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.

Our Spring Fes­ti­vals Guide has list of events coun­try wide, which will hope­ful­ly tide things over till fes­ti­val sea­son prop­er gets under way. Check it out here. If you know of any we’ve missed, let us know on the Con­tact Us thingy.

Doves new album Con­stel­la­tions For the Lonely is out now and it’s an incred­i­ble work, up there for album of the year. Are there any albums you’re look­ing for­ward to hear­ing this year?

The disappearance of festivals…

Usu­al­ly there are a few which bow out each year, but this year the shift is dra­mat­ic. Blue­dot will not be reap­pear­ing in 2025, like­wise Wom­ad (on a break), Rise fes­ti­val which made a spir­it­ed debut appear­ance last year; Tim­ber, Black Deer and Cam­bridge Folk Fes­ti­val. But new­bie Found fes­ti­val, which has risen from the ash­es of Tow­ersey, will fea­ture plen­ty of folk music to sat­is­fy fans.

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.

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. I am a live music pho­tog­ra­ph­er and also write for the site too.

Please sup­port the site run­ning costs through giv­ing us a heads up on socials, mes­sag­ing, gen­er­al­ly spread­ing the word, and please con­sid­er buy­ing tick­ets via our very occa­sion­al affil­i­ate links which won’t cost you any­thing but gives us a few pence.

And… a big thanks to our guest bloggers.

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You may obtain per­mis­sion to use images from this web­site by get­ting in touch via the Con­tact Form.
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