Local music, for local people.

It has, since I first started following a local band a school friend had formed called Thirst (http://www.ziprecords.com/artists/thirst/index.shtml), been a fascination of mine that so many talented bands and artists can exist in towns and cities the world over without getting any real exposure outside their local area. Sure Thirst themselves went on to sign with Zip records and do some tours in the US and yes I readily acknowledge that there are a number of artists from Portsmouth alone who regularly play nights in London and more recently in Liverpool (though the latter is largely due to a Portsmouth promoter moving there), but they are still 'Portsmouth bands' in both perception and mindset.

The point I'm making though is that here, where I call home, there are some fantastic and diverse musicians creating superb music and playing exciting gigs on a regular basis. First and foremost among them, in my mind, is Andrew Foster (http://www.andrewfostermusic.co.uk), a great musician, songwriter and producer, Andy also has a superb work ethic and when not performing himself is a great supporter of other bands and artists. His music is firmly in the singer/songwriter mould and, although easily accessible and appealing to diverse audiences I would place it closer in spirit to the passion of Scott Matthews than the common denominator mass production of James Blunt. Andy is definitely someone it's worth checking out.

Another band who are head and shoulders above most of the rest are Suburbian (http://www.myspace.com/suburbian) a band who I have previously described as 'like Coldplay with balls', and rightly so I think.

At this point it seems only right to mention the work of Iain Martin, and Stiff Promotions (http://www.stiffpromotions.co.uk/), as a local promoter Iain has no competition in my opinion and his unswerving support of and help for local musicians and music lovers is nothing short of exemplary. It says something that I know of not a single local musician of note who has a bad word to say about either the man or the business. I'm very lucky to have been involved with reviewing a number of gigs Iain has put on and they number highly among my favourites.

Before I shut up it's only fair to mention my favourite group of precociously talented teenagers, Hardly Heroes (http://www.myspace.com/hardlyheroes06 ), these pop punk playing teens have a great set of songs but most of all they really enjoy what they're doing and it's very contagious!

Please, please take time to check all these people out and let me (and them) know what you think!

To all those bands and singers I haven't mentioned, please don't take it as a snub, I'll be writing this for a while yet so there's every chance I'll give you guys a shout out.

It's nearly holiday time

Well, in a little over two weeks Emma and I will be jetting off for a week of fun, sightseeing and best of all meeting up with some great friends who I've already mentioned here.

Originally we planned to go to New York, as we'd had such an awesome time there in 2005, but when we were priced out of that option and started lookign at alternatives Toronto leapt out at us. The subsequent opportunities to meet up with friends just made it an even better idea.

As it stands we're not really sure what we're going to be getting up to for the most part, though a night out with Chris, Trevor and their partners is on the cards and on the Friday we're going to a gig with them and also Dave and Mark, kind of a mini Eurohip reunion. We're seeing Wintersleep (http://www.wintersleep.com) a great band who Dave introduced me to by way of a conversation about his shirt!

I'm guessing that we'll head out to Niagara at some point, I'd certainly like to... and the CN Tower is pretty much an obvious choice, b ut for once I'm going into a holiday with a pretty small checklist of things to do, it's really quite refreshing.

Other people's blogs

I just wanted to say a big thank you to some friends of mine. A couple of people whose blogs you'll see listed over to the right there have very kindly linked to this blog from their own. You may even have joined me from there in which case this is irrelevent (sorry), but I just wanted to give you all a bit more information on these guys and a couple of others by way of a story.

In the early part of last year Emma and I were sat at my PC, absently downloading music, for some reason we decided to search for the term "New Orleans", possibly I was trying to get a copy of the Gary Bonds track, I really can't remember. Among the many options the computer threw back at us one stuck out, a song called "New Orleans Is Sinking by a band called The Tragically Hip. We'd never heard of them but, intrigued by the combination of great song title and genius band name Emma decided to download the track. We listened to it and I remarked that it was 'okay'. As time went on Emma started downloading other tracks by the band and rallying on me to listen to them, they weren't bad but nothing really hooked me.

I could see she was intrigued though, so when I noticed a tiny advert for a gig they were playing in London I bought a pair of tickets. Roll on to Emma's birthday and I presented her with the tickets and an album by the band (In Violet Light), she was ecstatic and to show willing I tried once again to see where she was coming from in her adoration of this band about whom she knew nothing. As I listened again and again to the few tracks we'd downloaded one of them suddenly took a hold on me. Called "Bobcaygeon" this endearing little number wormed into my brain and acted like the key in the lock, bringing me to really appreciate this band.

Soon it was July and we headed off to London, to Shepherds Bush to see the band. We ate dinner in a Wetherspoons in a shopping Centre near by and I noticed a few people wearing band shirts, I also noticed that they weren't English - what had we stumbled in to?!

After dinner we decided to head over to the venue a little early, expecting to be the first there. To our surprise there werw a group of guys there in matching shirts toting enough cameras and recording equipment to be easily mistaken for a film crew. One look at the blurbs on their tees told us that they had all travelled from Canada to see this band and to follow them on tour. As the queues formed for the show one of the guys started filming the prospective audience, asking questions and generally chatting. Then, suddenly, the venue changed the queue formation and we had to move to another queue as we were seated on the second balcony. One of the group was in front of us and we catted to him now and again as we waited, he seemed very friendly and courteously explained things about the band and what to expect to us and others around us. This man, I later discovered was Adrian Burden whose blog (http://www.onegeeksopinion.com/) is featured opposite, in getting to know Adrian I've been lucky to meet as caring and friendly a person as one could hope for, a true gentleman.

Eventually we got into the venue and, resplendant in freshly bought tour shirts with hideously expensive beer in hand we secured seats front and centre. What followed was easily the most exciting and visceral experience of my gig going career to date. Even now I struggle to put into words the gamut of emotion I went through that night. When the show was over and we went back outside I tried to find the group we'd seen before the show, to find out more about 'The Hip' as everyone was calling them, vbut all I could see was a guy selling knock off Tragically Nip shirts.

In my quest for more to know I turned to the internet and discovered the excellent http://www.hipbase.com, which provided me with insight into the band, I started to buy up their CDs via eBay and Amazon and stumbled across the Hiptracker, the work of a group of fervent fans who taped the band at almost every show and shared the recordings with anyone who showed an interest. One of them, Chris Kirkpatrick becam my go-to guy for anything I needed to know, his patience and friendly help making me even more sure that there was something special about this band and their following. Chris runs, with a few others, a fantasic site at http://www.hipfans.com and was the man behind the hip trakcer until it was rewcently destroyed by a selfish idiot.

Soon enough it was 2007 and early in the year the band announced their intention to tour in Europe again. I couldn;t help but get excited at the prospect of seeing them and taking part in what a group of us dubbed Eurohip '07. Getting to properly meet the guys from the previous year and some others who I had virtually befriended since, notably a Londoner by the name of Ben Grubb (http://bengrubb-illustration.blogspot.com/) who shared with me the strange sensation of being obsessed with a band who hardly anyone you knew had ever heard of.

This year seemed to fly by and before I knew it I was in London, it was September and I was en-route to Victoria station to meet up with some Canadians the day before a gig I had been waiting all year for. Chris and Adrian were both there and I met Trevor Cornell for the first time, like me Trevor was a few years younger than the majority of the group, unlike me however he is a fantastic photographer as was evidenced throughout the two days I spent with the group, his work can be seen at (http://www.trevorconnellphotography.blogspot.com/) and really is woth your time! There was another Trevor their too, also Dave, who has introduced me to another great band called Wintersleep (more on that soon) and another Matt, a kindred soul. Soon enough we met up with Ben as well and after I fetched Emma from Waterloo we all spent a very enjoyable evening chatting and laughing as if we were old friends.

The next day we met up again, joined by another Canadian Hip fan called Mark who had taken a later flight. The day that followed was one of the most enjoyable I've had in the longest time and before I knew it I was thinking of these guys, who I'd conversed with mostly via keyboards and websites as among my favourite friends.

So thank you guys, all of you, for allowing me into your lives and for enrriching mine, it's been an absolute pleasure!

An example of one of my reviews.

Well, as you probably know I write reviews for a few different publications. This is one I've recently submitted to Blues Matters magazine. The artist, Oli Brown is a fantastic young blues-rock guitar player who writes and plays some superb tunes. Find out more here: http://www.oliselectricblues.co.uk/.


Word of mouth can work both ways. We’re all more inclined to trust the opinions of friends when they tell us about new music, but sometimes you here so much about a particular artist that you begin to wonder if they can live up to the hype. Stood outside the Cellars waiting for the doors to open I couldn’t help but ponder whether this would be the case tonight. No sooner had Oli and his excellent band taken to the stage though and my fears were blown right out the window. Make no mistake this guy can play. He’s 17 years of age and quite possibly the best guitar player I have ever seen live. Face hidden behind a curtain of hair as he hunches over his guitar and wrestles out of it some of the most blistering rhythms you’ll ever hear. His band are no slouches either, drummer Simon Dring keeps the beat beautifully, playing with a lovely subtlety and coming alive at the right moments to really punctuate the beats while Fred Hollis on the six stringed bass guitar is a fantastic musician, going from rhythm playing to soloing and showing a huge amount of charisma during his between song banter with Brown. In a set (or rather two, The band play their own support set) punctuated with some superb covers, not least among them a cracking rendition of Boom Boom, the highlight of the night was one of Oli’s own compositions, a song called Psycho, detailing the behaviour of a slightly obsessive female friend and delivered by a band doing a fantastic rendition of the traditional sixties trio sound. These three young men are, quite possibly, the most exciting live sound around, check them out now, because if there’s any justice in the world, they’ll be playing huge venues all too soon!

The First Post

Well, this is, as the title suggests, my first post here. I guess I should give you an idea what my blog is all about. Really this is just going to be a repository for all that's swilling about in my brain, as and when I have leave I will be posting here. Obviously I'll still be posting some reviews over at my myspace blog (http://blog.myspace.com/matt_merritt) but I'll also be writing extensively about music here, that being the thing that most drives me. Well, I hope that if you're reading this you'll be coming back to check the blog out as it grows.

Keep in touch,
Matt