Keith Crombie

Lance Liddle’s Newcastle-based Bebop Spoken Here blog has done a typically superb job, in the past fortnight, carrying several tributes to promoter Keith Crombie, a lynchpin of the local scene, who died on December 29th, at the age of 74. The role that a great blog like Lance’s can have in bringing communities with a shared passion / interest / purpose together at difficult times is just beginning to be understood.

There is also a Facebook Keith Crombie Memorial Page where his impact on younger generations can be seen, maybe even measured: several University students have taken the opportunity thank him for all he did.

Keith Crombie’s funeral is tomorrow January 14th, and will involve a procession starting at the Jazz Cafe which Crombie ran.

But landlord Mike Tilley has managed to heaped the ultimate indignity on a music promoter. In the period between Crombie’s death and tomorrow’s funeral, he has obtained a possession order and changed the locks, according to the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. I don’t know the rights and wrongs of the case sufficiently, but it seems a very insensitive decision indeed. The comments on the Chronicle piece are trenchant, to say the least. 

It’s also, sadly, the second case this week where a jazz club’s locks have been changed by the landlord.