Gosh, I’ve got a huge weekend to blog about - The First Big Weekend of the Winter nonetheless - 8 bands, 5 badges, 3 cities, and 1 excellent t-shirt. I started writing this as a text heavy blow by blow account but soon got bored of that (almost as quickly as you’d have got bored of reading it) so I thought the best thing to do was to just sketch thoughts from the weekend onto the post. There are 20 of them. Friday evening starts with me at Island Bar. Monday evening ends with me in an RnB club (the excellent Robin 2). Feel free to rearrange these bits into any order within those two bookends that you find most humourous.

1. You know how you collect music and go to gigs to experience as many beautiful moments that you can, and how seeing and dancing to a good band (especially for the first time) easily outweighs any amount of disappointing second albums or ill-advised spin off projects. I had one of those moments twice this weekend and I’m certain that The Deirdres are the most magical band I’ve seen in a long time. There are seven of them writing and playing beautiful pop songs and running round the stage like liquid picking up random instruments, things that jingle, or trying to get close to a microphone to join in the communal melody. They also dance over enthusiastically when other bands are playing.

2. They also have the best hand made t-shirts. Mine is of a dinosaur (saying I am Deirdre)!

3. Sheffield seems to have a very healthy indiepop scene and has produced loads of great bands recently. I’d love to be able to attribute this to having an indiepop night called Offbeat running consistently over the last 10 years or a brilliant record shop called Forever Changes. I’d love to know if anyone else has theories on this.

4. Half Man Half Biscuit are an absolute national treasure. I laughed once every 30 seconds on average and never once got bored during a one and a half hour set. I love the way how rather than singing about abstract concepts, they sing about things like The Bottleneck at Capel Curig and having to switch the kitchen light off with your chin when you’re holding tea and toast. They also prove that there is nothing wrong with borrowing tunes if you’re going to put humorous lyrics to them. It’s not theft or breach of copyright, it’s taking the components of other things to make something wholly new - a point made by Larry Lessig. Everyone borrows from what has gone on before anyway whether they are overt about it or not - as Einstein says, the secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

5. When I put an Autumn Store poster up in Jibbering Records on Saturday they were playing an amazing record, but I will never know what it was.

6. Gran and Pop put on an amazing gig at The Island Bar on Friday which was really well attended. It’s certainly led me to believe that I can throw out the bit in the Promoter’s Handbook (the imaginary book that makes the ideal Christmas gift) which says that you *have* to book a local band.

7. Gedge is an excellent name for a cat. So is Cocker, but I wouldn’t advise that you write a song about a cat called Cocker.

8. Horowitz are lovely people. I’m really looking forward to going up to Stoke to see The Deirdres, MJ Hibbett and Horowitz on the same line upon the 14th December - the day before The Autumn Store Christmas Party.

9. Winston Echo is a very watchable performer and has a lovely mix of humour and quietness, the fact that he apologised on Friday for singing the lyrics to Winchester Cathedral Choir in the wrong order and never sounds entirely in tune just adds to the charm.

10. Nat from Monkey Swallows the Universe has a lovely voice but seems more nervous performing solo (though in her defence it was her debut solo gig which I saw on Sunday). She also uses the little loopy thing which is becoming quite popular with solo performers.

11. In order to ’Do the Indie Kid‘, you need to
“Hands behind your back
Bounce your hips
Move your feet around
And do the Indie Kid”
So now you know what that dance you’ve been doing for years is called.

12. Post POPshow curries should be the staple diet the future. I need to bring this tradition to Birmingham following Autumn Stores.

13. Having The Deirdres and KateGoes on the same bill would be amazing. I really want to make this happen *sets wheels in motion*.

14. Steam Trains + Music = Brilliant idea. Indietracks really is an excellent festival and I’m very much looking forward to the big two day festival on the 26th and 27th of July after missing this years due to Emmaboda (I’m still wearing the wrist band).

15. A tweepop cover of Daydream Believer is not only credible, but also very danceable.

16. The Icicles played two gigs wearing different sets of matching clothes. There are two kinds of band image (assuming that no image isn’t an image which is what a hairdresser told me on Saturday). The first is “hey, we’d have more fun if we all went out and bought/made matching outfits”, the second is the “how will our clothes help us sell more records”. I hate the fact that stuff like this goes on. The Icicles fall into the former category and can fill a room with lovely sounds.

17. The Robin 2 is a superbly sized venue and the exact sort of mid size room with good sound which Birmingham centre is missing.

18. Pete Green might be played on Rob da Bank this Sunday. Or alternatively someone claiming to be Rob da Bank has a few Pete Green MP3s in his inbox. Or alternatively Spam has got a lot more specifically targeted and researched.

19. Rob from The Retro Spankees demonstrated the most honest way to DJ. After a record finished, he just plopped the needle straight back at the start. This is how we listen to songs at home - if we like it we play it twice (twenty) times in a row.

20. It’s officially Winter. Yay!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 12:10 am and is filed under Mathemusical equation, Review, Gig. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.