Archive for the ‘Gigs’ Category
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
The Maccabees are set to headline the Shockwaves NME Awards Tour 2010, with Bombay Bicycle Club, The Big Pink and The Drums completing the stellar line-up. The tour kicks off in Newcastle on 4 February 2010 and culminates on the 20th February at London’s Brixton Academy. The South London five-piece recently played a triumphant home-coming headline show at this very venue, from which The Guardian ran a five star review, acknowledging that “The Maccabees’ star has risen spectacularly in 2009”.
In October The Maccabees headlined the Lake of Stars festival in Malawi, Africa and are currently on tour with Editors in Europe. Both bands return briefly to London to play a Little Noise session at the Union Chapel in Islington in aid of Mencap on Monday 16th November. (more…)
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Friday, November 20th, 2009
When someone has had serious praise (and a sackload of songs) from Bruce Springsteen and he’s described by Jon Bon Jovi as the reason he got into music, you know there has to be a story there. The man in question is John Lyon, or Southside Johnny, and he’s aided and abetted by the Asbury Jukes. The band, with many personnel changes, have been around for 35 years with a current line-up which has been fairly stable for the last 10 years (stick with me, it’s all relevant).
Despite the long lifespan, this isn’t a nostalgia gig; Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes (shortened to The Jukes from now on) have released 4 albums of new material in the last decade and his audience expect to hear the new songs as well as the 70s classics. The audience at the Buxton Opera House were mainly the expected glad to be grey generation with some notable exceptions, including the teenager behind the mixing desk applauding the solos and singing along to songs recorded around 2 decades before he was born. (more…)
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Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
From the ashes of the phenomenally successful Beautiful South, itself formed from the Housemartins, comes the New Beautiful South, and they tour the UK this November.
After the original band broke up 2 years ago, famously citing “musical similarities”, a number of the band decided to reunite and resurrect the songs and the sounds of this Great British Pop institution by dipping into the Beautiful South songbook as well as writing new material. Find out the November dates from their official website.
Carrying on where they left off Dave Hemingway & Alison Wheeler (Vocals), Dave Stead (Drums), Damon Butcher (Keys), Tony Robinson and Gaz Birtles (Brass) are now joined by Phil Barton (guitar), Karl Brown (Percussion) and Steve Nutter (Bass).
The driving force behind the original band Paul Heaton continues to pursue his solo career.
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Friday, October 23rd, 2009
It seems very easy to be dismissive of The Proclaimers as so many people associate them purely with their big early hits of the 1980s. That’s a shame because if they gave them a chance they would find some great, beautiful and intelligent songs.
This is what The Proclaimers brought to a nearly-packed St. David’s Hall in Cardiff last Wednesday. After a great showing by their impressive support Miles Hunt & Erica Nockalls from The Wonder Stuff, the lads took to the stage and quickly set out their musical stall.
With a huge back catalogue it is really only the die-hard fans who could singalong with all songs but the well-known tracks really got the crowd going, from those 80s classics to their most recent tracks from albums “Life With You” and “Notes and Rhymes”.
If there was one word that I could use to describe the gig it is “joyful”. That’s the feeling that The Proclaimers brought to their audience and have done so for a good few decades already.
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