"Bands do start at the very bottom, and people forget that"

Another day, another reminder of the pressures that live music venues are under. In the last month alone, the strain has proven too much to bear for the owners of three venues in south Yorkshire and the East Midlands: the Harley in Sheffield, the Maze in Nottingham and the Victoria Inn in Derby.

I never made it to the Maze but know it was held in high esteem and played host to scores of great gigs. The Victoria Inn, however, was somewhere I visited at least once (Seafood in around 2000, I think) and its loss will be a serious blow to a city that (to my knowledge) already had precious little in the way of music infrastructure, certainly in comparison with its near neighbour Nottingham.