I’m writing today’s column in the utterly brilliant Cwrw Bar in Carmarthen, where owner Matt is playing some exhilarating stuff in his “Tangled Parrot” record shop upstairs, while I sit and write this in the downstairs venue where I had a cracking gig last night (Thursday). 

I’m on my second tour of Wales in six months and the previous night was in Le Pub in Newport, a lovely, friendly community space which, like Cwrw, is the beating heart of its town’s underground cultural scene.  
 
An independent music venue makes such a difference to any town or city, but especially to smaller communities where it is often the only place of refuge for those who choose to live life outside the mainstream. 

Such a presence provides an incentive for bands to form, for aspirant singer songwriters, poets, spoken word artists and comics to try their material out in public; for visual artists to exhibit their work; and for micro-breweries to strut their stuff. It’s a vital ingredient anywhere, and is so often lacking – forcing people to cobble together events in unsuitable spaces, stifling creativity and strangling dreams.
 
And when such a space has existed, and is ripped away at the whim of a property developer or a clueless council whose idea of “culture” is restricted to the polarities of the Royal Ballet and Love Island, the effect is devastating.