The Rolling Stones have been in Manchester this week and according to the local press, tickets were changing hands at £400 a pop. So as much I would have loved to have seen them I will be giving that a wide berth then.
The other big music event this week is the Diggle Blues festival and very good it is to. What makes it better is that it is free, all the organisers want from the audience is to turn up and throw a quid in a bucket if you liked what you saw. I have been known to throw a tenner in when the group has been fantastic.
What I like is the diversity of the bands and the venues. We have the local pub (The Gate), a coffee shop (The Woolyknit Cafe), A Band Club (Diggle Band Club), an Ice-cream Parlour (Grandpa Greens), A Church Hall (Kilngreen) and a Cookery School (Saddleworth Cookery School).
The Sessions are arranged so that you have 30 minutes to get to the next venue so you don’t miss anything.
What people of my generation want is to be transported back to a time when almost every pub in the town had a live band playing and the atmosphere was fantastic. There is nothing quite like listening to live music for raising your spirits and in this day and age, we could do with quite a lot of live music working its magic.
These bands and performers are fantastic at what they do and mostly they do it because they love performing and they get paid for doing what they love.
So back to my opening paragraph, do you think Messers Jagger and Richards when they started out playing in pubs would have dreamt they would still be filling stadiums some 56 years later? I very much doubt it.
John D Eccles 