It’s a question which I’ve given a lot of thought - Sex Bob-omb being the fictional Toronto band from the Scott Pilgrim comic books.

We’ll no doubt find out what they sound like in the upcoming film, but I’ve also recently stumbled Kupek - which is music by Scott Pilgrim’s author Brian Lee O’Malley. Probably the closest thing.

In good old fashioned internet style, you can download several albums for free.

Just thought I’d quickly pop up the flyer for the next Autumn Store on 7th June.

Little My will be on first, at around quater to nine, as they have to get back to Cardiff to catch the end of a birthday party - so if you want to see them, best get down early.

Um, this is against Section 7 of the Promoters and Live Music Act (1992) which clearly states that bands with the fewest members go on first, gradully increasing the number of members per act as the night goes on. Ho hum.

Edit: Yay, they’ve just said they can stay all night so it’ll be Lime Chalks Chalks fist, then Pete Green, then Little My.

I couldn’t go without saying a few words of support for Created In Birmingham, who did a brief post a few months ago on Surface Unsigned a while back. CiB did a bit more digging and to keep a long story short, and it seems that in order to progress through the competition you need to sell tickets to at least 25 of your fans (friends) at £6 a pop, and in return you get a few guitar strings and the vague promise of peck on the cheek from the music industry.

To back this up, they put up some of the terms so that people could read about how the competition works - which Surface Unsigned weren’t that happy with, and asked CiB to take down the post with a strongly worded letter threatening legal action.

You can follow all this (and get the story much more better-ly explained) on Pete Ashton’s post about Surface Unsigned. The best thing is the re-write of the Surface Unsigned terms and conditions in Lolspeak.

My big thing is that you don’t need battle of the band events (which frequently descend into how-many-cows-have-you-got-yeah-Ive-got-104-friends wrongness) to enjoy music, or even to “make it” if that’s your aim. If you’re not playing with bands that you like, or releasing records, then the best advice I could give to anyone is to give it a go yourself.

It’s never easy, but it’s you trying to make a difference - and if we all did that then I’m fairly certain that events where 25 of your friends are charged £6 to see you play a 20 minute set wouldn’t exist.

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.

Ooh gosh, it’s been a hectic weekend and a half - played a gig at Freaking Legend and promoted an Autumn Store of my own.

I’ve put the playlist from Saturday’s Autumn Store up on the website *starts thinking it should be a blog post* and there’ll be a full review soon! Which will be a blog post.

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.

It seems like ages ago when I agreed this date with The Deirdres and I assumed that we’d be living in the future, listening to some form of ethereal keyless future music as envisaged by MJ Hibbett. Not so, it seems, which is *good* news.

*inserts flyer*

It’s at The Sunflower Lounge, doors are at 8.30 and it’s £4 in. There’ll be a game where you can win things too.

I’ve been having a good rummage through my 7″ record box today taking out stuff and putting stuff in. I’ve got new singles by MJ Hibbett, The School, Moscow Olympics and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart amongst others - but as always, let me know if you have any requests.

I’ve been looking for support for the Andersens & Starlets gig on 12th July and stumbled across a nice collective of local bands called Adventures In Static Monochrome. It’s kind of like a record label but without the records, in that it’s a statement of intent and beliefs by a collective of bands who like each other, and like any good indie label, liking one band makes you want to check out the rest.

Hopefully good things will happen as part of this - there’s already talk of a compilation CD and it seems that various collaborations take place too.

These are the bands currently in the collective -

Bavarian Country Singers and Comrades
I’ve not seen these play live yet, but hopefully I will soon if they can play the Andersens gig. They’re kind of a folk lo-fi in the same way as Andersens which makes me think it’ll work really well. They use a good mix of instruments to great effect - the banjo works really well on A Stormy Day At Sea and I love the brass instruments which kick in about a minute into Hooks Pt 1.

Dan Hartland
Solo acoustic performer who plays a lot around Birmingham and has a residency at The Queens. He’s joined by a cello player from time to time too by the looks of things, and there’s some songs with more arrangement on his myspace too if you want to have a look round.

The Sleuths
Former Autumn Storeists who played at the Monkey Swallows The Universe gig just under a year ago. They’ve got an absolutely brilliant track called The Other Sleep on the Adventures in Static Monochrome page at the moment. *tries to click on it to download it and keep it forever*. Hopefully it’ll make the CD.

Jay Krause
He’s from Manchester so not as local as the rest of the collective, though you can download his songs from his myspace. It’s reflective solo songwriting, and he does some short film soundtracks too - there’s a Youtube of one on his myspace.

Mellow Peaches
I’d not had chance to listen to these before today but I’d heard good things. They’re quite bluesy with some lo-fi thrown in for good measure. I quite enjoyed the bouncy tune of ‘Fireflies’ which is on their page at the moment, and there’s some nice guitar work going on.

Gurdan Thomas
I accidentally walked in on a Gurdan Thomas gig a while back and stayed for most of the set. He’s got a really inventive use of melody and there’s a great song called I’d Have Her which you can download off his myspace. Ooh, and his myspace has recently filled with loads of local gigs.