In the last few months I’ve been missing gigs, so much so that I haven’t been to once since, ooh, October, and then I didn’t even know it was going on ’til I went to the toilet and noticed it in the basement. However I would probably have gone to at least one a month, maybe more, if I’d known about them in advance, but I always seem to find out about them a week or so after the event. The problem is that I’m not a huge music fan – I don’t trawl through the gig listings or have loads of gigging mates to drag me along – but I do miss listening to four or five odd folk making a blinding racket with random instruments in a pub.
What I want is an internet guide to the toilet circuit, indexed by area with filters for specific bands. For example, Jeffrey Lewis was in the country last month and I didn’t know about it. If I could subscribe to a feed that told me when he was here I would have gone along. Similarly a feed for all the small gigs in Birmingham this week would be better than all the random mailing lists I’m currently getting, some stretching ahead for months, others giving 24 hours notice. The small gigs scene works by word of mouth and pure luck, which is probably what makes it nicer than the big gig scene, but it’s also quite frustrating if you’re not in the loop.
Does anything like this exist? Is it worth building? I’ve been pondering setting up a blog for Birmingham gig scene partly as a way for forcing myself to stay on top of it but it strikes me a national version would be more sensible. Of course I have no time to actually do any of this…
Since I lucked onto the Dead Kennedys gigs, I have been thinking the exact same thing. A what’s on in Birmingham and Black Country, which spits out a billion customisable RSS feeds – show me today, show me only the tribute bands playing at the Wulfrun, show me comedy gigs in pubs, etc, etc, etc. Haven’t done anything about it, naturally. Setting up the infrastructure wouldn’t be the hard bit, it would be getting the data in and keeping it current. I’m far too much of a slacker to do that, or to trawl round everywhere getting the venues to do it.
I picked up the Dead Kennedys thing by random pattern matching accident. I was in Nostalgia, handing over the comics-cash, and I spotted their name on a Wulfrun flyer without actually looking directly at it. They were reasonably fresh in my mind, because Jello Biafra had come up in conversation at the previous pubmeet.
Last night, I spotted a flyer for a Frank Sidebottom – the bard of Timperley – from across the road.
We shouldn’t have to do that. We should have software to do that for us.
It’s a huge problem promoting gigs round brum – i’ve been promoting the Frank Sidebottom (Variety Is Back!) gig for the best part of two months, but it’s bloody hard to get anywhere to list stuff.
You’d think that the “What’s On” would at least put stuff in the listing – but nah. Neither has, i think, any of the other websites or anything that i’ll submitted the info to.
I think a brum/surounding areas site would be better than a national one – if it worked it could always be expanded.
You’d need to get the ear of the local promoters – the catapult club & the like – and a decent website (I’ve done a few with news feeds – like the Birmingham It’s not Sh*t one – but nothign on this scale).
Tickets still available for Frank btw, or wou can pay on the door http://www.varietyisback.co.uk
For the record, Jon, I saw the Frank Sidebottom poster that was strapped to the pedestrian crossing on Moseley High Street. Bear in mind that I walk past the Kav at least twice a day, and not noticed anything there. Arn’t they interested in promoting gigs at their own pub?
dunno, i think they’re fairly confident of it sellign out anyway – we had to turn people away last time and didn’t have anyone as good as frank on.
that said i did take some posters down to them last sunday, and i was in there on thursday and they hadn’t put them up (still there only so much i can do…)
I was very taken by “Meat Raffle” and “Inside Lav”.
Just had that pattern matching thing again. Dropped off a prescription at the chemist. Toddled over to the traffic lights. Pressed button. Glanced around with a view to sneaking across on the red man. Notice the remains of a poster on a lamppost which reads “The Jeffrey Lewis “.
The small gigs thing is here already on our street furniture. Pete – move to Moseley.
Please tell me if I’ll ever get to see Frank Sidebottom live. I never have and fear I never will. bonne_laure@voila.fr