Welcome…

WELCOME… to Gourmet Gigs, the main­ly music web­site. Our focus is on emerg­ing artists and fes­ti­vals along with reviews, rec­om­mends and a few inter­views too.

There are plen­ty of win­ter fes­ti­vals tak­ing place this year – our list is on the site now with plen­ty more to come. Muta­tions is hap­pen­ing this week­end at var­i­ous venues around Brighton.

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 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’.

A wel­come piece of news is the return of Doves, with a sin­gle “Rene­gade” just out and an album “Con­stel­la­tions For the Lone­ly” on the way. There are a few live per­for­mances com­ing up but Jimi Good­win will not be join­ing them on stage. The last time I saw Doves was at the Albert Hall for the Teenage Can­cer Trust – look­ing for­ward to their new music and live shows.

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 need 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.

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