About

Welcome…

Magical Sounds tent

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, but the music won out. Still – we love a gig that’s gourmet stan­dard, and we’ll still fea­ture food so bring it on.

Inde­pen­dent Venue Week – hope­ful­ly you head­ed to a small, grass­roots venue in cel­e­bra­tion. Gourmet Gigs was in Heb­den Bridge at The Trades. Saw the bril­liant Eng­lish Teacher plus Splint, a force­ful post punk out­fit with Jake Bogac­ki on gui­tar and vocals (he used to be in Work­ing Men’s Club before branch­ing out with his new band). 

Grass­roots Venue Watch…
As always, a note about grass­roots venues… Moles in Bath recent­ly closed its doors… as did a tiny venue called The Film Ate­lier in Cat­ford, south Lon­don. Read about it here. Bet­ter news: thou­sands signed the ‘Save Brix­ton Acad­e­my’ peti­tion and it will now reopen on 19th April. Also con­grats to Sound Lounge in Sut­ton who received £35,000 in dona­tions and will now stay open. 

Check out the Music Venue Trust, who do a tremen­dous job. Togeth­er with Skid­dle, they have just embarked on a game-chang­ing ini­tia­tive to sup­port grass­roots music in the UK. They’re intro­duc­ing a 50p tick­et levy, and match-fund­ing, with all pro­ceeds going to MVT’s Pipeline Invest­ment Fund to help venues nationwide. 

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, dash­ing down to Jack Docher­ty’s show at the White­hall The­atre where Bowie was his actu­al guest. My first fes­ti­val was Bux­ton in 1972 with John Peel announc­ing the bands. It took place on a freez­ing cold moor but I loved the whole expe­ri­ence. And we just parked our tiny two-man tent any­where we felt like, on some stones in front of the stage I seem to remember.

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. 


Treat for today.
Been lis­ten­ing to Liege & Lief (Fair­port Con­ven­tion) on these speak­ers. Such a good sys­tem it was like lis­ten­ing to it for the first time all those years ago…

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: The web­site and all pho­tographs on this site are © copy­right 2012 – 2024 Gourmetgigs.com. All rights reserved. The use of any of the pho­tographs or con­tent on this web­site with­out writ­ten per­mis­sion is strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed.
You may obtain per­mis­sion to use images from this web­site by con­tact­ing me via the form.
Pho­tog­ra­phy by oth­er pho­tog­ra­phers is always repro­duced with per­mis­sion and cred­it­ed when appropriate. 

4 thoughts on “About

  1. I have and now need to upgrade a Nikon d40 a basic 6mp cam­era and it has improved my life great­ly, even going upto a 10mp will make no dif­fer­ence as the sen­sor is exact­ly the same,and we all know that Mpix­els are only to do with how big yr blow­ing up an image,for blog­ging it’s not need­ed. before my nikon (Baby) i used a sim­ple Fuji film s1000 and as you may see with my Kit­ty Daisy and Lewis pics they’re the best I’ve tak­en no cred­it to nikon.. it real­ly is impor­tant NOT to use flash,as I’m sure you prob know? hope this helps 🙂

    1. Total­ly agree about no flash, for many rea­sons. I decid­ed to get a good point and shoot, as wield­ing an SLR around at gigs, if you aren’t there as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, I found to be annoy­ing and can detract from enjoy­ment of the gig. I got the Canon XS240 and it’s a love­ly lit­tle cam­era (12mp and 20x zoom) but so far my results (on King Charles, from Tier 1) are not exact­ly to be com­mend­ed! iphone can work just as well. Love those pics of Kit­ty Daisy and Lewis!

  2. Thanks for your com­ments. I think cap­tur­ing the atmos­phere is the main thing. And if the pho­tos don’t work out too well I still think it’s bet­ter to have some­thing on the page rather than noth­ing. I pre­fer to take pho­tos at fes­ti­vals, you can usu­al­ly get clos­er to the stage, and there’s the oppor­tu­ni­ty for ran­dom shots. Have you decid­ed what cam­era to get?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *