I've promoted the occasional gig over the years.
In the dim distant past we'd have to do it so that the band I was in could play gigs. Back then there were only a couple of venues in north east Wales that would entertain the idea of allowing the noise-afflicted hoi polloi in to preach their sermons of insurrection. Or, in our case, to play a few dog-eared Stone Roses rip-offs with all the rock 'n' roll spirit of a glass of tepid water.
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Like buses, Welsh artists tipped for big things come in groups. After Marina And The Diamonds came onto my radar, another Welsh singer-songwriter, Ellie Goulding of Knighton in Powys has crashed into the public consciousness this week.
Photo by from the .
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The commenting system on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Wales' blogs will be changing early next week.
³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iD is to become the single sign-in method for all ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ online services. If you have an existing ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ membership account for blogs, message boards or other services at some point in the next few months you will be automatically prompted to upgrade to ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iD.
Instead of the old method of signing in, you'll see a message encouraging you to upgrade your existing account. This process shouldn't take long, but is necessary for people to continue posting comments across all our blogs.
More details can be found on the
³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Internet blog. For any problems, please refer to our .
Bang Bangor is, and I quote the promoters because they put it far more succinctly than I can, "An exciting new festival - a chance to experience a range of live music and culture, around the city of Bangor, over four days."
You may already know this.
I blogged about it here.
Last night was the inaugural Bang Bangor gig at Hendre Hall, North Wales' most convivial and mediaeval (feeling) venue. In the space of a week, it would be difficult to find a greater contrast to the mostly slick, urban venues of Cardiff without visiting Outer Mongolia or the Amazonian Barfly.
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Sometime yesterday afternoon Twitter had me shouting "yeahs!" to the heavens and cranking my stereo up to window-rattling volumes.
Why the celebration?
Well, Jen Long of
³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio 1 in Wales' Introducing show (presented by fellow blogger and sometime DJ sparring companion,
Bethan Elfyn) - posted the following:
@jenlong Swathes in this week's NME. Good work.
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While plenty of exciting new Welsh acts come to our attention, very few actually combine talent with the genuine potential to break into the national consciousness. Marina And The Diamonds - one of the subjects of Beth's latest blog - begs to be brought into the mainstream, but on her own terms.
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Cardiff city never felt so exciting as it did last weekend for , testament to how a few people working together with very little resources and lots of determination can pull off something special. More power to the DIY collective.
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Of all the great acts on at last weekend's
Swn Festival, perhaps are one of the most talked-about.
Watch Marina and some of the other stars of Sŵn, including Post War Years, Bright Light Bright Light and The Zimmermans, recorded on a mobile phone - apologies for the variable sound quality!
Anglesey's Johnny R is about as close as music in North Wales has to an out-and-out iconoclast.
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A week or so I wrote about the Introducing gig in Aberystwyth featuring , and .
Well now you can see a video of the bands giving their own perspectives on their work.
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So, 2009 is over. The hangover still lingers, as do the memories of so many great bands, so many friendly faces and good people. Swn was so good it could transform the most charismatic conversationalist into a pub bore, banging on and on (and... on) about who they saw over the weekend while the unblessed wish to hell they'd shut up.
So I won't bore you with the who's, where's and what-they-were-like's. But I am going to implore any of you out there who are musicians, or run labels, to make the effort to go next year, regardless of whether you're playing or not.
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Chapter Arts Centre ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio One/Radio Wales Gig with Marina & the Diamonds, Martin Carr and lots more.
I'll be quick with this blog - as Day #2 is about to kick off, and I don't want to miss a beat.
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It's Dame Shirley Bassey Day today on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Wales as the Tiger Bay songstress performs live for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Electric Proms tonight from 7pm.
You can catch the performance live on Radio Wales' Evening Show.
To get in the mood, you can watch some archive footage of Shirley Bassey's songs or remember her first ever Number One single.
I'm on the train, fresh from the In The City conference in Manchester, and gliding through Welsh countryside in glorious autumnal colours.
Initially stepping out in Aberystwyth was a little surreal. Manchester's large towering buildings were a long way behind us and Aber's small but bustling town centre felt like a world apart: the hills, the fresh sea air, the pastel painted sea front, and enough students to bring a bit of life to a sea side town. It was fun to be back here, with a ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Introducing gig in tow.
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Righto, there's a little festival happening this weekend, called Swn - more about that in previous blogs
here and
here, but I promised an alternative guide to Cardiff, just in case any of you reading might be visiting the city for the first, second, or third time - there's nothing beats local knowledge.
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With few exceptions, every piece that gets written about culture in north east Wales begins by saying there isn't all that much of it, really; as if culture comes in measurable and readily identifiable units rubber-stamped by philosophical bureaucrats in Brussels.
If you measure culture in terms of that which is recognised as such by a mysterious, far-removed cognoscenti; or you think that culture or artistic worth can only be determined by consensus; or, perhaps, you would measure the value of a band on the amount of downloads they can shift or people they can drag into a shoebox, then, no, you wouldn't find much to shift your needle into the red in north Wales.
If, however, you don't measure culture but instead immerse yourself in it, and enjoy having your soul thrilled by poets and musicians who've never seen a bandwagon pass through town, let alone dreamed of jumping on one, then north Wales is a teeming rainforest of sounds and thoughts that have evolved uniquely due to their relative isolation.
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There are only four days to go until this year's Swn Festival lavishes Cardiff with multitudinous gifts of musical ace.
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The first single from Lostrophets' fourth album, It's Not The End Of The World (But I Can See It From Here) has entered the charts at number 16.
You can listen to an excerpt of the track and don't forget to leave your comments about what you think of the single - are you looking forward to the album?
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Fifteen
years ago, Newport was at the centre of a resurgence of Welsh indie
music as the world's press praised the likes of
60ft Dolls, Novocaine
and
Dub War.
Our
Welsh music history site takes a look back at the time, including a
1994 edition of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Wales documentary series The Slate.
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In a little over a week I'll be hopping down to Cardiff for the annual . Swn is an intimate sprawl of excellent leftfield music spread around many of Cardiff's venues, clubs and pubs.
Radio 1 and
C2's Huw Stephens told me that the festival was inspired by other city-based music events, like in New York, Manchester's , Brighton's and the in London.
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Hi,
I will be resurrecting the gig guide for my show starting this coming Sunday night. If as a venue or promoter you're interested in having your gigs plugged, please send details of your events for the forthcoming week to:
themysterytour@gmail.com - please make the first words in your email's subject header
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In my hands today, fell a lovely pink copy of the latest issue by Kruger magazine. A few years ago, I spent two backbreaking years running the Welsh-langugage magazine Tacsi, so I've a lot of respect for anyone running a website, blog or published magazine. It's a creative and rewarding work, but also like radio, can sometimes feel undervalued and unappreciated. When was the last time you told/emailed a journalist that you enjoyed a particular story? Exactly!
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The first time I saw
Cate Le Bon she was fronting school band Alcatraz at the National Eisteddfod in Llandeilo in 1996, the year the
Super Furry Animals brought their tank onto the field. I was something to do with the dreaded Battle of the Bands competition, or maybe recording something from there. The details get fuzzy!
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I'm increasingly of the opinion that we're very much in the midst of an unprecedented, restrictive, musical conservatism - at least with regards to the bands that receive support in the mainstream media and achieve commercial success.
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The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Wales Evening Show has continued its series of guests in session, complete with video.
This week sees Cardiff's Zervas and Pepper in session with their song You Must Be Doing Something Right. Watch the video below, and check out the show here.
My philosophy regarding reactions and criticisms of music that is submitted to my radio show is a simple one: I am absolutely - some would say brutally - honest to those kind enough to send me their difficultly-wrought music. To fob these people off with platitudes or a standard rejection slip would be more disrespectful of their art and aspirations.
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When the idea of writing a regular blog on music in North Wales was suggested to me - "Maybe, you know, two or three pieces a week," they said - I was a little concerned, deep down inside, that I'd have to start making stuff up to fill the hungry spaces on these pages. It hasn't worked out like that, at all. In fact, there's that much going on that I've managed to erode 5mm off the end of my typing fingers (all two of them) in the last fortnight.
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Gwenno is a proper, old school pop star. That's a rarity, these days, when generally the only qualification for the role is the ability to sing Mariah or Whitney in front of Simon Cowell as if your life depended on it
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It's pretty rare for we provincials to get a heads-up on the latest musical phenomenon to be bewitching the dandies and city folk. But wise music-lovers who take the trouble to check out Islet at Morgan Lloyd in Caernarfon this Saturday night (10th October) will see the most talked-about new band in the UK.
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We have some unwritten rules at ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Introducing show, some unspoken rules that we all accept when discussing and booking session bands.
a) We have to be pretty excited about said band.
b) We have to have seen them live to check its not all pro-tools skills.
c) We have to have quality recordings from said band that won't sound like someone screaming on a building site or singing in the shower!
d) We read all about them, and get some info from their MySpace/or website. Kudos points for good design.
e) We even sometimes laugh about their funny influences section, and home made YouTube clips from the rehearsal rooms.
f) Check their top friends too - this tells you a lot!
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If I'm honest, my ideal Friday night probably constitutes a curry and a good film, a comfortable night after a week of late nights DJing and radio. When everyone else will be on their way out, I've usually had enough of partying. There's always the exception to the rule and last Friday night, typically a wet drizzly night, I was heading to Newport.
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For the best part of the last 15 years I've gloried in the variety of music I have had the freedom to play on my show and in my DJ sets. Mine (not that it belonged to me!) was the first generation that wasn't particularly tribal about its music. Madness sat next to The Beatles, Iron Maiden, Ice T, Josh Wink, The Stone Roses, De La Soul -- you get the point without me having to drag it up to date.
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Katherine Jenkins joined Radio Wales' Roy Noble for an interview filmed specially for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Wales Music website.
In an engaging chat, she talked about her new album, Believe and what her work entertaining British troops abroad mean to her.
Watch the full video on the Wales Music website.
Connah's Quay in Flintshire has always had musical connotations in my mind-hole.
World-renowned classical guitarist, comes from the town and was in my year at the Alun School, Mold. He was, er, instrumental in my ensuing fascination with music. You can blame him, then.
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Ten years ago music in north Wales was in a very different place to now. It was much more band-orientated, the kind of technology that allows the likes of DJ Switch to assemble thumping drum n bass in his bedroom, send it to Radio 1 and get airplay on Fabio & Grooverider was still nascent.
Apart from little sparks of success -
Big Leaves and Pocket Venus getting Single of the Week accolades on Radio 1,
Tystion doing similarly in Melody Maker - nothing managed to burn bright enough to earn recognition beyond the area's borders. Until Melys, that is.
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Swn Festival 2009 is heading to Cardiff
You only have to look around to realize that live music is having a great time right now in the UK. The un-healthy amount of festivals are one by-product, another is the growth in inner city, street-hopping festivals just like Cardiff's Swn Festival.
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Hello all, I'm Bethan Elfyn, late night DJ and presenter on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio 1
every Wednesday - a national show for Wales which broadcasts simultaneously at midnight with
Huw Stephens in England,
Rory McConnell in Northern Ireland, and
Vic Galloway in Scotland.
I thought a small introduction appropriate for the first blog, 'Who am I?' 'What am I about?' etc. Well, I was born in Bangor, North Wales, grew up in Newtown, Powys, and have lived post-university in Cardiff apart from two adventurous years working for
³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Cymru from Bangor - my first proper job!
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| 14:28 UK time, Friday, 30 October 2009
Adam Walton
Bethan Elfyn
James McLaren
Laura Sinnerton
