the Crown and all their rules and taxes out of the USA? (of course, we then proceeded to impose onerous rules and taxes on ourselves--sigh)
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Just a thought - why actually do they have TVs in pubs? I can understand it for sport, probably more fun to watch with others, but just having the telly on? Doesn't everyone have one at home? (Sorry I don't get out much to these sorts of places!)
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
I read some time ago that a guy had invented or programmed a remote control that he carried around on his person. On entering a pub where a TV was on, he promptly and surreptitiously turned it off. I'd really love to do that.
I once had a Sunday morning trad gig in a pub where we were seated under the telly. One particular Sunday morning it was left on so that the punters could watch an All Ireland Minor Football final. We were still expected to play, they turned the sound down a bit but left the picture on. We played for about half an hour, then put the instruments in the cases and walked out.......Nobody objected or broke into tears at our protest....strange that?
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
I guess I will just have to stop bringing my electronic keyboard to the local sessions before the government starts taxing it as much as Mark Harmer suggested (every single little note?). I hope nobody from the IRS read Mark's post. Also, I am wondering which instrument will the government start trying to tax next after they get rid of the pianos (both acoustic and electric)? Bodhrans?
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Free Reed, I can see how punters not paying attention to a paid performance would be a problem, but if you were just playing for yourselves in the session, why would it matter? Or were there too many football fans among the musicians, throwing the tunes off track?
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
AIB - I hate the feeling of playing a paid gig when you know that the punters don't really want you there and would rather watch something on the telly. I always felt that to have to play music in competition with a TV set is an insult to both the music and the musicians. If it were an unpaid session I wouldn't be there in the first place.
Will Harmon has some story about a session which played during a sports event. I suppose at the ends of the earth there may well be a happy synthesis of tunes & TV.
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
In several pubs I play in there is often a TV on silent. Once time I remember playing at a session where whatever channel they had the tele on was playing Gladiator, on silent of course. Oh look, there's Russel Crowe without a shirt... whoops, sorry, dropped that beat.
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Mind, the sound on the telly was off, so it wasn't disrupting our session, except when people in the pub audibly reacted to whatever olympian tragedy was unfolding on the screen.
Another year, another pub, and the telly was showing re-runs of the US women's beach volleyball victory, when Misty May and her cohort went rolling in the sand in their bikinis. I had my eyes closed, but our piper lost all control....
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
LOL, my eyes did open at the sound of the derailed pipes, and I managed to catch the tail end (ahem) of the cavorting on the telly. It's now a running joke, years on, that the piper is not allowed to sit facing any telly in the pub....
Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Not wanting to leave a stone unturned in its attempts to outlaw live music in pubs, the British government has apparently turned its attention to the humble pub piano, according to Terence Blacker's comment column in the Independent this week. This is what he says:
A bum note on pubs and pianos
The government's campaign against the terrible scourge of live music has taken a new turn. Publicans, club owners and restaurants can play recorded music or televised football games as loudly as they like but, according to the Culture Minister Gerry Sutcliffe, even "theoretically innocuous activities such as putting a piano in a pub" can be so disruptive that they will require a licence from a local authority.
How good it is to know that, in these times of stress and noise, the Government has its eye on that previously neglected danger to public order: the piano. (end of quote - you can find it here: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/terence-blacker/terence-blacker-spinning-out-of-control-in-the-blogosphere-1798641.html )
# Posted on October 9th 2009 by RichardB
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
I didn't realise there were any left.
More club-style loud noise, hectic football replays on huge screens again at high volume, etc etc., = stress, boredom = more drink sunk faster. That is the *point* of jacking up the volume late on - or so at any rate a publican told me, and I don't doubt it.
This means good business for the big operators, more tax and rent revenue for HMG or what passes for local government. It is also probably the only straightforward way to get huge amounts of money back out of the underclass by legal means, or indeed any means at all. This makes HMG feel better and less liable to think their social money is going down a black oubliette, which would make the Opposition laugh at them. In today's UK, p*ssed-dom is both profit and product. It is marketed to the world as passion and vibrancy. Seriously. I rather think the world smells a rat on this one and the tourist industry has over-egged the appeal of being murdered or whatever while sampling the delights of Britain's "evening economy", but otherwise all this has a hideous rationality about it.
# Posted on October 9th 2009 by nicholas
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Even without government involvement this is the way it goes. Pop music and sports, unfortunately, draw a bigger crowd than acoustic folk music.
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by shanty
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
I am so sick of the growing government involvement in all aspects of life- on your side of the pond as well as mine.
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by Greg the Piano Tuner
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Trouble with a capital T that rhymes with P that stands for Piano!
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by fuzzygreen
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
I like the 'theoretically innocuous'. Putting a piano in a pub IS innocuous. The trouble now is that it would have to come all the way from China (the piano, not the pub), because the English makers have been bankrupted by our government. Oh, and the music 'industry'.
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by gam
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
I now realise how fortunate I was to enjoy my early drinking years in the 60's in Portsmouth where many pubs had pianos as the centre of an evening's entertainment. It wasn't the music celebrated on this site, but it was music of the people, and the songs meant everything to the older generation. A friend of mine who still busks on pa, played pub piano in the Grave-diggers Arms (lovely name for a pub - by the cemetery of course). Nowadays pubs are dominated by huge plasma screens (one sold every 15 seconds in the UK last year and to have them all on at the same time we would need two extra nuclear power stations.) Switch off the power and play acoustic instruments - it's our only hope!
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by RichardB
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
I love to see a piano in a pub but please please Landlords get the thing tuned up once in a while. Like any other piece of the pub's fixtures and fittings it needs maintainance and servicing.
Maybe if pub pianos were better looked after they'd be played a bit more...then again they do take up space that could be used by two more customers. Possibly I'm being a bit cynical now.
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by john knoss
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Oh, and of course an annual Licence (Tax revenue) is required for TV's whereas pianos don't - at present.
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by john knoss
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Thank goodness for the few 'historic' pubs in my area. A couple of them have NO T.V. AT ALL!!!!!!
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by shanty
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Two of the session pubs I go to in Bristol do not have television screens, and they turn off any background music that's on when we are ready to start.
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Ah, yes.
],
Taxing live music again - the people have spoken again, even if it is by remaining silent.
1.You folks elected the great "THEM" [just like over here
2. You let them remain in power and pass their stupid laws and amendments [just like over here]
3.and when it comes home to you (ie. bites you round the butt), I do not see news bits of hundreds of people gathering in protest demanding to be heard [just like over here].
Suck it up.
[just like over here]
Ah, there's my coffee.
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by Piece
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Ah, yes.
],
Taxing live music again - the people have spoken again, even if it is by remaining silent.
1.You folks elected the great "THEM" [just like over here
2. You let them remain in power and pass their stupid laws and amendments [just like over here]
3.and when it comes home to you (ie. bites you round the butt), I do not see news bits of hundreds of people gathering in protest demanding to be heard [just like over here].
Suck it up.
[just like over here]
Ah, there's my coffee.
Pardon the grumpiness.
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by Piece
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
One of the reasons I bought an electronic keyboard in the first place was that I almost never, ever saw a real piano in a restuarant or a pub or a bar or a private residence or any place at all here in the United States. After I bought the keyboard, now I had something to play music on and perform on almost anywhere and everywhere if I wanted to.
I guess the next thing the government will try to tax and demand that we buy a license for will be electronic keyboards such as mine--especially if you perform as often as I do.
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by fauxcelt
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Fauxcelt - they may tax you for owning it, then again for bringing into a pub, then again for plugging it in...and probably tax you on a per note basis, after that. I wouldn't put anything past this government.
I'm shortly moving to an area where a lot of regency properties have bricked-in windows thanks to the window tax which came in about 300 years ago - so the idea of bonkers taxation is nothing new (sadly).
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by Mark Harmer
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
And I thought this board was frequented mostly by liberals who love being pushed around by government....Oh, I mean who love it when government pushes around other people.
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by feardearg
People go to a pub to buy a drink.
The music is often incidental ~ http://www.thepublican.com/story.asp?sectioncode=7&storycode=65237
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by Ben Steen
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
A session I went to in a pub last year was nearly ruined by the arrival of a young man insistant on trying to accompany on the pub piano. Eventually he gave up when one of the regular and longtime players told him he wasn't up to the task. He actually turned out to be a great harmonica player though!
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by flossie
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
In my earlier post I may have given the impression that my personal walk through life has not included the consumption of industrial qualities of cheap and dubious alcohol for no reason at all, and that I have thus inexcusably withheld from the state the taxes and duties deriving therefrom, thereby forfeiting my right of continued existence on this earth.
I can assure all eyeballs of the state reading this that this is not the case.
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by nicholas
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
("Quantities...")
# Posted on October 10th 2009 by nicholas
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
I recently returned from a holiday in the UK, and was amazed at the continual assault on the ear drums from loud piped music in pubs and shops there. I use the term music loosely because the tapes were obviously chosen by ten year olds. In one pub during Sunday lunch there were three different big screen TVs, each one showing a different game, piped music and noisy games machines all going at once. Are the punters brain dead or something. You can't even get away from the 'boiler house music' in the loo. Yeah, we've come a long way from the days of the old piano in the corner.
# Posted on October 11th 2009 by Free Reed
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
"Pop music and sports, unfortunately, draw a bigger crowd than acoustic folk music. "
Not on Monday nights, or other trad session nights, and not in every pub at once. There's room for the niche market instead of all slugging it out for the trade of the same set of yobs
Just returned from Australia where one highlight was a wonderful small session in the back room at the Lomond in East Brunswick, Melbourne, where a local occasionally got up and made sympathetic and melodic contributions to the sets on the well-tuned piano.
However it is known as a "muso's" pub
bloke probably tuned it himself
# Posted on October 11th 2009 by Bren
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Relax nicholas, your continued existence on this earthly plane is not in jeopardy. But, the next round is on you. ;)
# Posted on October 11th 2009 by Ben Steen
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
'I recently returned from a holiday in the UK, and was amazed at the continual assault on the ear drums from loud piped music in pubs and shops there. I use the term music loosely because the tapes were obviously chosen by ten year olds. In one pub during Sunday lunch there were three different big screen TVs, each one showing a different game, piped music and noisy games machines all going at once. Are the punters brain dead or something. You can't even get away from the 'boiler house music' in the loo. Yeah, we've come a long way from the days of the old piano in the corner.'
But that's been Ireland for the last couple of decades, Free Reed! Where do you live? No, on second thoughts, keep that to yourself!
# Posted on October 11th 2009 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Yes, Mark Harmer, I am afraid you are correct about excessive taxation by the government (on all levels--local, state, and federal). They certainly seem to go out of their way to tax anything and everything which they can get their filthy, money-grubbing hands on (including bonkers--whatever that is).
# Posted on October 11th 2009 by fauxcelt
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Does anyone wonder why we threw the Crown and all their rules and taxes out of the USA? (of course, we then proceeded to impose onerous rules and taxes on ourselves--sigh)
# Posted on October 11th 2009 by AlBrown
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Just a thought - why actually do they have TVs in pubs? I can understand it for sport, probably more fun to watch with others, but just having the telly on? Doesn't everyone have one at home? (Sorry I don't get out much to these sorts of places!)
# Posted on October 12th 2009 by The Archivist
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
I read some time ago that a guy had invented or programmed a remote control that he carried around on his person. On entering a pub where a TV was on, he promptly and surreptitiously turned it off. I'd really love to do that.
I once had a Sunday morning trad gig in a pub where we were seated under the telly. One particular Sunday morning it was left on so that the punters could watch an All Ireland Minor Football final. We were still expected to play, they turned the sound down a bit but left the picture on. We played for about half an hour, then put the instruments in the cases and walked out.......Nobody objected or broke into tears at our protest....strange that?
# Posted on October 12th 2009 by Free Reed
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
I guess I will just have to stop bringing my electronic keyboard to the local sessions before the government starts taxing it as much as Mark Harmer suggested (every single little note?). I hope nobody from the IRS read Mark's post. Also, I am wondering which instrument will the government start trying to tax next after they get rid of the pianos (both acoustic and electric)? Bodhrans?
# Posted on October 12th 2009 by fauxcelt
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Free Reed, I can see how punters not paying attention to a paid performance would be a problem, but if you were just playing for yourselves in the session, why would it matter? Or were there too many football fans among the musicians, throwing the tunes off track?
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by AlBrown
Free Reed
does this help? http://www.universal-remote.net/
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by Ben Steen
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
AIB - I hate the feeling of playing a paid gig when you know that the punters don't really want you there and would rather watch something on the telly. I always felt that to have to play music in competition with a TV set is an insult to both the music and the musicians. If it were an unpaid session I wouldn't be there in the first place.
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by Free Reed
Live music
Will Harmon has some story about a session which played during a sports event. I suppose at the ends of the earth there may well be a happy synthesis of tunes & TV.
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by Ben Steen
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
In several pubs I play in there is often a TV on silent. Once time I remember playing at a session where whatever channel they had the tele on was playing Gladiator, on silent of course. Oh look, there's Russel Crowe without a shirt... whoops, sorry, dropped that beat.
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Live music in pubs -
It was the Olympics. Apparently if you work it right there's free drinks; Re: The Happy Complainer
August 24th 2008 by Miss Lonelyhearts
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/18849/comments#comment393978
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by Ben Steen
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Mind, the sound on the telly was off, so it wasn't disrupting our session, except when people in the pub audibly reacted to whatever olympian tragedy was unfolding on the screen.
Another year, another pub, and the telly was showing re-runs of the US women's beach volleyball victory, when Misty May and her cohort went rolling in the sand in their bikinis. I had my eyes closed, but our piper lost all control....
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by Will Harmon
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
See. Bloody pipers are useless. They can't play and watch attractive members of the opposite (or same) sex at the same time.
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
Open your eyes Miss Lonleyhearts, feck the music for a short time in favourable circumstances ;)
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by bogman
Re: Live music in pubs - the threat posed by pianos
LOL, my eyes did open at the sound of the derailed pipes, and I managed to catch the tail end (ahem) of the cavorting on the telly. It's now a running joke, years on, that the piper is not allowed to sit facing any telly in the pub....
# Posted on October 13th 2009 by Will Harmon