retiredmartin

July 2023. Hillsborough, Sheffield.

Last weekend the rain arrived, but the M.O.R. crowd at Tramlines lapped it up (literally), dancing along in their designer wellies to middle-aged indie pap*.

Embracing the mud @tramlines pic.twitter.com/DMdAvcPfZf

— Rachel Macqueen (@indie78) July 23, 2023

“Embracing” ? Who says “embracing” in 2023 ?

We were escaping Sheffield on Saturday morning, but popped along to the Fringe on Friday night.

Virtually every Sheffield pub had music on, mostly young punks from beyond the Peak. I don’t think band names are daft enough these days;

“I want to see Airport Dad” I told Mrs RM after studying the programme for 20 seconds.

Airport Dad are nearly as new as ALDER, the bar in Sheffield Brewery’s mothballed site.

ALDER is possibly my favourite Sheffield pub, and therefore one of my favourite anywhere, particularly on music night.

For a start, folk know how to stand at the bar here.

And it’s an incredibly unpretentious place, particularly for a music-driven bar.

Mrs RM took a table in the foliage by the door, but you really need to be under the glitterball with the other 30 folk squeezed into the gig space.

Can’t remember what I had, but one of you escapees from beer Twitter (sorry, X) will know what the handpump below was dispensing.

You get cool, rich beer (NBSS 3.5) for well under a fiver in the company of folk who smile a lot (but not TOO much).

Airport Dad have guitars with “No to Tories” written on them and nothing to sell yet. They were great, even if they did try to get us to call out “Airport”, “Dad”.

They finished with this one,

to crowd euphoria.

“Am I supposed to know that one ?” said Mrs RM. Oh dear.

“I thought listening to the first Arctic Monkeys album was a requirement for Sheffield citizenship” wrote Matt, when I messaged him.

Mrs RM harumphed, and headed into Kelham.

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*Paul Heaton is a legend, mind.