BARNSLEY’S own world-famous brass band Grimethorpe Colliery played to a sell-out crowd in Millennium Square Leeds on Sunday when they performed ‘Brassed Off Live’.
The hit 1996 film was played on a big screen as the band who had recorded the original soundtrack to the film performed it again live and in real time as the film rolled above them.
It was only the second time the band had performed such a live event, and it was the first time in Yorkshire. The difficult feat of impeccable timing was first performed at the Royal Albert Hall last year to mark the band’s centenary and to celebrate 21 years since the film’s release.
The film is a fictionalised version of the band’s real life story. The bittersweet tale is set in 1992, when, just five days before the ‘Grimley Colliery Band’ was due to compete in the national championships at the Royal Albert Hall, the village’s colliery is earmarked for closure.
With the band’s members all facing unemployment, none had the money or the enthusiasm to make the trip to London and the band looked to be finished.
But a recent addition to the band, who had been discovered as an ‘enemy’ working on behalf of the architects of the colliery’s doom, steps in to make sure the band plays on.
Pictures: Sarah Zagni
