Welcome…

WELCOME… to Gourmet Gigs. Our focus is pri­mar­i­ly on emerg­ing artists – and fes­ti­vals along with gigs, new releas­es, reviews, rec­om­mends and a few interviews.

Pitch­fork Music Fes­ti­val has two more nights to run. Dal­ston Takeover takes place tomor­row night – Sat­ur­day 8th Novem­ber – with 5 just-about walk­a­ble venues tak­ing part. EartH Hack­ney’s The­atre and Hall plus the Shack­lewell Arms, Cafe OTO and the Vic­to­ria are all includ­ed. I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ed to see Great Grand­pa (we reviewed their album ear­li­er this year here) and hey, nothing. 

The Samhain Rit­u­al evening I attend­ed at Earth Hack­ney, pre­sent­ed by Stew­art Lee, was on its sec­ond year, so I am hop­ing it hap­pens again next year. If you’re a fan of Stew­art, of Mor­ris Danc­ing (no? I promise you the troupe I saw would change your mind) and ambi­ent, tex­tur­al music, this would be for you. the And it was great­ly appre­ci­at­ed not to be shoved into the cold night air after­wards, instead we were invit­ed back to the bar where a DJ set was in full flow, plus all the artists and their excit­ing merch. A far nicer and more civilised way to end the evening, although it’s not always pos­si­ble with trains and bus­es to catch.

Memories of festival season … here’s End of The Road 

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 been vis­it­ing more of our grass­roots venues and have recent­ly been to Future Yard in Birken­head, a love­ly and very friend­ly space with a good bar, out­side area and tasty look­ing piz­zas! I also saw Jane Weaver at The Drill in Lin­coln – with a superb sup­port per­for­mance by Memo­ri­als. The Drill is a large space with a wide, low stage and a lot of his­to­ry to it. Good to see these venues thriving.

Our history

Gourmet Gigs began on June 3 2012 at Field Day fes­ti­val in Vic­to­ria Park where I saw the elu­sive Mazzy Star, review here. 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. 

Please sup­port the site run­ning costs by giv­ing us a heads up on socials, mes­sag­ing and gen­er­al­ly spread­ing the word.

And… a big thank you to our guest bloggers.

Affiliate links…

We have a few affil­i­ate links on the site for tick­et pur­chas­es. If there’s a gig you fan­cy buy­ing tick­ets for, please sup­port us and click through our tick­et links. It costs you the same… and it helps us to keep going and keep sup­port­ing emerg­ing artists. Thank you!

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