The School and The Loves were a promoters dream by turning up in Birmingham at five ‘o’ clock, a whole hour before sound check, and in fact, only The Retro Spankees have turned up earlier for a gig thus far. I get increasingly nervous as the seconds tick by after six ‘o’ clock and we could be sound checking.

It was with a lot of nervousness that I booked this gig at the Island Bar too as there were plenty of big events on elsewhere with excellent bands playing which people would understandably want to go to, as well as the regular smattering of small gigs which friends and acquaintances were playing in.

Firstly – Gigbeth happened! You won’t have missed the promotion about that unless you had your head in the proverbial sand. It had big banners down the Bristol Road and links on the Travel West Midlands homepage and everything! Gigbeth was also the reason why we booked the slightly higher risk Island Bar, as The Sunflower Lounge was running a Gigbeth event. There’s a good Collective Memory of Gigbeth coming together on the Created In Birmingham blog.

Secondly – Project X, which I would have no doubt enjoyed a lot, after last years frankly superb three stage event which mixed a wide range of music styles, and in my drunken mess I seem to remember a genuinely funny stand up comedian being thrown into the mix too. This is where I would have been were I not doing a gig myself.

This time, we had our very own former Project X performer opening for us tonight, and Richard Burke opened. Weirdly his acoustic guitar was playing up a bit and distorting, apparently the battery in the pick up was dead. I wasn’t aware that they did have batteries in them, which is worrying because I use one!

Luckily, Ben Calvert was on hand with an acoustic pick up of his own and the night carried on after a brief interlude.

Richard, if you’ve not seen him before, put in an exceptionally good performance of gentle acoustic stuff – and better yet – genuinely-funny-chit-chat in between songs, aided again by Ben Calvert who chipped in. Richard also played a really really good cover version of I’m Not Looking for a New England!

The School were on next at 10, as part of my “putting the bands on at 9, 10 and 11 trial”. If anyone has any comments about how this worked then please let me know, because I kinda worked on the assumption that last buses are at around 12 and there would be time for people to get home by public transport after the gig.

I’d only heard a few songs by The School before booking them, but what I had heard was excellent and I had no hesitation in booking them when they e-mailed me looking for a gig – especially as they’re recently signed to Elefant Records which I’m a big fan of.

They really are quite excellent. It’s pop in the 60’s sense of the word, with girl vocals and one of those glockenspiels in blue cases that bands we book seem to frequently own. The School are a classic example of a band where the melody is king and the backing instruments do pretty things in places where there is no tune, and allow the songs to flow seamlessly in between verses and choruses. Liz, who sings, giggled her way in between songs in a way that added to the charm (and indeed tweeness) of the performance. Their tunes really are catchy, and I had a little dance at the top of the stairs when I was watching the door.

The Loves took to the stage at 11, they’re much more towards the Velvet Underground side of 60’s music than The School but they still have catchy tunes. The one thing I have to say was the work rate of the drummer was outstanding in the last few songs, and his facial expressions were really quite excellent. I’m not sure drummers ever realise some of the faces they pull on stage but you can always tell when a drummer is having an enjoyable gig.

With that, we got more drunk, DJ’d into the night, played keepy-upys with balloons and finished off the cupcakes which we’d made for the gig.

It was a little quieter than Autumn Stores usually are – possibly this was to do with Gigbeth being a bigger/better pull on weekend gig goers, and the fact that we only had one local artist on the line up – but I really enjoyed this evening. It felt like a party in someone’s living room with a few bands on for good measure, and that, I think, is what the best gigs are like.

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