We all know and love our city’s music so if you have a little spare time it would only be right for you to cast a vote for one of Liverpool’s largest music and best festivals, Sound City! Sound City is up for a UK Festival Award and need your votes. Voting opened 16th of September and will be open all the way until the 10th of October (a week today I think) so vote, get your friends to vote and you could be getting your hands on 2 tickets to every winning festival at the awards! Imagine! The award your old pals Sound City are up for is the Fans Festival award and being the music loving city we are known world wide for it i only right we support one of our city’s biggest and best musical events. They work their arses of to make sure Liverpool stays on the music map so I think they deserve a little thank you from us all. All you need to do to vote is click here… I’M GONNA VOTE FOR SOUND CITY! …and you will not only being supporting local music but even greater than that… possibly winning a whole load of festival tickets you can bribe your mates in to liking you with. (Miles Kane @ Liverpool Sound City)
from behind the beard.
WHY ACTS DO AND DON’T GET BOOKED.
Being a musician, promoter and event organizer for over 15 years is very much like having a severe multiple personality disorder take you off on a pedalo ride in Corfu.
I see myself primarily as a musician. I got into promotion and events because I got tired of the musical clicks on the acoustic circuit in particular. It was almost impossible to get unpaid gigs and even open mic were not really that open.
My plan was to allow anyone and everyone to play and it worked! Well initially……..
Sure enough a few months down the line my good intentions had only resulted in me starting my own click!
I think it is unavoidable especially on the acoustic scene that inevitably it is easier to book people who:
A. are a good act
B. turn up on time
C. don’t leave straight after they’ve played.
D. aren’t a pain in the NECK.
E. listen and support the other acts.
This is more important than the big question that is a venues prime concern:
Do they bring people?
This is the hardest thing to deal with as a promoter as venues on the whole are not interested in music just the chingery of the bar till. Great bands play as many gigs as they can. When you are doing 3 gigs a week people can’t afford to come and support you at every gig, sadly most venues would rather it be a young bands first gig filled with aunts and uncles and people from Betty next door’s work than a tight band of musicians who put 25 hours in every week.
If you’re in a band and your playing a venue for free it’s not your job to be filling the room it’s the promoters/venues, but bare in mind if you turn up with 50 people, chances are you will be booked again, no matter how tedious or talentless your band are and you will be offered other gigs too.
Sadly the whole pay to play sherbetness seems to have summed up the scene.
Buy a guitar and learn to play it today and sell 50 tickets at 5 quid each and you can play every Saturday night.
We need to be supporting local bands and the good ones not the ones with the biggest family or number of work mates.
It is clear why pay to play exists. Money.
There are an alarming number of bands who cry off the day of the gig, via text an hour before kick off or just don’t turn up a few days after a FB message. Drummers in car crashes being a regular one! Had that off 3 bands in 2 weeks.
It’s bad enough when bands pull out but even worse when there is kit share going on…..
If you turn up, play and are decent and not a total diva to deal with then I don’t care if you bring nobody. That’s my job. If you want a gig I will get you on.
Get in touch my beard is worse than my bite.
greedyjesus@msn.com
Greedy Jesus News - Event Listings
*PLAYING COURTYARD OF HEEBIES ON SATURDAY 2:30PM
*OXFAM SHOP ON BOLD ST- SUNDAY AFTERNOON.
*THURSDAY-ACOUSTIC NIGHT AT BIER KELLER
*FRIDAY- SUPPORTING THE REAL PEOPLE AT THE HARBOUR BAR
*SATURDAY- BAND NIGHT AT BIER KELLER, THE 53’S, DAYWALKER,THE LEES,LAST ASYLUM.
*THESE ARE ALL FREE EVENTS AND SUNDAY AND FRIDAY ARE BOTH CHARITY EVENTS,COME SHOW SOME SUPPORT. X
-Greedy Jesus
It’s a cliche but I really didn’t know what to expect tonight. I knew what I wanted to expect and that was the 80’s retro swagger scene to burst alive again like it had never gone away. Not that I would have been able to tell if it had anyway. I’m too young to remember Jungle Brothers and old school hip hop knowledge has never been my fortay. BUT… I do own a pair of Puma ‘Yo Raps’ and if I leave my ‘special shoe’ at home I do have a natural pimpish limp to my stride. So for those two reasons alone, as soon as I heard JB were hitting stage at The Masque as part of their reunion tour that was it; YouTube, Spotify and my real life ghetto pal who goes by the name of JC (not that JC) were all brought to the forefront of life. JC is the whitest person to look at but the blackest person to talk to and when it comes to old school this is the guy to give a holla to on the 2way. So I did.
But the night wasn’t all about U.S. nostalgia. First up were Manchester based band China White; A Britpop vibed band with an electronic twist throwing a typically cool northern look out towards the crowd. Gallagher attitude and image, funk riffs and beats and lyrics that are surprisingly heartfelt at times and seemingly reflective of real life experiences. I’m saying ‘seemed’, I’m not going to lie, from the back a lot of the vocals were inaudible. I think that was just down to mic handling mixed with such a large sound system. Nevertheless, that shouldn’t be held against them by far! In a smaller venue it would have been great, mic couple of millimetres away from his mouth at masque? It would have been excellent! For first act on they knew how to get the filling venue going and the drums, bass and synth were hitting the room up with some body snatching beats and venue controlling sounds. I could feel myself getting drawn closer to them. Great crowd pleasers, good crowd interaction plus vocal clarity did get better as the set went on. I’ve got down in my notes under comparisons; ‘Happy Mondays’, ‘Oasis electronic rapping’ and ‘Gorrillaz Without Gimmicks’. They’ve got themselves down as ‘D.Funk Pioneers’. They were good! I actually really enjoyed them.
As good as they were though, I wasn’t prepared for what I got fish slapped in the face with next laa. You might have heard of these guys. They’re called The Corinthians. Now if someone had told me you’re going to go see some scouse rap and enjoy it I’d ‘pfft’ at them with every ounce “yeah?? yeah??… naaaaa” attitude I could conjure. I’ve seen the vids of scallies on the Trans-Penine trail singing “hate it or love it Halewood’s on top, and I’m gonna shine like a J and Co watch”. To be honest, that’s all I would have expected. But woe is me and my little small minded self. The Corinthians TEARED. IT. APART! I’ve got to put it to these guys. They blew me away. As soon as the first track hit I noticed the silhouette of a guy with a plastic pint fall over on to his knees as he tried to walk up those big stair seat things. He just tripped but I pretended it was because of the music and had a little giggle to myself. Then I stopped being a pansy and watched as the whole house got turned inside out by a trio of scouse/reggae/funk/rap/greatness. If you want to sum it up in one it would be DubHop. Innuendo, dressed in a grey hoody, Sonny in a striped blue polo shirt and Little Dreadz dressed dapper in a white blazer providing scar vocals. I can’t fault these guys anywhere. People were body popping, girls were going crazy, fellas were swaying like they were gangsta. Everyone got sucked in and The Corinthians spat them out. If you get the chance to see these guys, see these guys. I wanted to meet these guys afterwards but no sooner had their set finished they had disappeared in to the crowd, leaving me to ponder how under appreciated scouse rap may be.
After all that excitement, I don’t know about you but I’d completely forgotten about all that ‘bring back the 80’s’ malarkey I was going on about earlier. Luckily the in-between set performances by DJ Buddha and MC SAS tickled your conkers back in to the realisation that after 18 years of separation Mike Gee and Sammy B were actually getting back on stage together and would be taking us back to the days when they, along with their friends De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, were running shit on the US scene. MC SAS stopped. Started the count down. 5 became 4. 3 became… well you get the idea. We hit one and Mike Gee came bouncing out spitting rhymes like tha good old days (I imagine). We get half a verse through maybe? Sammy B comes out, hip gyrating, beanie on and beard cladded. The beard was greying but that only made him look cooler than ever. Both these guys from start to stop took the stage by storm. Where they got the energy from I do not know but they were using every inch of that stage just as the crowd was using every inch of the floor. And you know it wouldn’t be right if these guys didn’t freestyle. Second or third song in the music is stammered Mike spits to Sammy, Sammy spits to Mike both of them freestyling about Liverpool. I’m not talking about pre-written pretend freestyles. These were off the tops of these guy’s heads. The looks of happiness and the tiny hollas on each others faces as they spat a line just proved these guys are the real deal. Nothing like the (open quotations) rappers (closed quotations) of today. These were . What made the whole performance better was you knew they loved to be back. They were rapping to each other like two young boys playing on a school yard and the crowd who were young enough to be their kids were going crazy. The chemistry between the guys was great and the crowd connected with it so easily. The whole performance was crazy. Tonight it wasn’t a question of bring the 80’s and 90’s back. For these guys the 80’s and 90’s never went away.
How can I sum these guys up? How I wanted it I got it. (<—funny pun.)
Treat—> http://youtu.be/Xo-Z4-Tt_kQ
Joe ManGone.
( photos by Phil MacDonald)
There are few times in my life where I watch a gig and feel completely refreshed by what I have just seen. Tonight my faith was restored in the beautiful thing they call rock n roll. White Denim in a sweaty dark venue. Perfect.
Support came from locals The Loud and Royal Bangs.
The Loud have had a fair amount of press and hype through certain local ‘zines and deservedly so. This schizophrenic garage beast is unleashed to a half full Academy 2 and sets the place up for a good night. I can’t decide however whether Penningtons voice is astoundingly brilliant or very average, it records very well but maybe tonight was just an off night for him.
Up next is Royal Bangs, a band that I’d seen the weekend previous at Leeds Festival. The contrast between those two performances was incredible; Leeds Festival playing to one row of the Alternative stage mid afternoon to a tepid reception and here to a rapidly filling O2 Academy. Their chaotic sound mixed with their stoopid time signatures is an exhilarating ride for the ears, ‘Fireball’ being a personal highlight.
My excitement grows until White Denim take to the stage, an addition of a fourth member and extra guitarist makes an interesting change. New guitarist Austin Jenkins took like a duck to water when joining this band, having only been playing with them since last September it seems like they have been playing together for years. Jenkins and founding guitarist James Petralli exchange riff and solo for the set whipping the crowd into a frenzy. The Texan Four-piece are on fire, not even a broken bass string or the lights and sound being cut after curfew can stop them, resulting in a powerful end to their set.
When an evening of music such as this comes through your city, make sure you’re their. Great booking from Liverpool promoter Evol, hope to see more like this one.
Here are gig and event listings in Liverpool for today and tomorrow. Click on the links for more information. I will soon be posting full week listings every 7days. To get your event posted send a link to your Facebook event page to this guy -> here!
Today - 8th September 2011
- Thursday Cult(ure) Screening: ‘Adaptation’ @ CUC
- dot-art Pop Up Art Shops at Metquarter
- DeathWave presents Bury the Conscious, Adust, This is Turin, Pandemik
- Jamie “Afro” Archer - On Tour
- Acoustic Ascension with Greedy Jesus FREE ENTRY!
- Me & Him Bring You…… Gig
Tomorrow - 9th September 2011
- INDISCO
- ONE NIGHT ONLY - fundraising for the Bombed Out Church
- Union Present: The James Whitehouse band, Bec Sandridge & Bill Davro
- DANIEL MARTIN MOORE | Eva Petersen and more @ The Scandinavian Church
Event listings are posted on a regular basis. Send us your event and follow us here on Tumblr!
Joe ManGone
