It’s always worth looking at the listings when arranging gigs to make sure that you don’t clash with anything big, and this time round it couldn’t have been with anything musically bigger in Birmingham – as Capsule’s annual Supersonic Festival was taking place just down the road.

It is a bit of a shame as this gig is the closest that the Autumn Store has come to pushing the boundaries of indiepop towards what you might consider Capsule territory - but these things happen. I was mainly glad to finally be able to get Japanese band Andersens to Birmingham, with their co-headliners The Starlets and give The Sunflower Lounge a little night of diverse and lovable music of it’s own.

Local duo Bavarian Country Singers & Comrades kicked off the live music of the night in a perfect fashion. They play their own brand of lo-fi-country-pop using guitars and the occasional banjo and toy accordion.

They also did a great and unexpected cover of Jay-Z’s 99 Problems, which reminded me of the good old days when Autumn Stores Discos used to finish with the Ben Folds cover of Bitches Ain’t Shit.

One of the great things about BCS&C is that they both have really lovely singing voices that made the harmonies utterly spellbinding, and you just can’t help smiling at it all. There will always be a home at The Autumn Store for slightly shy and thoughtful acoustic pop duos like this.

The Starlets on the other hand have a more expansive sound gained from both the clever use of guitar pedals to enhance the arrangements (rather than for the sake of it) and by adding a violin and trumpet to the indie band 4-4-2 of drums, bass and two guitars.

The last few days of gigs left them sharp and definitely on form when they played the Autumn Store and the diversity of the song writing really did come through in the set – switching between quiet and hushed songs with whispered vocals to louder songs with good use of dynamics.

There were four members of Andersens who had come over from Japan for the tour, and at the start of the set they were joined by a saxophonist and the trumpet player from The Starlets to give the songs the type of depth that they achieve on record.

You could never accuse Andersens of not having a bold and unique songwriting vision. The songs often take in the gentler and relaxing elements of pop bands such as Architecture In Helsinki but always surprise you by pushing them in interesting directions.

They also have a very good way of filling their musical landscapes with snippets of melody that remain firmly with you for the day. Christmas Eve in particular has been following me round since the gig, just popping in to my head every so often to remind me that complex and quirky arrangements can be mixed with a sense of tunefulness.

At times Andersens pass through transitional jazzy moments, as a way of changing their songs but they always retaining that playful touch that prevents the songs from ever becoming as tedious as the word ‘jazz’ would usually suggest in a review. Towards the end of the gig, the brass section left the stage and the Andersens were left as a four piece, their last song featuring some clever guitar work over a flute led rhythm section.

It was also pretty exciting to find out afterwards that Andersens were responsible for Jens Lekman’s third favourite gig ever.

The night ended with some DJing and dancing. Remembering my love of acoustic covers of non-acoustic songs from earlier the Jeffrey Lewis version of Punk is Dead had to finish things off!

It’s been about three months since the last Autumn Store and I’ve genuinely missed doing it. Promoting a line up made completely of out of town bands has its good bits (getting bands you want to see play closer to home, with bands you want to see them play with) and bad bits (finding and bringing amps and bits of drum kit so that they can do that).

All in all, the former outweighs the latter and tonight was a prime example of why those dream line-ups you think of should make the transition on to a stage near you.

Having said that, this line up had a quick reshuffle on the night, so that Amida could go on first as they had to make the daftly early last train back to Manchester – it was at 10.20pm!! This pushed Winston Echo into the most desirable second slot (you get to play to both people who arrive late, or leave early, AND you can drink before going on without running the risk of becoming a boozy headliner). It also ran against every rule that you learn in promoter school about making the acoustic guy go on first.

They did play what was a fantastic set, mixing all kinds of influences. At times they touch on the blend of enthusiasm and sensitivity that you may find caught on the grooves of Postcard records, and at other times they find a sharp chord sequence and rhythm that wouldn’t look out of place on a Buzzcocks song. The upbeat tunes and short songs made them come across as a very summery band, which was just perfect given the weather.

Winston Echo played next and he/they played some excellent lo-fi songs on acoustic guitar and snare drum. Standouts were Winchester Cathedral Choir and Bureaux de Change, the last song was pretty ace too but its title escapes me. They did a Nirvana cover too, which they had lying about from a gig in December when they covered the whole of Nevermind from start to finish.

Genres are crap at the best of times – and if you can argue that the word grunge tells you about the sound of Nevermind but doesn’t give away that it contains some pop-inspired-melodies, the same goes for the anti-folk tag and Winston Echo for, um, much the same reasons. There are some tunes in this set that will get stuck in your head.

Finally, it was time for The Deirdres to play their first Birmingham gig. I could quite happily plunder the whole thesaurus for increasingly amusing chains of words and phrases that are the same as “cracking set” - but I’d still feel I should be adding more positive things to say at the end.

They kick off the set with Electro Magic and coordinated dance moves, and go through a full set of wonderful songs with great quiet/loud dynamics. All seven of them join in with so much energy. Claire, Are We Safe To Be On Our Own is still as magical as the first time I heard it, and a new song called Ball In A Cup fits into the set wonderfully and already feels like a classic that’s so thoroughly established and recognisable that you wouldn’t be surprised if it popped up on the next version of Guitar Hero. Assuming the next version of Guitar Hero comes with glockenspiel and melodica peripherals, obviously.

It genuinely takes me back to the early days of getting into indiepop, so full of happiness with the discovery of this whole new genre that can leave you wandering round rainy streets on starry-eyed-autopilot, and inspired you to make music of your own.

One wonderful thing happened after the gig too, when one of Ace Bushy Striptease gave me a lovely handmade fanzine. Apparently they do a fanzine or something similar for every gig so far – I’m really looking forward to seeing them play the next Tropical Hotdog on Friday 6th June.

The indiepop disco finished off the night and you can find the tracklists on the website. Roll on Sat 7th June when we’ve got Pete Green (now with band), Little My, and Lime Chalks… which I’m a member of, so I don’t think there’s any way that I can get out finding and bringing amps and bits of drumkit to this next one. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it just as much though.

Sunday Bank Holiday Sunday. What a great day. You wake up in the morning, you’ve got to read all the RSS feeds, there’s gigs on all round, you’ve got to go to one, see four bands, and you think Sunday, Bank Holiday, Sunday.

I think that last Partridge-paragraph worked better in my head - but Bank Holiday Sunday can be good for gigs, and this Sunday Wave Pictures were on at the genius Coventry gig venue - Taylor John’s House!

Actually, it was a nice surprise when it started off as I was only expecting 3 bands – but right at the foot of the bill were The Empty Set, who are a little two piece made of a singer on guitar and violinist (the violinist from Honeytrap, to be precise). They didn’t quite launch into the set - but more stumbled into the opening song in a lovely way and it had a genius Belle and Sebastian-esque tune (old school B&S naturally) and the violin used a loopy echo effect to build up the number of violins playing.

I’m hooked.

Low key songs with melodies and general New Scientist style geekery will always make me happy – and here songs cover the topics of love between protons, and Évariste Galois.

We are also treated to a fantastic cover of Some Candy Talking, which is made brilliant by a scratchy violin in the background, it’s about as close in spirit to the original as you can get with a two piece on acoustic guitar and violin.

They’ve got a collection of songs out soon on Tough Love Records so it’s worth looking out for.

Next up were their label mates Honeytrap, I’ve seen them a few times in Birmingham but tonight I caught myself wondering if bands are a bit like football teams… bare with me… in that they play better at home. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not telling you that the times I’ve seen Honeytrap at The Sunflower Lounge they’ve come out all 4-5-1 hoping to pack the midfield and grab a goal on the break, but they did put in a great gig for the home crowd and it was the best I’ve seen them play. Maybe they’ve honed their set over time, as bands do, and it has nothing to do with the home crowd thing?

The singer’s shouty voice had a tinge of Modest Mouse to them also this time (which is a good thing in my book). They’re playing for This Is Tomorrow with KateGoes at The Yardbird on the 4th June which is shaping up to be a good gig.

It was my second four-band-line-up of the weekend so gig blindness was starting to set in at this point. That coupled with *the comfy chair* and a bottle of frankly ace Sam Smiths organic lager is a blatant recipe for lethargy

You probably couldn’t pick a better style band than The Chap to try and get someone off the comfy chair. They’re a three piece band who use a driving bang-bang-bang of the bass drum to keep the music flowing, in a quite robotic sense without letting that restrict them, and they broke out the string instruments at the end for a bit of a crazy fiddle.

To be honest, I remained seated, it was a very comfy chair – but it picked me up a bit and got me ready for Wave Pictures.

The Wave Pictures a solid band, very tight (I know, I know, that’s what you say about bands when you can’t think of anything positive to say – but they are) and they’ve got well written songs that hint towards Hefner-style, and for that, they’re brilliant.

They swapped to electric guitar halfway through the set and played a song about teeth (I think Red Wine Teeth – I’ve not got the album yet) which was a reflective standout, and the single – I Love You Like A Madman was also good to hear.

Assuming I didn’t lie to you in November by half remembering a night in London because of that drunk-haze-of-achievement that you only get after playing a gig, they’ve also dropped the excellent ukulele-ing which made this set a bit more formulaic than the last – but it’s a good formula.

Gig over, we got back at about 1.30am. Monday bank holiday monday.

I played a gig a few weeks back at Bohemian Jukebox supporting The Voluntary Butler Scheme, who I’ve talked about before - but also on the bill was another solo performer called Superman Revenge Squad. From Croydon.

He has a nice guitar style which I think is pretty and Malcolm Middletonesque, and he picks out nice notes behind the melodies and lots of open strings to make nice full use of the guitar.

Best of all he went into streams of poetrywords from time to time too while the guitar dropped out a touch - which is always something which bands don’t seem to do much, or indeed enough. Maybe because writing humorous and meaningful lyrics are a forgotten art but it really adds so much if done properly. I still remember the smile I had on my face seeing The Courtesy Group doing poetry the first time I saw them.

I loved his song about how Dexy’s back catalogue became overlooked the day they wrote Come On Eileen (I have a similar ABBA gripe), one called ‘When Everyone’s Dead’ about getting into grunge, and of course Idiot Food (which you download from his website along with loads of other free music… woo! Go online free music revolution!)

I had a nice chat with him about some of the Birmingham bands of yore like Jameson and The Starries, before the gig too - which was good, and a bit suprising especially as he wasn’t in Birmingham at the time!

Was the Betty & the Id gig really 12 days ago! That’s really flown by, at least I didn’t promise you a live review on this blog “soon”, over a week ago. That would have been embarrassing.

A few interesting things about this gig – mainly it was the first time I’ve put on a band from a different country, and it was Liechtenstein’s first trip to Birmingham, and they took the opportunity to spend a few days here.

Actually, I was a bit worried when they first said they were spending a few days here – what do you advise an out of town band to do in Birmingham? The nature centre is closed during the week in the winter (see the otters - it was my first thought) but most other things cost money. Most of the tourist sights seem good for evening events, sports, and shopping - or tell you to go to Cadbury World, which isn’t much good if you have no idea who Cadburys are (in Sweden, they have the worryingly tasty Plop bars).

As it was they had a potter round some canals and went to Ikon Gallery – but if you have suggestions for things that I can recommend to visiting bands on a budget, then let me know.

Betty & The Id sound checked first with relatively few problems (equipment spotting – one copicat, which made the geek in me very happy), though we did have some problems with Liechtenstein and feedback – which sadly lingered a bit into the set too.

Horowitz were on first, and to sum it up in a word they were ace. They’re a band at their best when the guitars are fuzzy and constant, so that the short songs merge. They have a style of innocent melody that’s influnced by C86 music (maybe the bumper book of Razorcuts) but the tunes are also matched by the melody of the guitar work – Sister is a perfect mix of the two.

Liechtenstein provided more influences from that era of guitar music, and it’s easy to see why they’ve been picking up so many fans – and I hope that they made a fair few friends in Birmingham with this visit. I’d compare them to The Shop Assistants, with four vocals adding depth to the songs.

Betty on the Id took us further back in time with 60’s Garage influnces and I have to admit, I’m a bit stumped about how to review them because my references are a bit shaky when you get pre-post-punk so I can’t just throw band names at you in the hope that you get the idea which is what I increasingly do when describing bands.

What I can tell you that without following it up with… “like band X do” is that they use music imaginatively. They accentuate extra beats because they don’t just 4/4 at you all of the time, they break up verses with beautiful little complimentary scales on different instruments – it’s intensely listenable. And danceable, as proved by the happy dancing people down the front.

One interesting thing was the number of good Birmingham bands which members of Betty & the Id have played in – bands that I like too! The list includes L’Augmentation (ace free downloads, follow the link), The Bee Men (they still have some 7” singles left – it’s well worth asking how to get hold of one) and best of all, a pre Pristine Christine iteration of The Sea Urchins, which brings us nicely back round to that C86 in a good old circle.

And thank you to Betty & The Id for bringing a drumkit and backline too.

Whenever I go to London in the day, I always have a quick check to see what gigs are going on in the evening. So much happens there which is potentially hellish – I imagine that if I lived in London then I’d have the permanent feeling that I was missing something.

Last week I got chance to pop to MJ Hibbett’s ‘Totally Acoustic’ night upstairs at The Lamb on Lamb Conduit Road (I wondered if there was a sinister reason behind that name, but apparently it was named after philanthropist William Lamb who improved the conduit that brought fresh water to the people of the area in 1577), to see a gig by Mr Hibbett and Andy from Pocketbooks under his Sunny Intervals moniker.

The pub was exactly the sort of place that I expected it to be – homely with real ale and no PA meaning that we were treated to an um, unplugged ‘unplugged’ performance. The upstairs room was full – not rammed - and everyone seemed to know each other or acted like they did and it’s in this type of environment, away from large sterile super venues and hyped up bands, that truly touching moments of music are turfed up.

All through the gig, the friendly atmosphere meant that it wasn’t weird when performers stopping a song to make a funny comment to the audience before restarting.

Mark kicked off with a short ukelele set (must buy one soon, they look like fun – make it your must have accessory for 2008), and unbeknown to Mark several of his friends pulled out ukeleles of their own in the middle of the song to join in. A ukulele flash mob! Genius. He also played a cover of ‘The First of the Gang to Die’ and the chorus works shockingly well on the ukelele.

Andy played next. His music always conjures up images of lovingly remembered lazy weekends, maybe because that’s what the lyrics are about, but the music always complements it so brilliantly, and Andy’s voice – never powerful but always poignant, pulls you in to the stories. He has a single out on Wee Pop records.

Finally Mark finished off with an actual acoustic set including many songs which I’d never heard before – I loved ‘We’re Old and We’re Tired (and We Want to go Home)’, and a really lovely song called ‘The Girl Who…’.

Sadly, I had to dash off mid encore because I was old and tired and I wanted to go home (which was 100 miles away).

The Autumn Store Christmas party has been and gone, wow, what a day! 

First things first, the press round up - to see if the e-mail addresses I fire listings off to work! I was quite excited to see it listed in Saturday’s Guardian, which is very exciting, the Birmingham Metro also carried the listings (thank you both!).

Completely predictably, the NME didn’t include the listing - and only informed readers about gigs at The Barfly and two of the Academy Venues. I’m not saying that I or anyone has a divine right to waltz into the NME printed listings but it’s just a bit disappointing that the one music publication which is available in most local news agents is writing itself out of local music scenes, all around the country. 

Having said all this, I think one of the things that I learnt from Falling and Laughing’s recent London gig is that a good press release with full on descriptions of the bands (and maybe a photo) may go further than the bare details. I’ll try sending something like that through to them next time and report back to you on how that works out.

It was a fair slog to the venue with guitars, guitar amp, bass amp and all the DJing records. I need to start convincing bands to bring more equipment next time… Arctic Circle were the first band to arrive for the sound check, which ran over a bit and so the doors opened at 8.45. This also meant that the night ran over a bit and so apologies if anyone missed the end of Pocketbooks due to public transporting.

I suppose this is one of the difficulties when sound checking a large 7 piece band, and we were scared to move any of the equipment after they had sound checked, so when Falling and Laughing came on, we had to tiptoe round Arctic Circle’s forest of instruments. Glockenspiels and Keyboards lived on top of guitar amps as every square foot of space counted.

I really enjoyed this Falling and Laughing gig, probably the last one with this line up sadly, and Birmingham is going to again miss Stu’s melodic basslines. In true ‘potentially the last gig with this line up’ fashion there were loads of tuning problems at the start which led to shambles - although during our first gig Darryl managed to kick through the skin of his bass drum during a particularly energetic ska rhythm and tuning problems pale into insignificance compared to the power of a split drum skin.

I protested when the word ’shambolic’ appeared on the poster (poster making duties have been subcontracted/kingly taken over by Debbie) as I think we’re relatively tight, only to have the reply “yes, but what about the 5 minutes of talking and faff between songs”. Fair point.

Arctic Circle were on next and didn’t take that long to re-set up the equipment, before launching into a stunningly beautiful set. It really was beautiful and expansive, having seven members really did fill the room and during the set there were drums on the floor, holding hands, instrument swopping, (more) songs about light pollution, girl/boy vocals and excellently written songs. I hope they sold some copies of their great album during their trip to Birmingham.

Also during the Arctic Circle set I got chance to look through the pile of CDs which were for the secret santa compilation swap, there looked like there were some lovely submissions with nice covers and a very wide range of bands between the CDs, I find it fascinating looking at what people put on compilation CDs.

Pocketbooks were up last and played an excellent Pocketbooks set, despite Andy struggling with a cold *and* being unfairly forced by the band to sing more than one song in a row at one point. As always the twin keyboard and (more) girl/boy vocals worked well and at one point I was even invited onstage to play the sleigh bells during their christmas song. I felt like a twee christmas Bez.

The Pocketbooks gig was also of note because we found out that Leon had won X-Factor during the set (to the dismay of the crowd, seems there were a fair few Same Difference fans present that night). The Autumn Store, keeping you up to date with DisposablePop culture since 2007.

There was DJing until 1 in the morning, and then that was it for another year. Thank you for all the bands who have played and people who have come down to see them in 2007, none of this would be fun without you, and hopefully see you next year!

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 was a Fortuna Pop! organised line up featuring Bricolage, The Wave Pictures and Wake The President, and Falling & Laughing in what was a pretty fantastic celebration of the Sound of Young Scotland. Not that we have many links with Scotland, but I think that our name secured us the spot at the bottom of the bill.

The first problem with a London gig is getting there on a Friday afternoon, when band members finish work at 4pm and soundcheck is at 7.30. Weighing up the options was a tricky one and the plan chopped and changed from staying at a Travelodge on the outskirts and booking a more traffic savy-taxi driver, to ferrying the whole band directly to the venue by cars.

Eventually, a Bearsuit myspace bulletin about London traffic scared half of us into taking the train (more expensive but at least you know when you’ll get to London with some degree of certainty) and half by car. I’d love to know how Birmingham bands who play London a) loads, and b) midweek, manage to cope with this stress. Seriously, I can think of no bigger headache than having to get to London on a Wednesday for an 8.30 set after finishing work at 5.

The train won by about half an hour in the end although the car only just made it in time to get a brief sound check, although in true first-out-of-town-gig fashion, an amp, a pedal and the copicat all played up.

The Buffalo Bar is a splendid venue downstairs, and is also independently run. It’s just the right size for small scale indie gigs, and just the right lay out to make it seem full with small numbers, but with a decent capacity, of about 150 I think. It definitely filled up early and the audience were there to listen to all the bands too, rather than chatting away over everything. This is possibly testament to the strong line up too.

We put in what was a slightly shorter set than usual but filled the time with idle chit chat in between songs. I’m still trying to work out whether this is frowned upon or not, I have the feeling that it’s either something you really like or really hate. Personally I like it when bands chat between songs, because you get a good impression of who the band are and why they are making music. Speaking of music, we made loads of mistakes too but I don’t think anyone noticed… shhh…

There were some nice comments after the gig too. Stu told me one which I really liked, about a girl who used to live in Birmingham, getting all nostaglic after hearing us namedrop so many Birmingham locations in lyrics.

Wake The President were on after us. They are a very enjoyable band to watch with some strong tunes and some good guitar work, I think they were my favourite band of the night. They had some strong melodies. It’s easy to instantly compare them to Orange Juice, but they had more a more laid back feel about them and had some parts which were a bit talky – prompting comments about how ace the Scottish accent is. The singer was wearing a The School badge too!

The Wave Pictures were on next, they used to be the backing band of Darren Hayman apparently, and you can tell, the first song launching off in very Hefner fashion. This is by no means a bad thing although it did make me wish that it was Hefner playing, that is, until the singer pulled out a ukulele and played it excellently, in borderline rock solo fashion!

At around this time I got the only disappointing crushing blow of the night – the pinball machine that had been sat in the corner, inviting me over all night, wasn’t working. Gutted.

Bricolage were the last band up. I’d seen them standing in the crowd earlier and thought “they look like a band”, so I was happy that my spidey-senses hadn’t let me down. I own a 7” by Bricolage too (the excellently named ‘Looting Takes the Waiting out of Wanting’) although it’s still sat in my in-pile. They were a very competent band who had a shade of Orange Juice to them – like everyone tonight. Two vocalists (both on guitar) contributed excellently to give the songs melodies a gentle feel.

There are some photos of the bands from the night online too, at what looks like being an excellent London Indie photography site called Underexposed.

Excitingly, my KateGoes t-shirt which I wore for the gig was spotted too, by someone from the PRS Foundation, which is a charity that funds new music – although their website seems to have only been infrequently updated since 2005. We had a nice chat and she told me that KateGoes had won a competition with them and are playing a gig in Camden, on the 7th February, with the three other bands who also won. This could be an excellent excuse to go down to London and support a good local band – though there are only 50 places for each of the four acts so you have to get in touch with KateGoes via their myspace if you want to go.

There most information that I can find out about this gig is on the KateGoes myspace, I can’t seem to find anything by googling KateGoes and PRS Foundation, which is a little worrying, as I wouldn’t of minded finding a bit more out about the competition - it sounds quite interesting.

The car was quicker back than train the next morning too.

Ahh Christmas. Responsible for some of the most awful music ever written, as well as some of the best (The Fortuna Pop! Christmas CD’s anyone?). Today The Birmingham Christmas Lights were turned on!

There was a good spread of bands put on for the ceremony, cumulating in Sugababes switching the Birmingham christmas lights on (Push The Button I suppose being the song which virtually guaranteed the Sugababe’s involvement in turning-the-lights-on events all around the country). As much as I think Too Lost In You is a great pop song, I only really wanted to see Misty’s Big Adventure, so today was a swift in and out job.

Misty’s were on at 3.45 and were introduced by the BRMB presenters as “the band with loads of instruments” which is an excellent comment – seemingly throw away but you can read so much from it. Loads of instruments. Imagine that.

It was a short Misty’s set but included many of the old and new favourites, kicking off with I Can’t Turn The Time Back and finishing with Hey Man! The best bit was their performance of Fashion Parade (which was kicked off by Grandmaster Gareth asking everyone if they were looking forward to McFly) featuring the usual Franz Ferdinand “Lots of money/Do you wanna” chorus but as an added bonus also contained that Kaiser Chiefs style “ahhhhhhhhh” build up in between the verse and chorus.

I do feel a bit sorry for Franz Ferdinand that they’re Grandmaster Gatreth’s target in that song to be honest. Alex Kapranos has always come across as one of the few people in modern popular music who has his head screwed on, and who is performing a style of music that he’s grown up with rather than because he thinks he should sound a certain way (see for example, putting Fire Engines on as their support at The SECC - that’s the Glasgow equivalent of a Birmingham band playing The NIA with Felt as support). Still each to their own and Gareth’s general point about music definitely still stands.

I really wanted to see the Erotic Volvo/large youngish non-Misty’s crowd interaction too. I’m happy to report that he seemed to have a good time; although I worry he lost a hand on his right shoulder in the fray down at the front.