The Edinburgh ,Monday nights is still going.There may be others Im not too sure.There is something on Thursdays in a bar called Cuffs, am not sure how regular this session is I intend to visit soon .Tonight ,Rodewald suite ,Philharmonic hall should be a belter...There are some fine musicians playing.
You got the wrong end of the stick there - Newcastle has plenty of sessions, AFAIK.
Nor is the loss of Vizzade / Bottle Of Dog / Lunatic's Broth anything to cry over, it had become disgusting stuff full of cr*p with a thin texture and taste. Of course it was always the former, but up to 1973 it was at least strongly flavoured, inducing a kind of furious and heady nostalgia as soon as one's nose touched the froth - a bit like inhaling new fence creosote on a hot day, which it probably contained. But in that fateful year a neighbour who brewed his own beer told me that the yeast he had hitherto got from Newcastle Brown had suddenly ceased to be there, and that was it. So it's going away to be brewed in Tadcaster - but really, the idea that they were going to apply for an appelation controlee for that gunk *did* make me feel slightly ashamed to be British.
I don't know Liverpool - I've only passed through it - but I assumed Irish sessions would be as native there as coals in Newcastle. Except that, of course, there are now no coals in Newcastle.
I told you what happened to the Broon Ale, Mix - they watered it down and took the body out of it!
But here is a potted history:
In the 1920s, mining engineers under Newcastle discovered, way way down, a huge lake that seemed to be bottomless. Its inky depths had seeped from, and were replete with, the innumerable virulent substances that the coal measures consisted of, along with those that derived from Newcastle's waste disposal schemes from the Romans onwards.
A man called Colonel J. Porter got to hear of this. He sank a shaft so as to drop in all the organic matter he could find, the only qualification for inclusion being that it was dead. Two years later, the lake was ripe. This was convincingly established by sniffing the top of the shaft. So, in 1927 Newcastle Brown was born.
There were claims that the day after it went on sale, the police requested that the strength be reduced, because the cells were already full. (*This* detail comes from Wikipedia...)
But by 1973, the Geordies had drunk the lot.
So the brewery resorted to power-hosing the coal measures to produce more. But the results were anaemic and disappointing, and even the Geordies decided there was far better stuff to drink.
So the relict Newcastle Brown industry has relocated to Yorkshire, no doubt to pump rusty sulphurous water out of coal mines *there* to flog to impressionable Southern students as the fast way to attain manhood by being, e.g., uncontrollably sick in a tutorial with someone who didn't like them much to begin with.
Rabbit coming out of doctor's meets his mate. Mate asked what was wrong. Rabbit said 'I'd just finished my lunch - nothing heavy - just a cheese toastie, then a ham toastie then a tomato one - whan I was violently ill.
Mate asks 'so what did the doctor say?'
Rabbit replies 'oh, he said it was obviously a case of mixin' ma toasties!'
The foodstuffs you mention are alive and well. I had leek pudding in a restaurant recently - light, fluffy and delicious.
But "Eat all, sup all, pay nowt..." is quintessentially Yorkshire: it has to do with getting value for money, and a type of prudence that can be relied upon to pay dividends.
Up here, these concepts are alien. It is more normal to spend money you haven't got on things that are bad for you, and to assume that lunacy is the surest way to prosperity. Look at the directors of Northern Rock!...
Sounds like you're stuck between a Northern Rock and a hard place! And what with the EEC fish quotas, I don't suppose the bo-at is coming in much these days, either ...
Talking of leeks, is the practise of "leek nobblin" still rife in geordie land?
I trust that the ingredients of the pudding that you enjoyed so much were not obtained in a clandestine raid ...
Oh yes, leek-nobbling / leek-slashing continues (amid, I may add, a large and entirely laudable allotment tradition in the area); but the fishing boats are now mainly to be seen rotting on the shore in melancholy photographs taken by the more introverted kind of photographer.
I was there on sunday night and apparently there was a session kicking off in peter kavanagh's after martin hayes' gig. I had a kid with me instead of an instrument so didn't check it out. There were a couple of really good players up here from liverpool last week who told me that, though thin on the ground at the present, sessions are still happening there. I can't remember where they said this was though, sorry. They also mentioned that there was "quite a lot" of singing going on, good for some, less so for others
Monday night in The Edinburgh is the only weekly session on the go at the moment (that I know of anyway). St Michaels Irish Centre in Tuebrook has one on the last Friday of the month which I don't usually get to as I work a lot of weekends.
It would be great to have more sessions on the go but I just don't think there is enough people playing around here to keep a lot of regular ones up and running. It takes two or three musicians to commit to turning up every week to get a decent session off the ground and that seems to be a tough call here at the minute.
The Cuffs thing was started by a really excellent flute player and might have done better but it was just at the start of the summer when everything gets pretty quiet so it never really took off. The manager and his wife were great and very supportive so maybe in the future it will get a second chance.
Hope that answers your question, it would be lovely to hear you play sometime.
No Sessions in Liverpool
No Sessions in Liverpool
There are 4 defunct sessions listed in Liverpool. Are there no sessions at all?
Thanks
Ged
# Posted on October 23rd 2009 by gedpipes
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
Some sessions in Liverpool coming up on a special occasion:
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-life/liverpool-lifestyle/2009/10/20/celebrating-liverpool-s-special-irish-links-100252-24959704/2/
Enough to get in contact with other players and find out what the regular places are - and play a few tunes of course
# Posted on October 23rd 2009 by Henk Bos
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
The Edinburgh ,Monday nights is still going.There may be others Im not too sure.There is something on Thursdays in a bar called Cuffs, am not sure how regular this session is I intend to visit soon .Tonight ,Rodewald suite ,Philharmonic hall should be a belter...There are some fine musicians playing.
# Posted on October 23rd 2009 by peter wsll
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
i cut and pasted this from the above link,
"Michael McGoldrick and Friends. Founding member of Toss the Feathers, Flok! And Lunasa this outstanding flute, whistle and Lilliean pipes"
# Posted on October 23rd 2009 by mellow_bellows
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
LOL
# Posted on October 23rd 2009 by Henk Bos
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
There's actually an establishment in Liverpool called "Pogue Mahone’s"??
# Posted on October 23rd 2009 by grego
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
No more Newcastle Brown to be brewed on Tyneside, either.
What's the world coming to, eh?!
# Posted on October 23rd 2009 by nicholas
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
No sessions in Liverpool?
No sessions in Newcastle?
Looks like all you scousers and geordies need to get busy and organise some, then!
# Posted on October 25th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
@Mixomatosis (couldn't resist that!):
You got the wrong end of the stick there - Newcastle has plenty of sessions, AFAIK.
Nor is the loss of Vizzade / Bottle Of Dog / Lunatic's Broth anything to cry over, it had become disgusting stuff full of cr*p with a thin texture and taste. Of course it was always the former, but up to 1973 it was at least strongly flavoured, inducing a kind of furious and heady nostalgia as soon as one's nose touched the froth - a bit like inhaling new fence creosote on a hot day, which it probably contained. But in that fateful year a neighbour who brewed his own beer told me that the yeast he had hitherto got from Newcastle Brown had suddenly ceased to be there, and that was it. So it's going away to be brewed in Tadcaster - but really, the idea that they were going to apply for an appelation controlee for that gunk *did* make me feel slightly ashamed to be British.
I don't know Liverpool - I've only passed through it - but I assumed Irish sessions would be as native there as coals in Newcastle. Except that, of course, there are now no coals in Newcastle.
# Posted on October 25th 2009 by nicholas
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
Must be a temperance meeting we have in the Cmberland , Byker , Newcastle every friday then .
# Posted on October 25th 2009 by bazouki dave
Whooops Cumberland not Cmberland
# Posted on October 25th 2009 by bazouki dave
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
Oh, that's what it is? It all makes sense now. And there was me thinking it was a bunch of drinkers with a session problem.
# Posted on October 25th 2009 by TheSilverSpear
More like the local Care in the Community branch meeting sometimes
# Posted on October 25th 2009 by bazouki dave
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
Do you reckon then the university would give me money for beer? It's like doing participant observation for my thesis.
# Posted on October 25th 2009 by TheSilverSpear
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
We used to have student grants for every student for that very purpose but the govt got rid of them .
# Posted on October 25th 2009 by bazouki dave
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
@ Mix:
Geordies do not organise.
Stuff happens.
# Posted on October 26th 2009 by nicholas
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
@ Nicholas
Ah, I see now, you were referring to the broon ale - not the sessions.
Well that's a relief ...
But wait!
Whatever happened to the broon ale?
Must try not to keep rabbiting on ...
Mix (omotosis)
# Posted on October 26th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
I told you what happened to the Broon Ale, Mix - they watered it down and took the body out of it!
But here is a potted history:
In the 1920s, mining engineers under Newcastle discovered, way way down, a huge lake that seemed to be bottomless. Its inky depths had seeped from, and were replete with, the innumerable virulent substances that the coal measures consisted of, along with those that derived from Newcastle's waste disposal schemes from the Romans onwards.
A man called Colonel J. Porter got to hear of this. He sank a shaft so as to drop in all the organic matter he could find, the only qualification for inclusion being that it was dead. Two years later, the lake was ripe. This was convincingly established by sniffing the top of the shaft. So, in 1927 Newcastle Brown was born.
There were claims that the day after it went on sale, the police requested that the strength be reduced, because the cells were already full. (*This* detail comes from Wikipedia...)
But by 1973, the Geordies had drunk the lot.
So the brewery resorted to power-hosing the coal measures to produce more. But the results were anaemic and disappointing, and even the Geordies decided there was far better stuff to drink.
So the relict Newcastle Brown industry has relocated to Yorkshire, no doubt to pump rusty sulphurous water out of coal mines *there* to flog to impressionable Southern students as the fast way to attain manhood by being, e.g., uncontrollably sick in a tutorial with someone who didn't like them much to begin with.
"Where there's muck there's brass..."
# Posted on October 26th 2009 by nicholas
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
....but back to the question
so there is one session in Liverpool?
Ta
Ged
# Posted on October 27th 2009 by gedpipes
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
Well, that's a sad story, Nicholas ...
But as they say in Yorkshire: "Eat all, drink all, pay nowt !"
And what of the stottie cake and the leek puddin' ?
Are they both still alive and kicking in Geordie land?
# Posted on October 27th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
Rabbit coming out of doctor's meets his mate. Mate asked what was wrong. Rabbit said 'I'd just finished my lunch - nothing heavy - just a cheese toastie, then a ham toastie then a tomato one - whan I was violently ill.
Mate asks 'so what did the doctor say?'
Rabbit replies 'oh, he said it was obviously a case of mixin' ma toasties!'
[ beats a hasty exit stage left ]
# Posted on October 27th 2009 by domnull
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
@Mix:
The foodstuffs you mention are alive and well. I had leek pudding in a restaurant recently - light, fluffy and delicious.
But "Eat all, sup all, pay nowt..." is quintessentially Yorkshire: it has to do with getting value for money, and a type of prudence that can be relied upon to pay dividends.
Up here, these concepts are alien. It is more normal to spend money you haven't got on things that are bad for you, and to assume that lunacy is the surest way to prosperity. Look at the directors of Northern Rock!...
# Posted on October 27th 2009 by nicholas
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
@ Nicholas
Sounds like you're stuck between a Northern Rock and a hard place! And what with the EEC fish quotas, I don't suppose the bo-at is coming in much these days, either ...
Talking of leeks, is the practise of "leek nobblin" still rife in geordie land?
I trust that the ingredients of the pudding that you enjoyed so much were not obtained in a clandestine raid ...
# Posted on October 27th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
Oh yes, leek-nobbling / leek-slashing continues (amid, I may add, a large and entirely laudable allotment tradition in the area); but the fishing boats are now mainly to be seen rotting on the shore in melancholy photographs taken by the more introverted kind of photographer.
# Posted on October 27th 2009 by nicholas
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
....yes but are there any f$3ing sessions in Liverpool
# Posted on October 28th 2009 by gedpipes
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
I was there on sunday night and apparently there was a session kicking off in peter kavanagh's after martin hayes' gig. I had a kid with me instead of an instrument so didn't check it out. There were a couple of really good players up here from liverpool last week who told me that, though thin on the ground at the present, sessions are still happening there. I can't remember where they said this was though, sorry. They also mentioned that there was "quite a lot" of singing going on, good for some, less so for others
# Posted on October 28th 2009 by pavlf
Re: No Sessions in Liverpool
Monday night in The Edinburgh is the only weekly session on the go at the moment (that I know of anyway). St Michaels Irish Centre in Tuebrook has one on the last Friday of the month which I don't usually get to as I work a lot of weekends.
It would be great to have more sessions on the go but I just don't think there is enough people playing around here to keep a lot of regular ones up and running. It takes two or three musicians to commit to turning up every week to get a decent session off the ground and that seems to be a tough call here at the minute.
The Cuffs thing was started by a really excellent flute player and might have done better but it was just at the start of the summer when everything gets pretty quiet so it never really took off. The manager and his wife were great and very supportive so maybe in the future it will get a second chance.
Hope that answers your question, it would be lovely to hear you play sometime.
# Posted on November 1st 2009 by flossie