Category Archives: Live Events

Wednesday 21st July – Playlist

So much good music around at the moment – my ears are buzzing with it all!

Mixed up new tunes and played tracks from bands competing to open Bingley Music Live*

Here’s le menu:

Middleman – It’s not over yet
!!! – The most certain sure
Tunng – Don’t look down or back
Jasmine Kennedy* – It used to be true
Health – USA Boys
Korean Interlude – Kinzli & The KiloWatts
Magic Kids – Candy
Sharp Darts* – Chase the sun
John Grant – Chicken Bones
Flying Lotus – Do the astral plane
Pifco – Wet look leggins
The Mexanines* – Give you love
Oasis – Roll with it
Steve Mason – Am I just a man
Secret Sirens* – Black Heart

Send me a message if you’d like to come and be my featured artist or band in session: laura.rawlings@bcbradio.co.uk

And…happy birthday to Patrick T and Selection Box!

Sessions news…

Bingley Music Live final

Bingley Music Live final

Hi folks,

On Wednesday night I’ll be playing music from four more bands competing to open Bingley Music Live in September. It’s the big final competition at St George’s Hall on Saturday 24th so if you want to have a say in who goes through, get yourselves to the gig.

These are the runners and riders:

Jasmine Kennedy, Sharp Darts, The Mexanines, Secrets Sirens, Northern Glory, The Beat Marshalls, Black Diamond Bay and The Dawnriders. Good luck one and all! I’ve been at some of the heats and I can promise you these guys are great.

I’m getting ready to go to WOMAD – very excited already. I’m off to see Rolf Harris for goodness sake! Getting giddy about Horace Andy, Nouvelle Vague Club, Soil & Pimp, Ghislain Poirier, DJ Kentaro…so much good stuff. Promise to play some WOMAD treats on the show over the next few weeks.

Don’t forget, get in touch if you’ve got some tunes you’d like me to play, gigs to plug: laura.rawlings@bcbradio.co.uk
OOh and next week’s session (28th July) comes from Leeds lovelies Pifco!

Glastonbury 2010…..

tUnE-yArDs, the brainchild of the clearly unhinged but super-talented Merrill Garbus, opened my Glastonbury 2010 (Rolf Harris doing ‘Stairway To Heaven’ doesn’t count) on the West Holt Stage early on Friday afternoon, with a set of songs from debut album ‘Bird-Brains’. In contrast to the lo-fi sound of the album, recorded solely by Garbus using a sound recorder, a full band complete with 3 drummers, including Garbus herself, meant that the tribal energy of the songs broke through. Driven by a kind of afro-beat rhythm that builds and builds on top of Garbus’ distinctive chanting and yodelling, this all came together to form a sound that’s brilliantly smart and stupidly brilliant, exemplified in ‘Sunlight’.

Rivaling Liam Gallagher in terms of misplaced arrogance, Continue reading →

ATP Festival curated by Matt Groening – Day 3

Matt Groening introducing Daniel Johnston as his favourite songwriter

Matt Groening introducing Daniel Johnston as his "favourite songwriter"

Sunday dawns and Jim becomes my hero twice in ten minutes by making me a fried egg sandwich and telling me he once saw Spike Milligan in a pub in Manchester. Simon rather coyly reveals his affection for Spear of Destiny and I resolve to play the excellent “Do You Believe in the Westworld” on the radio for him, only to forget later and feel like a dick for doing so.

We race to the Centre Stage to see Boredoms again, just to reassure ourselves that we weren’t victim to some kind of mass hallucination yesterday and they are once again, amazing. We then decamp to Reds, the smallest of the Butlins venues to see Viv Albertine’s Limerice who are excellent. Continue reading →

ATP Festival curated by Matt Groening – Day 2

Saturday begins with two hours of 70’s kids cartoon Hong Kong Phooey on the excellent ATP TV channel provided for the weekend. Refreshed by the antics of the titular kung fu practicing canine, we venture forth into the unknown. [I ventured forth a little earlier than the others and caught Hello Saferide, in Reds. I was rather impressed by her Swedish knack of finding a good tune, and sentimental lyrics. Ed]

Hello Saferide - melodic and romantic

Hello Saferide - melodic romanticism

Between the four of us (me, Albert, Simon and Jim) we can conjure up little previous knowledge of Boredoms despite the fact that they appear to have been going since about 1942 and have released about half a million records. The notes about them printed in the frankly beautiful programmes (coming with 4 different covers featuring Matt Groening penned caricatures of Iggy, Joanna Newsome, Daniel Johnston and someone we didn’t recognise [either She & Him or Lightning Dust, the jury is still out – ed]) weren’t much help either. In this we simply read a breathless treatise about Boredoms being Japanese, having a penchant for using lots of drummers, and being a bit ace.

Continue reading →

ATP Festival curated by Matt Groening – Day 1

The first thing that hits you when you walk in to the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival is the contrast between the ultra mainstream surroundings of Butlins and the heartening array of freaks who attend. This is demonstrated in microcosm within 5 minutes by a painfully thin young Japanese man wearing a surgical mask and lime green leggings draping himself with impressive languor against a wall featuring a poster for “The Peter Andre Weekend” – three nights at Butlins and a concert featuring the impressively pectoralled housewives’ favourite for a mere £98.

Broadcast

Broadcast - noise, or music?

We will return to bare chested doyens of entertainment in a moment, but our first foray was to see Broadcast, a male/female duo beloved of the hip and the trying-to-be, who amble shyly onto the stage and proceed to stand at two elevated box like contraptions and wrestle out half an hour’s worth of whirrs, drones and howls whist having experimental films “broadcast” (did you see what I did there? ) on top of them. The result is very much an ATP archetype: challenging, startling and beautiful at the same time. The effect is only diluted mid-way through the set when they resort to boring old actual songs. That’s not noise, that’s just music.

Continue reading →

Scars On 45 Dish On Bradford’s Best Curries

Scars On 45 backstage at The Brudenell Social Club

A couple of months ago I had a chat with half-Bradford, half-Leeds bred indie rockers Scars On 45 before they went off to Texas to play SXSW with their new Chop Shop Records label-mates Fanfarlo and Marina and the Diamonds. Vocalists Danny Bemrose and Aimee Driver had a lot to say about their upcoming album, living the dream and… where to get a good curry in Bradford.

“People always get it wrong… they go to places like Aagrah and Akbar’s and nice places, but you’ve got to go to some proper dives to get a good curry. There’s Sweet Centre… there’s Karachi. Karachi was in The Guardian, it’s been going since 1965! And it’s either chicken and spinach, or chicken and potato… but it’s got to be masala.”

And his bandmate? “Spicy Cottage! Chicken tikka every time!”

Check out thejustaminuteproject.com for the video interview and myspace.com/scarson45 for some tunes.

Moor Music Festival Volunteer call out

Moor Music Festival

The Moor Music Festival is a grass roots festival and has no corporate tie ins with the majority of work being carried out by volunteers. There are a wide variety of positions available and the opportunity for volunteers to gain valuable experience. Based in the North Yorkshire Dales the organisers are keen to initially offer these positions to local organisations and people interested. There are currently positions for Team Leader and Head Steward available for those with experience.

The deadline for signing up as a volunteer is 12th July 2010.

All volunteers are required to send a cheque for a refundable £85 deposit (the price of one weekend ticket) with their application to secure their place.

Download Volunteering at the Moor Music Festival 2010 for full details of the various ways you can be involved as a volunteer.

Once you know how you want to take part, download and complete the Volunteer Application Form and return it to us with your deposit via post.

More general info about the festival can be found here.

Saltaire Live 2010 (and Selection Box 131)

Only a wazzock would begin a blog entry about what he played on his radio show this week by discussing a band whose wares he failed to commit to the airwaves.  I am that aforementioned hitherto hypothetical wazzock.  I had all good intentions of playing Salsa Celtica on this week’s programme, and then when the weekly task of packing the record bag full of goodies in preparation for the programme came along, I just plain forgot.  If you see me on the street, feel free to point and boo me for my continued enslavement to lacksadaisy.

The timing of the proposed play was imperative, as it was meant to serve as a “heads up” – as I believe trendy people say – to the fact that Salsa Celtica, who released their new live album En Vivo En El Norte on 19 April, are set to play at Victoria Hall this coming weekend as a part of this 2010’s Saltaire Live.

Salsa Celtica play the Saltaire Live festival this weekend.

Salsa Celtica - only one of them was expecting rain.

Continue reading →

Cope, Arrowsmith & McLaren: Selection Box Shows 128, 129 & 130

After a false start a little while ago, Brigadeer Phillip Agnostin D’Argtanian Tannoy Gargle Pissflap Cope III plonked his posterior into the guest chair for Selection Box 128.  I continually say that I am not going to keep noting the number of the show we’re on, as its something I only mark out for my own probably-autistic filing purposes.  And yet I continue to announce how many of these by-the-seat-of-the-pants produced pillock presented programmes we’re up to now.  Still, worth noting that in around four months we’ll (and that’s very much the royal “we”) be up to 147 shows.  Perhaps I’ll have a snooker-themed special to celebrate.  Chas & Dave have retired now, so that’s them out the window as potential session guests, but no doubt referee Len Ganley knows how to tap a triangle on cue, so that’s a part of the rhythm section sorted.  Actually, he’s probably dead now I think about it.  I do know that Steve Davis is a prog rock aficianado, so perhaps this isn’t as daft an idea as it first seemed.  The only problem I foresee is that personally I find the majority of prog a bit too, well, shit to play on air.

Yours truly (right) and Phil Cope clearly have nothing in common.

Yours truly (right) and Phil Cope clearly have nothing in common.

Continue reading →