Another quick post reminding you of good upcoming gigs and nights. I promised I’d do more of this!

Friday 18th July - Robot vs Dinosaur are running a free night at the Island Bar with more excellent electronica and interestingly named genres.

Tuesday 22nd July - Ooh, this is one of ours. The Autumn Store hosts a pre-Indietracks gig at The Sunflower Lounge for several overseas bands who are playing the festival.

Thursday 24th July - A 444 Club/Bohemian Jukebox joint event, with Toby Goodshank. If you’re an obsessive reader of liner notes then you may know he played guitar on The Moldy Peaches album. I’ll be DJing some shambolic indiepop at this one too.

Monday 28th July - Ballboy return to Birmingham at The Flapper thanks to Gran and Pop.

Ah-ha!

I’ve rounded up some MP3s of the bands who are playing at the next Autumn Store on the 22nd July to download. Enjoy.

The Smittens - Stop the Bombs
The Smittens - Party Time
The Smittens - Good Migrations

The Zebras - Science Competition
The Zebras - You Look Ready

Red Pony Clock - There’s Nothing Wrong With Getting High
Red Pony Clock - 12-Color Step

Here’s the flyer for the next Autumn Store on 12th of July - this Saturday - with Andersens, The Starlets and Bavarian Country Singers and Comrades!

The Autumn Store’s pinup for this event is a Cuttlefish.

I read a particularly good article about them in New Scientist about how they communicate with other cuttlefish via their camoflage which is pretty darn clever really.

I’m really looking forward to this next Autumn Store on the 12th July with Andersens, The Starlets, and Bavarian Country Singers and Comrades. Partially because it’ll feature the first, second, and third time a band has used a trumpet at an Autumn Store events. Hat trick!

I’ve also tracked down a few free MP3s by the bands for you to download.

Andersens - Tear
Andersens - Christmas Eve

The Starlets - New Wave
The Starlets - Rocking In A Shy Way
The Starlets - All To Make You Feel Brand New

You can listen to some Bavarian Country Singers and Comrades tracks on their myspace.

As well as the Autumn Stores which are coming up, there’s a few good pop bands coming to Birmingham soon. I had to have a little shout about it in word and video form!

On Friday 27th June, there’s two good gigs to pick between.

Hotpants Romance come down from Manchester to play at Patrick Kavanagh in Moseley.

Hotpants Romance - Sugar Dip (I know, I kept waiting for the picture to get bigger too - it’s ace though)

Also, on the 27th June The Retro Spankees and KateGoes play at The 444 Club at The Rainbow in Digbeth.

The Retro Spankees - My Sonic Driver

There’s a post-Indietracks gig too, as Scottish Indiepop band Ballboy are on tour and play at The Flapper on Monday 28th July! Lime Chalks and The Last Hurrah support and it’s brought to us by Gran and Pop.

Ballboy - I’ve Got Pictures Of You In Your Underwear

And…

Don’t forget that Robot vs Dinosaur is back tomorrow at Island Bar too!

It’s been a busy few weeks as the band shaped tetris blocks have been slotting into place nicely for the Autumn Stores over the next few months - I suppose that this is the ’spring range’. Quite excitingly I’ve got several bands on from overseas, mainly in a big Pre-Indietracks show but also Andersens are over from Japan, which should be ace as their last album got some cracking reviews in *proper* music publications - Plan B and Wire.

Saturday 10th May - (last fm page)
The Deirdres
Amida
Winston Echo

Saturday 7th June - (last fm page)
Pete Green
Lime Chalks
I’ve also asked to see if My Sad Captains will be able to make the trip up from London

Saturday 12th July - (last fm page)
Andersens
The Starlets
One more on this line up too, I did ask Gurdan Thomas who would have been perfect, but he’s got a gig at The Jug the week after. Gutted. I’ll let you know when I get someone booked.

Tuesday 22nd July Pre Indietracks Gig - (last fm page)
The Smittens
The Zebras
Red Pony Clock

*and relax*

All of the gigs are downstairs at The Sunflower Lounge and will probably cost £3 or £4. As always there’ll be sweets and indiepop and games and fun stuff.

Ooh, it’s all been a bit quiet on the Autumn Store surface recently, but like a duck I’ve been paddling away under the surface to get gigs organised. Um, I’m sorry to subject you to the duck simile too.

I was keeping April free for a Japanese band called Andersens, who had penciled in a tour of the UK, though it had to be postponed for now (hopefully I’ll get them on tour later this year, and hopefully with The Starlets too…). I did then try to organise something for My Sad Captains but finding a venue was a little tricky as loads of places already had bookings.

Sooo… let’s quickly forget about what I’ve not done and talk about what is coming up!

May 10th sees the long awaited Birmingham debut of The Deirdres who I’ve talked about before on this blog. They’re lovely, if you missed the post. There are seven Deirdres all adding their own little brand of shambly joy to their songs, all of which have beautiful pop hooks. One of the thinks I find amazing about The Deirdres is that although they’d not come across ‘indiepop‘ as a genre before promoters started booking them with ‘indiepop’ bands, but their songs really should be the examples of the genres definition on Wikipedia - it’s everything I love in music, the hand made T-shirts and CD covers, glorious melodies which you hum all day, getting over the little mistakes by laughing, excessive numbers of twee instuments on stage, and songs which actually go somewhere rather than just verse-chorus-versing at you.

They also play with Amida, who apperared on the Kids at The Club compilation and whos guitars and loose vocals will take you take you right back to the days of Orange Juice.

Both of these bands are playing at the increasingly legendary Indietracks line up, which is of course, reason enought to come down to the Sunflower Lounge on the 10th May.

Winston Echo completes the line up with his lovely songs.

Speaking of Indietracks, I’ve agreed to host a pre Indietracks gig on Tuesday the 22nd of July so that some bands who are over from other countries can play a few warm up gigs and do a little tour. The Smittens from the US are already confirmed and we’ll see what other nice suprises the Indietracks line up throws up.

And that’s been my recent frantic paddling! Quack.

Just had to send this round on Facebook and Myspace, you may have seen it already -

Sadly Strange Idols have had to cancel their set tomorrow due to illness. We’ll hopefully be able to offer them a gig later in the year because they are ace and I’d love to see them in Birmingham.

There’ll be a reduced entry fee and we’ll still be playing some of your favourite records in between the bands and into the night (as always send me any requests) – so hopefully see you there!

It is a mighty shame, especially as I don’t think Strange Idols have played round here yet.

I did have a bit of a flap this morning trying to arrange a replacement, but sadly I was at work so wasn’t able to get one organised. As all the rest of Falling and Laughing are in warmer climes I can’t sub myself on from the bench either.

I do like the idea of a subs bench to substitute on bands to play, that would be quite funny. If you see a load of people in tracksuits at the bar next gig doing warm ups, you now know why!

Oh well, as I said in the message above - I’ll hopefully be able to get them up here later in the year, because they do write great pop songs.

Righty ho, just a quick reminder of this then. It’s on Thursday at The Sunflower Lounge.

Featuring Horowitz who are coming down from Stoke with some warm fuzzy guitar shapes, Liechtenstein from Sweden who are on Fraction Dics which is shaping up to be a really good little label at the moment, and Betty and the Id who are a Birmingham band who do a garage/pop thing.

MJ Hibbett is putting together a show for the Edinburgh Fringe festival this year based on a series of articles that he wrote for the PopArt London blog. It’s musing over his music career which has spanned 10 years - or his exciting life in rock if you may.

This should be a good show, as the articles have been well written and funny so a coherent narative running through them with a few songs thrown in seems a jolly good idea.

There’s a myspace for it too.