live at leeds 2010 has been a triumph thus far, but it’s not over yet. 13 venues, 170 bands, 3 afterparties and 2 for £5 marks and spencer salads later (couldn’t eat both, eyes bigger than belly), the party continues at the brudenell tonight from 6pm.
california’s crystal antlers released their debut album tentacles just over a year ago. it was met with generally favourable reviews and i, for one, like it. but i like them live even more. they’re going to destroy the brudenell with riffs running riot. check out the video to their title-track and single ‘tentacles’..
leeds based spectrals were set to support the drums at the cancelled friday 30th show at the cockpit. fucking volcano.
the band came out of nowhere last september, playing their first ever gig supporting grammatics at oporto, and have since gone on to firmly establish themselves as amongst the best we’ve got to offer in west yorkshire. fuzzy, lo-fi, but melodic pop that’ll have you bobbing your head. it’s good stuff, and the band’s live show has gone from good to brilliant and keeps getting better.
a once familiar bunch around ls6, bear driver have made the move from leeds to london and it feels like a bit of a rare treat seeing them at the brudenell again.
with a sold out self-released ep followed by a release on leeds-based dance to the radio in may and july ‘09, respectively, bear driver went on to play leeds and reading festivals being hand-picked for the slots by bbc introducing. a busy summer saw the bears migrate south and they’ve certainly been missed up north. i missed them at nation of shopkeepers yesterday and am super-stoked to get a second chance to see them.
oh, their song ‘no time to speak’ is one of my most favourite songs ever. if that means anything..
manchester band plank! are a lot better than their name suggests.
i can’t say i’ve heard of them before now, but that’s what i love about live at leeds. it’s as much about finding new music as it is the chance to see bands you might already know. an experimental electronic outfit, the guardian’s top new music said of them: “think fugazi crossed with slint crossed with stereolab crossed with awesome” (sat 24th april, 2010).
punk punk punk. twisted are about as punk as it gets in 2010.
collectively ex-members and members of facel vega, held by hands, state run, spectrals, wonderswan and cutting class originally dreamt up somewhere in south wales before migrating to0 leeds. they play raging garage punk/revolution summer emo with a strong diy ethic.
chicago-born jeff t. smith, aka juffage, has pretty much suprised and amazed everybody who’s seen him play in recent months.
now in leeds, studying for a master’s or something, juffage is a one man musical machine who i’m told is a bit like david thomas broughton meets lightening bolt. i’ve yet to see this man perform, but if recent reviews and hearsay are anything to go buy then i’m pretty psyched about this. i hear he’s in town on a student visa that’s not going to last forever. best catch him whilst i can..
hello. happy monday! i’m feeling a bit chirpy this afternoon. i’m not so sure why, but it’s probably partly because the line-up for the leeds and reading 2010 is announced this eve, with a launch party at the cockpit, and i’ll be there tweeting live as it happens. in between the mingling and the mini-pizzas, of course. exciting.
rumoured reformers, the libertines (photo: guy eppel)
last year’s festival was fun. sweaty, wet, muddy fun with a lot of cider, singing-along and moshing, and highlights including seeing local bands like bear driver, ellen and the escapades and middleman on the bbc’s introducing stage, the (still) slightly small, red, bird jumper i bought from blue rinse and that £1 spring roll on sunday night with the last of my pennies, that, at the time, taste like heaven. and i managed to get through the weekend without losing two grand’s worth of equipment this time. always a bit of a bonus.
tonight, melvin benn, director of festival republic, announces the line-up for leeds and reading 2010 after months of rumours and, after last year’s festival, i daren’t say he’s got a bit of a challenge ahead of him. by his own admission, last year saw “the most accessible line-up ever”, and tonight he’s got the task of topping that. with arctic monkeys, radiohead and kings of leon headlining, and the prodigy, bloc party and kaiser chiefs playing just before them, you could say you got twice as much for your money last summer.
reforming has been all the vogue over the past few months. bands across the board have come together again, from pavement to faith no more, playing festivals and sold-out headline shows across the country. even boy george, last week on bbc 5live, claimed culture club would be coming together again in 2011. yes!
but what excites me the most, i won’t lie, (it’s the 13 year old skater boy in me), is blink 182. i miss the old days, with my blink rabbit t-shirt and baggy jeans, and all the small things on full blast with my speakers pointing out of my window. god i was cool. the band, who’ve been at the center of rumours regarding who’ll be headlining the festival this year, have just confirmed a show at the o2 in dublin on 31st august. hmm, i wonder what else they’ve got planned for their time whilst they’re in the neighbourhood. LEEDS PLEASE!
another band rumoured to reform and headline leeds and reading is the libertines. the problems between singer-songwriters pete doherty and carl barât are no secret, with both being publicly vocal over the years. the band split in late 2004 and with only a handful of often impromptu musical appearances together since, the pair last played together in may last year at the rhythm factory in london at a tribute gig to old friend and babyshambles manager johnny sedassy who’d passed just before. that led to rumours they’d reunite for festivals that summer, but it didn’t happen. and so they’ve continued over the months with the guardian claiming, today, that’s it’s on for real this time. i’m not complaining.
other bands rumoured to headline include arcade fire and blur. truth be told, i didn’t even see blur at glastonbury last year, so i’m not to fussed about them. i was drinking a bottle of wine in a ditch with a box of noodles and the prodigy on in the background, having just seen mumford and sons play to the busiest, sweatiest tent i’d been in all week. i needed a breather, and all of the sobbing blur fans were a bit much to be honest!
anyway, i’ll leave you to ponder for now. follow us on twitter, tonight from 7pm, for live tweets as it happens at the festival launch. and check back soon for an interview with festival republic director melvin benn who we’ll be speaking to him tonight.
tickets for leeds and reading festivals 2010 go on sale tonight from 6.45pm. full details here.
last week, wednesday 17th, WHY? played a super-packed sold out show at the brudenell social club. i’d not seen them live before and was prettyyy excited about it. and i wasn’t let down. it was mega.
when WHY? were announced for the brudenell a few months back, my news feed thingy on facebook went a bit mad for a band i’d not even heard of. every other friend/foe was liking something WHY? related. (ha, i think i even clicked ‘like’ myself). but you get that sometimes, don’t you? complete cluelessness about a band you should have probably heard of, but haven’t.
a friend had also got a bit excited posting youtube vids of WHY? songs, too. the first of those being ‘these few presidents’, the first WHY? song i remember hearing and also the first song to have about 350 people singing along at the show. i was singing along too, as though i’d long been a fan for years. sweaty, sold out shows are nothing new at the brude, but it was the first time in a little while that i’d seen an entire crowd sing a song’s chorus. yoni was leaning into the crowd, pointing the mic at them, it was great. it felt like a festival.
i’d arrived at the brudenell a couple hours before doors to meet a friend for a drink. ben, from blood oranges, if you wondered. i took my pooch along too. it’s funny, an american dude i didn’t recognise came up to us and asked if he could play with the dog. i said sure, i didn’t mind, and looked at ben and whispered/mouthed something along the lines of “is he the guy from WHY?..?”. (ha, i’m pretty sure he heard.) but he was cool. it was andy (backing vocals/guitar), and he had a shar pei back in the us too. well, a half shar-pei. i think she was called edna. he got down and took a few pictures on his iphone to send to his girlfriend, then said thanks and goodbye and went away. i generally love people who love my dog. if you know me you’d know this. and it was like christmas had come early for her about half an hour later when i spotted andy, coming through the bar’s doors again, pointing towards us. he’d brought a friend this time. it was yoni, and the two of them got on their knees to play with my dog. super cool guys. super nice, and it’s no surprise how much their fans obviously love them.
the band played a lot of songs from alopecia, including ‘the hollows’ and ’song of the sad assassin’. they also played songs from their latest album, eskimo snow, with ‘against me’ definitely going down the bestest.
the gig was made even more special with two of leeds’ best artists, cameron steward and drew millward, coming together to produce an awesome print specially for the leeds show.
limited edition WHY? screenprint, edition of 62
it’s funny, towards the end of their set yoni told the crowd there was a riddle somewhere on the poster, and that the first person to figure it out gets a free one. the rush to cam and drew’s little coffee table come poster stall was insane, everyone trying their luck to save buying one for £10! it took ages for anybody to get it, though, and after one person got it right something strange happened.. everyone else seemed to get it right too. definitely no cheating going on there, just plain coincidence i’m sure. cam was nice enough to give away a second print, though, so somebody got lucky. if you’ve never seen the screen-printing process, have a read here. it’s impressive.
if you didn’t get a print on the night, cam’s got a few left at his store. get one!
live at leeds, the multi-venue’d wristband’d urban festival, is back bigger than ever in 2010. the final line-up has recently been confirmed and fuck me if you’ll find somewhere better to be that weekend.
live at leeds 2010 takes place on the end of april/start of may bank holiday weekend (30th april – 3rd may). having steadily grown over the years, this year’s event keeps with tradition by promising a gang of big bands for about the same money you’d spend on a cinema ticket and half a bucket of popcorn.
selling out early, last year’s live at leeds was a fun-packed weekend of music with performances that have gone down in leeds legend (mumford and sons at the brudenell, future of the left at the cockpit, pulled apart by horses at josephs well.. see the video below!), but a lot of people were left frustrated with the queues to get into some of the more popular venues. with acts like the maccabees, wild beasts, dinosaur pile-up and slow club a many more for just £10 it’s no surprise, really.
pulled apart by horse at joseph’s well, live at leeds 2009..
this year, organisers futuresound have stepped it up again, announcing more venues and more bands, and live at leeds 2010 is looking like it’s going to be gooooood. some of the bands playing live at leeds 2010 include the bronx, the sunshine underground, lightspeed champion, the twilight sad, blue roses, tubelord, woodpigeon and about 170 odd more.
and, of course, wild beasts, the kendal-by-leeds 4-piece who headline this year’s festival and who’ve spent the past twelve months deservedly being recognised across the board as one of the best bands not only to come out of england in recent years, but on an international level too. bassist tom fleming said: “we’re hugely excited about headlining this year’s festival! it’s a big deal for us. it’s going to be the first time we’ve played leeds in ages and we really feel like we’re amongst friends at live at leeds. we can’t wait!”
nor can i, with a line-up bigger than ever and more venues than you can shake a stick at, i’ve got to admit i feel a bit spoiled living in leeds sometimes.
all-day saturday tickets are £15 from lunatickets.co.uk and several other outlets, with full information on where here.
tickets for the drums on friday 30th are £10 here, and tickets for british sea power at the holy trinity church on monday 3rd are £13.50 here.
entry to the crystal antlers show at the brudenell on sunday 2nd is free with a live at leeds wristband, or £5 on the door.
keep an eye out for a full preview with stage times, locations and band reactions, coming soon..
london based la shark have played leeds twice this month. last week they supported paloma faith at the o2, and a couple weeks before that they played host to a packed hi-fi club at the awesome monthly party silver hips.
the band, whose live shows have become things of legend on the london underground, release their new single ‘a weapon’ on 5th april. and, before embarking on a full national tour with paloma faith that kicked off on the 17th in glasgow, they played a small handful of shows in london and leeds. one of which included one of my favourite clubnights silver hips.
‘a weapon’ is a cool, jerky, disco-indie track that’s splattered with 80s appeal and you get the feeling the band had the sugarhill gang on repeat before recording it. it’s fun, and i’m not sure if they meant to create a weird sort of old school hip-hop come indie-pop hybrid, but it works.
the pillock i am, i couldn’t make it to the hi-fi club to catch them at silver hips. i can’t remember why, i’ve been kicking myself ever since, but the band have let us in on a bit of a the magic of being on the road (or not, as it turned out..) and all the gossip about their trip to leeds, kindly writing a little diary of their day for us. have a read..
after a 9-hour journey that should have taken only 5, a little out of our minds, we arrived in the fair city of leeds half an hour before our stage time of midnight. not enough words can fit on a page to describe the amount of boredom you can endure whilst broken down for 4 hours, just outside of leicester in a “welcome break” service station, in the freezing cold, waiting for the aa to come and hot-wire your car back into service. the break was about as welcome as a punch in the face.
the aa come to the rescue, hurrah!
our keyboard player sami was lost in an existential nightmare over whether to have his second kfc, just to tell the average looking girl behind the counter that he loved her. our drummern nick, spent all his money on chewable toothbrushes and flavoured condoms as he went to the toilet a record number of 8 times in 3 hours. ben, our guitarist, resorted to doing laps around the coach car park to keep warm. and our manager, jake, went asking truckers, collecting their receipts to claim compensation back from our hours lost in the vortex of time from the aa.
once we got to leeds it was sickdiculous. silver hips, at the hi-fi club was the gig we played, run by our good friend luke jones who we met on tour last year with good shoes. an awesome night of old school hip-hop and motown. the last time we were in leeds we were playing in josh weller’s band supporting the maccabees at the cockpit over 2 years ago. different crowd of people this time, the club felt a lot like an underground london club. very swish. we were only in leeds for about 11 hours but in the morning a little stroll round hyde park was a good way to say goodbye.
hopefully the next time we’re back the van won’t break down, we’ll get a sound check, and we can spend some more time sampling the delights leeds has to offer… hopefully see you then, many thanks for coming to the gig if you did.
love, la shark
so, a lesson learnt. the aa aren’t so bad, fried chicken isn’t really an excuse to declare love, and “sickdiculous” is a word you’ll probably start hearing a lot more soon. so note it down. and remember where you heard it first.
silver hips, who’ve recently featured bands like dutch uncles and loose talk costs lives as well as la shark, play host to good shoes on april 29th in an intimate gig as part of their album tour. tickets are £5 from seetickets and jumbo, and will probably sell out soon.
la shark release ‘a weapon’ on 5th april. keep an eye on lashark.co.uk for mor information on that..
