Fri 28 Aug – Reading Festival 2009

August Bank Holiday, and once again thousands flock to either Reading or Leeds to wear silly hats for three days of binge drinking, post-apocalyptic camping and occasionally a bit of music too. Here is your whirlwind guide to that latter part, starting with Dananananaykroyd, who are worth the stupid name. They’re gloriously chaotic fun as a live act and wake up the early attendees in the NME tent with their double drummers and tendency to play skipping games with lead wires or attack each other with microphones. Pity Manchester Orchestra can’t really…

Sat 4 Oct – Data.select.party, Colour, Canterbury, Butterflies On Strings, Cold Hearts

Chances are, if you are either old enough to buy alcohol, have a job, or are Stephen Libretto, it’s been a long time since you’ve been to a local gig full straggly unsigned bands who are unsigned for a reason and if there is any justice in the world will remain that way forever. However, due to the death of music and capitalism coinciding rather nicely at this time (so I hear), you too may find yourself in clubs that are little more than prefabs with stages that…

Sat 17 Nov – Arcade Fire, Clinic, Wild Light

Actually, that title may seem a bit of an exaggeration. You must be sick of people saying how brilliant The Arcade Fire are all the time. But you should still go and experience them.

I say this because for my 16th birthday present I managed to persuade my Dad to part with a substantial amount of money to go with two friends to see them live at Alexandra Palace, yesterday. So, after getting lost in my friend's neighbourhood trying to find her house, getting lost in the IKEA restaurant queue (yes,…

This week, the music world has suffered a tragic loss that almost went completely unnoticed in the press. Timmy Timmo, former singer with The Jab Band and figurehead of Slough's infamous Cough Syrup Scene has left us and gone to the great exclusive drinking club in the sky. Timmy was one of the great music geniuses of our time, who sung with the voice of an angel with a hangover and possessed the lyrical skill of your favourite generation spokesmen mixed in a blender and served on a plate, with a side salad that was entirely his own. With The…

There is a popular notion that teenage rebellion is a thing of the past, that we no longer have the bloody cheek to get outrageous haircuts and listen to bands with androgynous lyrics that make our parents worry about our mental health. This is simply not true. 'Kids Today' still dress like idiots, shut themselves in their bedrooms listening to music that still has the power to corrupt, and still go out at weekends smoking drinking and doing all the other fun activities that have a minimum age limit. While most parents would like to discourage this sort of behaviour,…

RIP Beautiful South
There are those of you on here who believe Beautiful south are nowhere near the high standard their music collection consists of. Mentioning no names…

There are also those who don't care about this band, are laughing at The Kid Whose Favourite Band Just Split or have never heard of them. Understandable.

Then there's the rest of you, who today have been avalanched by these sort of messages all day so probably will ignore this.

Today the Beautiful South after 18 years and 10 albums (not counting greatest hits) as a band have split. Big Deal.

As…