Latest news with #Spinners
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Spinners raises £4m to meet demand for 'competitive socialising'
A leisure chain which aims to capitalise on Britons' enthusiasm for 'competitive socialising' has secured a multimillion-pound funding injection to accelerate its growth. Sky News understands that Spinners - which offers games such as bowling, crazy golf, darts and shuffleboard - has struck a deal with investor Gresham House Ventures to provide the new capital. Spinners, which opened its first site in Reading in 2021, now trades from three venues and says it wants to become a UK-wide chain. Money latest: Its expansion plans reflect the growth of experiential leisure activities, with technology-led innovation in crazy golf and shuffleboard fuelling consumer spending at a time when many traditional pub and nightclub operators are experiencing significant financial pressure. Other businesses which have raised capital to fund rapid growth include F1 Arcade, the Formula One simulator chain, and Red Engine, the group behind Electric Shuffle venues. Jamie Bylett, founder and director at Spinners, said the funding would "enable us to accelerate our growth, and we look forward to announcing the location of new Spinners venues over the next few months". Francis Ireland, an associate at Gresham House Ventures, said: "With demand for competitive socialising growing rapidly, Spinners has built a strong base of customers at its existing sites. "We think the business has huge potential for continued expansion as customers seek out activity-based social experiences, so we are excited to be supporting Spinners as it continues to roll out its fantastic venues up and down the country." Gresham House Ventures invests on behalf of the Baronsmead and Mobeus venture capital trusts and is part of Gresham House, the specialist alternative asset management group. The valuation at which it was making its £4m investment was unclear.
Sky News
04-06-2025
- Business
- Sky News
Spinners raises £4m to meet demand for 'competitive socialising'
A leisure chain which aims to capitalise on Britons' enthusiasm for 'competitive socialising' has secured a multimillion-pound funding injection to accelerate its growth. Sky News understands that Spinners - which offers games such as bowling, crazy golf, darts and shuffleboard - has struck a deal with investor Gresham House Ventures to provide the new capital. Spinners, which opened its first site in Reading in 2021, now trades from three venues and says it wants to become a UK-wide chain. Its expansion plans reflect the growth of experiential leisure activities, with technology-led innovation in crazy golf and shuffleboard fuelling consumer spending at a time when many traditional pub and nightclub operators are experiencing significant financial pressure. Other businesses which have raised capital to fund rapid growth include F1 Arcade, the Formula One simulator chain, and Red Engine, the group behind Electric Shuffle venues. Jamie Bylett, founder and director at Spinners, said the funding would "enable us to accelerate our growth, and we look forward to announcing the location of new Spinners venues over the next few months". Francis Ireland, an associate at Gresham House Ventures, said: "With demand for competitive socialising growing rapidly, Spinners has built a strong base of customers at its existing sites. "We think the business has huge potential for continued expansion as customers seek out activity-based social experiences, so we are excited to be supporting Spinners as it continues to roll out its fantastic venues up and down the country." Gresham House Ventures invests on behalf of the Baronsmead and Mobeus venture capital trusts and is part of Gresham House, the specialist alternative asset management group.
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Dylan said: teach me that!' Martin Carthy on six decades of Scarborough Fair – and his new solo album
Martin Carthy has returned to Scarborough Fair. It's been 60 years since he first recorded the song on his self-titled debut album, and famously taught it (or tried to teach it) to both Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, when they came to watch the young guitar hero playing in the London folk clubs. Dylan transformed the song into Girl from the North Country, while Simon turned it into Scarborough Fair/Canticle, a hit single for Simon & Garfunkel and the opening track on their 1966 album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Carthy's new version is on Transform Me Then into a Fish, his first solo album in 21 years, released on his 84th birthday today. It now has sitar backing from Sheema Mukherjee, giving it a mysterious, spooky edge. 'That's the kind of a song it is. Try not to be scared of it,' said Carthy, whose sleeve notes when he first recorded the song provided a reminder that parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme were herbs traditionally associated with death. 'It finds a home among the weird, oddball songs. I was interested in what Sheema could do with it, and she responded as a wonderful musician will respond …' He is sitting at his kitchen table in the house in which he has lived for the past 37 years, in Robin Hood's Bay on the Yorkshire coast, just half an hour's drive north of Scarborough. It looks like an over-cluttered museum, with every space on the floor, walls or shelves packed with musical instruments, cassettes, pictures, posters and a street sign from Hull, where his wife, the late Norma Waterson, grew up. He now shares the home with their daughter, the folksinger and fiddle-player Eliza Carthy, her two children, and a cat. He says he has always loved the lyrics of folk songs as much as the melodies, and as he discusses the new album, he delights in telling stories, often illustrated with bursts of song, about the bands and musicians he has played with. Eliza brings in tea, chipping in about lyrics and song titles. The new album started out as a 60th anniversary tribute to his 1965 solo debut, but didn't quite work out that way. A handful of songs have been dropped, and three new ones added. But eight originals remain, including Scarborough Fair. He remembers exactly where he first heard it – at the Troubadour folk club in Earl's Court, in 1960, where it was sung by Jacqueline McDonald (of the Spinners fame) who told her audience that she had learned it from a new song book, The Singing Island, by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. Carthy rushed out to buy it and thought: 'That's a nice tune – and of course it was, because Ewan wrote [this version of] it! He would always improve a tune.' Carthy composed his own arrangement for the song, and was singing it while playing with the Thamesiders at the King & Queen pub, near Goodge Street, when he 'found myself looking into Dylan's face – I had heard about him from Sing Out magazine'. Dylan was there with his legendary manager Albert Grossman, 'a folk fan who loved fishing and whaling songs and could sing the pants off anyone, though he never sang in public'. Dylan said he loved Scarborough Fair, and begged Carthy to 'teach me that, teach me that'. A few days later he came to watch Carthy playing solo at the Troubadour, and began visiting the house where he was living on Haverstock Hill, near Belsize Park tube. The first visit has become a folk legend. It was during the bitterly cold winter of 1962-3, and one of Carthy's friends had found an old piano abandoned outside Chalk Farm tube and pushed it up the hill to the house. Carthy started chopping it up with a sword he had been given as a Christmas present, so he could feed it into a wood-burning stove – to Dylan's fury. 'I got the sword and Bob came and stood in front of me and said 'you can't do that, man, it's a musical instrument!' 'It's a piece of junk', I said, and swung a couple of times. Bob was looking up at me and said 'could I try?' – and he battered it … it's all true!' Dylan failed to master Scarborough Fair. 'He wanted to do it with a flat pick though he's a perfectly good finger-style player,' says Carthy. 'He got the giggles all the time and it made him laugh.' So when Dylan later transformed the song into Girl from the North Country, did he mind? 'We just swapped songs all the time,' says Carthy. 'That's what people did.' Carthy was less pleased when Paul Simon did not credit him for his arrangement on Simon and Garfunkel's version, Scarborough Fair/Canticle. But all is now forgiven, with Carthy saying: 'It was grossly unfair [of me] because it wasn't a pinch in any way … it was written as a tribute because he is clever enough to do that.'' They made up by singing the song together on stage at Hammersmith Apollo in October 2000: 'He was doing a tour. He said, 'Really – you want to do that?' It was important, so I could lay it to rest and never have to sing that song again!' He eventually changed his mind about returning to the song, he said, because 'I was gifted a lovely version!' In 2014 he was invited to sing on a TV drama, Remember Me, set in Scarborough and starring Michael Palin. When he went to the recording, he was presented with a very different version of Scarborough Fair, 'collected by Cecil Sharpe, from Goathland – a village near here on the moors'. That's the one he recorded for the new album and now sings live 'but I haven't got it quite right yet …' Sign up to Sleeve Notes Get music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras. Every genre, every era, every week after newsletter promotion Other songs of course have stories attached, too. He tells how he sang High Germany back in 1963 and thought he had remembered the words correctly until he checked the English Folk Music Journal and found that for some verses 'the words were nothing like mine – I was highly impressed I had invented this stuff'. He still sings his version. As for his own original version of the Ewan MacColl song Springhill Mine Disaster, The Ballad of Springhill, he says that MacColl, a folk purist, 'hated what I did, because I was playing guitar – a foreign body!' On the new version, Carthy is backed only by Eliza's fiddle and demonstrates his new singing voice. 'I lost a lot in the lower registers and found something else – and I like it.' Eliza's fiddle also provides the new setting for Ye Mariners All, 'one of those lovely nonsense songs.' The suitably surreal album cover for Transform Me Then into a Fish shows Martin at the breakfast table in the middle of the ocean, holding his fork like a crazed Neptune. Carthy has always been adventurous. After recording that landmark album in 1965 he worked with fiddler Dave Swarbrick. When Swarbrick joined Fairport Convention in 1969 – an invitation also extended to Carthy, 'twice!' – Carthy joined Steeleye Span instead, playing electric guitar, very loudly, saying 'do you want me to turn it down to 'lounge' – it's supposed to be loud!' After marrying Norma in 1972 he joined the glorious vocal group the Watersons. 'I thought eventually someone would teach me to sing, and Norma did,' he says. He went on to be involved in many different projects, including solo work, playing in duos with Swarbrick and with John Kirkpatrick and Eliza, and in groups including Waterson: Carthy (in which he was joined by Norma and Eliza), the brass-backed Brass Monkey, and the gloriously experimental the Imagined Village, which reworked traditional songs for a multicultural Britain, and featured a large cast that included Simon Emmerson, Billy Bragg, Benjamin Zephaniah and Mukherjee. 'I loved it,' says Carthy. 'That huge band was so exciting. Sheema seized everything we tossed at her and she encouraged me to take risks.' With the Imagined Village, he recorded a powerful new treatment of the traditional My Son John in 2010, with sitar backing and updated to the Afghan war era with Carthy's new lyrics: 'Up come John and he's got no legs, he's got carbon fibre blades instead.' He startled his followers even more by re-working Slade's Cum on Feel the Noize: 'Because I'm a big fan of Noddy [Holder]. What a singer!' He's just home from a US tour with Eliza, with shows to celebrate the new album involving both Eliza and Sheema starting on 12 June – while next year promises the return of a new version of the Imagined Village. Carthy may be 84, but he's not slowing down. Transform Me Then into a Fish is out today on Hem Hem Records
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New arts and entertainment district coming to Madison
MADISON, Miss. (WJTV) – The City of Madison has partnered with Bellamare Development to announce The Gallery. Located off Galleria Parkway, The Gallery is a privately funded, mixed-use destination that will blend entertainment, dining, retail, and office space. At the heart of the project is Spinners, a 120,000-square-foot indoor/outdoor family entertainment center featuring bowling, skating, games. Nine Mississippi students named 2025 U.S. Presidential Scholars semifinalists 'The Aldermen and I are excited to announce Madison's newest children's venue. Spinners will be opening its second facility, this one in Madison, highlighting skating, bowling, games and so much more. As always, Madison does it right the first time, and we are excited about this venue coming to our city. Very soon we will see some very happy children,' said Madison Mayor Mary Hawkins Butler. As part of The Gallery development, Royal Street will feature French-inspired walkable architecture, lined with local restaurants, boutique retail, and upstairs office space. Groundbreaking is expected by fall of 2025, with construction beginning shortly after. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
