Promoterobit: Jon Fat Beast

Last night, noticing it was the 25th anniversary of the the Venue, I was thinking about there was the only place I ever saw Jon Fat Beast doing his warm-up act (for The Family Cat), and was wondering what he was doing these days.

Woke up to this, this morning:

Very saddened to hear that the legendary Jon Fat Beast passed away this morning. pic.twitter.com/XQzIVKkrPq

— Jim Bob (@mrjimBob) July 27, 2014

Although most famous as the shouty, shirtless, sweaty bloke who'd come on stage just before Carter USM, Beast's real contribution to music was the work he did as promoter - through The Timebox, and (at first) The Bull & Gate.

If we live in an age now of landfill indie, Beast's model was - as he cheerfully acknowledged in an interview with Plunder The Tombs - more pile 'em high; sell 'em cheap:

I would get sent over 300 demos a week at its peak.
We were very cheap/free entry and made our money selling hundreds of sweary tee shirts I designed

It'd be difficult to come up with a list of bands from the era who played their first (or sometimes last) London date thanks to the support of JFB, but if you write down a list of bands from the era, you wouldn't be far wrong.

And - again from that Plunder The Tombs interview - he upset the right people:

I used to call Simon Cowell a cunt twice a week, he was at Phonogram as an A and R man.

No further details about his death at this point. But the music world has lost a legend - even if the focus of the legend probably looks at the wrong part of his work.