During the 1960s the village halls of Cornwall were thriving with the beat music of the era. While the bigger venues were putting on the larger and also visiting bands, on any Friday or Saturday night in Cornwall you could find an endless number of bands playing at the 'beat dance' at the local village hall.
The village halls were both steady gigs for both the jobbing musician and a local teen band having some fun at the weekends. In an era where there was little TV, few cinemas and nightclubs the pub and hall would become the focal point of village life, and the weekend beat dances brought out all the local teens out for a good time. Dancing, drinking, fighting and of course other things, would all take place to the sounds of the local beat group playing the hits of the day.
It was also not uncommon for bands to have to stoke the meter throughout the evening to make sure there was enough electricity for the rest of the gig! Often they would also have to call ahead to make sure the venue even had it's own power supply!
The halls were a major outlet for live music in Cornwall at the time. Of course people would go out for a night out wanting to hear the hits from the radio, songs they recognised and could dance to. With the rise of the DJ and the disco folk could hear the records as they were, not played by their mates who had learnt the riff to Satisfaction from a crackly 45 on their dansette. Sadly the disco would kill off a lot of live music in the later part of the 60s and unfortunately the village halls were one of the first to suffer.
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