In the battle to secure the future of independent music venues, Ninja Tune beat juggler Mr Scruff is doing his bit.
Tickets for Mr Scruff's upcoming tour will have a £1 levy designed to fund the grassroots music scene. As far as add-on costs go, better this than the bottomless black hole that folks like Skiddle call "administration fees". Charging to generate an e-ticket? Are you (s)kidding me?
He's calling his tour the Miniature Arena Tour, which is cute. His chosen arenas include Cosmic Slop in Leeds, Wylam Brewery in Newcastle, Sneaky Pete’s in Edinburgh, and the Snoggy Snotbucket in Lytham St Annes. One of those was made up by me. It's the Snotbucket one. But it definitely sounds like somewhere he should play.
The UK live music scene is in a bit of a pickle. Tonnes of places have stopped running events, and dozens are closing. The scene is woefully underfunded despite contributing squillions of smackeroonies to the UK economy and providing a social glue that stops a lot of things becoming unstuck during difficult times.
Mr Scruff's support for grassroots music is a good move, and it makes up for my one massive bugbear about Mr Scruff. He likes tea. He's always going on about tea. Tea this, tea that. Tea, as every right-thinking person knows, is horrible ditch-water that tastes like disappointment. I'd rather suck on Elon Musk's damp underpants. Yuck.
In the distant past, Mr Scruff was a shelf-stacker at a Kwik Save supermarket. My theory is that this job seeded his tea obsession. So beloved was tea to him, I reckon he stacked the tea bags extra neatly. Lined up those corners of the boxes nice and flush. The coffee shelves were scattered and wonky, and the hot chocolate section was a clutter of broken jars. But the tea bags? Those shelves were spotless, and if a customer dared take a packet of English Breakfast off the shelf, he'd bat their hand away. "My tea," he'd hiss. "My precious tea."
Anyway, he's a wrong-un when it comes to tea, but he's right about small venues.
While you're here, have a nosey at this old video about Mr Scruff (screenshot from Selectors: Mr. Scruff, above). You'll see his dog and his record collection and the concrete he puts under his decks and his iconic cartoons and lots of shots of Manchester.
Further Fats: There goes the hear: Manchester has enough gigs (2011)