The Passing Show: The Life and Music of Ronnie Lane

In the course of reading about Ronnie Lane and Slim Chance I came across this terrific BBC documentary about him.

The programme confirms all the stories about Lane in Shropshire and the earlier material on the Small Faces and the Faces is fascinating too.

I once blogged about Ronnie Lane in Shropshire:

Charlie Hart, a member of Lane's band Slim Chance, remembers hanging out with a "lethal combination of rock and roll A-list - Clapton, Townsend, Small Faces etc. - and Shropshire farmers".

And an article on GoJo Music suggests we can add the Three Tuns in Bishop's Castle to the list of Lane's Shropshire haunts.

But take a look even at the first part of The Passing Show and you will see the sights of the Stiperstones as the charabanc ("a victoriana sharowbold, and this is the fourwheelful of sst sst out the backgrove," as Stanley Unwin would have put it) drives along.

The pub at the very start is the Miners Arms at Priest Weston, at 00:50 you see the Devil's Chair and at 01:02 the tin tabernacle at White Grit, which has been pictured on this blog.

Back in the sixties everyone was getting it together in the country. But to do it in the harsher climate of the seventies, that was something else.