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!

A quick reminder that KateGoes are playing their last Birmingham gig of the year at the Jug of Ale tomorrow.

One of the supports comes from Betty and the ID, who I’ve been trying to see for ages but keep clashing with my own gigs and/or events at the same time. They feature bits of former Birmingham bands who I’ve enjoyed so I’m very certain that they’ll be good.

(PS, there will be a blog about the Christmas Party up soon, technical errors prevented it from going up last night)

Just a little reminder that this is on Saturday!

If anyone’s feeling in the mood for a starter to this main course then The Deirdres, Horowitz and MJ Hibbett are playing in Stoke at Sunny Inside the night before. Unless you’re from Stoke, in which case The Autumn Store on Sat is probably your pudding. You can’t have a starter a main course and a pudding, that’s just greedy…

Don’t forget to put together your Compilation CD and bring it down!

I’ve previously got excited about Voluntary Butler Scheme before on this blog, as they’re a great local one man indiepop act.

He’s got a gig at The Selly Sausage on Monday 10th December if anyone’s free and in the mood for indiepop. Not quite sure what the details are as I’ve never been to the night before. Or been to see a gig in a cafe, wacky students.

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!