Year with Brighouse and Rastrick Band

Though not quite the Rolling Thunder Revue – this tour lacks the excesses of the average pop band of the time (unsurprisingly for a brass band that had temperance in its name for its first four decades) – this tour of the UK nevertheless has its exciting moments. As we accompany the Band journeying by coach to the major brass band hot spots, we discover that they are still very popular, mainly because there were still collieries and a working class culture to go with them.

Brass bands are of course strongly associated with mining, and now have the function of keeping alive the memory of mining and other industrial communities after the closures of pits and factories: wonderfully brought to life in the 1995 film Brassed Off’s portrayal of events at Grimethorpe Colliery in South Yorkshire when it was announced that the pit was to close. Today, Brighouse and Rastrick continues to be supported by public subscriptions and its own fund raising, spurning commercial interests, yet still regarded as one of the ‘elite’ on the contest and concert platforms. In Christmas 1977 they put out a single, The Floral Dance, pipped to the No. 1 spot by Paul McCartney and Wings’ Mull of Kintyre.