Welcome…

WELCOME… to Gourmet Gigs, the main­ly music web­site. Our focus is on emerg­ing artists and fes­ti­vals along with reviews and rec­om­mends. Why ‘gourmet’ gigs? Because this site start­ed with food and music. Still – we love a gig that’s gourmet stan­dard, and we’ll still fea­ture food so bring it on.

Fes­ti­val sea­son nears its end. Well, sum­mer ones any­way – we’re in for a treat this autumn with a pletho­ra of events, and we’re com­pil­ing a list of them now. 

Green Man fes­ti­val was fab­u­lous as always. The Ris­ing stage has at last been giv­en some improve­ments, now offer­ing far more space for the audi­ence – and there’s a much more sub­stan­tial stage to do all those new bands jus­tice. I per­son­al­ly found the GM line­up not one of their most inspir­ing although there were a few top moments. Such as Jon Hop­kins’ late set which was incred­i­ble, the sound and the lasers almost shak­ing the foun­da­tions of the Bre­con Bea­cons. Michael Head was greet­ed with great warmth by his Walled Gar­den crowd and it was love­ly to see his awe at the beau­ty of the festival.

End of the Road pre­sent­ed an absolute musi­cal feast with Bill Rid­er Jones’ show­cas­ing his lat­est album Iechyd Da, an impres­sive set by Hel­lo Mary (we’ve got a review of their album com­ing up), the dreamy CMAT, and shoegazey won­der­ment from Slow­dive and Deary. My per­son­al favourite set was by Phos­pho­res­cent – a sub­lime hour of Matthew Houck and band’s immer­sive, emo­tion­al indie-coun­try music. I’m look­ing for­ward to the band’s return to these shores.

All Points East has become a sub­stan­tial fix­ture on the Lon­don day fes­ti­val cal­en­dar. It cov­ers 10 days from its base at Vic­to­ria Park. I was there for two days as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er. It’s a very well run event with stuffed line­ups (Joe God­dard, Jock­strap, Nation of Lan­guage and LC Soundsys­tem plus many oth­ers on Fri­day) which offer good val­ue for mon­ey. A gen­tle indie throw­back day wrapped the fes­ti­val, with Death­cab for Cutie as head­lin­er. The Lemon Twigs, Teenage Fan­club and more round­ed out the day.

South Fac­ing fes­ti­val is set on a beau­ti­ful site at Crys­tal Palace Bowl… Love Motion had all the right ele­ments with Horse­meat Dis­co and a few oth­er DJs, plus Grace Jones… sad­ly Roisin Mur­phy was ill and pulled out, leav­ing the DJs to fill a gap­ing hole in the sched­ule. Grace Jones took her place as the only live act – she was, as is her wont, fash­ion­ably late. She’d had all the time in the world to prep so there real­ly were no excus­es, and being late meant her set was cut short.

Despite the pletho­ra of fes­ti­vals avail­able, there are still deep-root­ed prob­lems with­in the indus­try. This is the final year for long-run­ning Tow­ersey fes­ti­val. Anoth­er which began with such promise was KITE, which for this year has shift­ed to Abbey Road Stu­dios in Octo­ber, and Down At The Abbey based in Read­ing, has announced it is tak­ing a year off but will be back in 2025! Fin­gers crossed for Blue­dot too, we await an announcement.

Grass­roots Venue Watch…
As always, a note about grass­roots venues.. Music Venue Trust (MVT), the char­i­ty which rep­re­sents hun­dreds of Grass­roots Music Venues (GMVs), has called upon politi­cians from all par­ties to “seize the moment” and to help save the sec­tor from the deep­en­ing cri­sis. It has pub­lished a report enti­tled ‘A Man­i­festo for Grass­roots Music’, which sets out the steps that need to be tak­en in order to stem the clo­sures of GMVs, cur­rent­ly run­ning at more than one per week, and to bring sta­bil­i­ty to the sector.

I’ve made no secret of my dis­like of the O2 Are­na as a music venue. So when I vis­it­ed the Man­ches­ter Coop Live to see the Pet Shop Boys, I was pre­pared for a sim­i­lar reac­tion. How wrong I was. The sound is top class, the stage is wide, the rake affords a good and clear view of the action. Not so good are the bar prices and those at the sil­ly Coop ‘shops’. And why can’t they pro­vide free water? (Answer: because it’s more prof­itable to charge over £3 for it). Have you been to the venue yet? What are your thoughts?

Our history

Gourmet Gigs began on June 3 2012 with Field Day fes­ti­val in Vic­to­ria Park where I saw the elu­sive Mazzy Star, review here. I’ve had some mem­o­rable moments like see­ing David Bowie in Han­ley, Stafford­shire in the Zig­gy Star­dust days. I saw him once more: after a tip-off, a friend and I dashed down to Jack Docher­ty’s chat show at the White­hall The­atre where Bowie was his guest. My first fes­ti­val was Bux­ton ‘Pop’ Fes­ti­val, in 1972, with DJ John Peel. It took place on a freez­ing cold moor. I remem­ber Roy Wood run­ning along the top of the stage. Or am I imag­in­ing that? We parked our tiny two-man tent on rocky ground almost in front of the stage. It was a life-chang­ing expe­ri­ence that set me up for a life­time of fes­ti­vals – although today’s metic­u­lous­ly organ­ised, health and safe­ty infused events are entire­ly a dif­fer­ent beast.

Please write for us…

Get in touch if you’d like to rec­om­mend bands, DJs, gigs, new releas­es, fes­ti­vals or venues. And also if you’d like to con­tribute and offer a guest blog piece – the chances are that we’ll say yes. Emails are checked on a dai­ly basis.

You can help Gourmet Gigs too…

The site is man­aged main­ly by me plus occa­sion­al guest writ­ers. We pre­fer to use our own band pho­tog­ra­phy so, PRs please note: we’re grate­ful for oppor­tu­ni­ties for pit access at gigs and festivals. 

Please sup­port the site run­ning costs by tweet­ing, mes­sag­ing, gen­er­al­ly spread­ing the word, and buy­ing tick­ets on our very occa­sion­al affil­i­ate links. 

And… a big thanks to our guest bloggers.

Back in the day…

No punks or skinheads

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