28th October 2009
If Leicester City Council pulls the plug on the Summer Sundae Festival and its Fringe then that is another stab in the back for one of Leicester's biggest assets: Live music. The Council does little enough to help music in this city and to pull the rug from under an up and coming fringe event is disatrous and unacceptable. Roll on the next hustings when we will be able to question prospective members about their policy on music and entertainment. We hope there will be a sea change in policy, leading to a much greater degree of support from the Council for live music and the arts generally.
A huge row has broken out about the De Montfort Hall being £1.4 Million in the Red. By the time CURVE opened it was a staggering £35 million over budget. We didn't see any heads rolling then, because it was the Council's own flagship project.
15th August 2009
Leicester needs a new music venue
For over a year now, ArtsinLeicestershire has been following the tour dates of 20 of the top UK bands. None of them have come to Leicester.
Why do big bands by-pass Leicester? The answer is simple: we don't have suitable venues.
In its hey day, The Charlotte hosted just about every UK band that has got anywhere. The Shed and the Firebug are too small to attract touring bands of any distinction. The Musician is a fine venue and hosts some celebrated artists but is too small.
The Leicester University Venue has seen a succession of big named bands that have played there to sell-out audiences but it's closed now for refurbishment. Maybe when it re-opens later this year, early next year, after a £15m refit, we will see a good programme of bands once more, after the planned 1,700 capacity hall has opened. But it's out of town and many non-students feel they can't go there or are just not sure if they can. Great for students but will the townies be able to get in?
The DeMontfort Hall is run by Leicester City Council. The kiss of death for anything arts or entertainment? A recent Leicester Mercury article tried to penetrate the issue of why the DMH programme ignores band music in favour of everything else. Their funders demand they be all things to all voters. There were some really good comments added by readers.
Sales of recorded music have fallen behind sales of tickets to live events, so it's a good time to go for live. In times of economic depression, entertainment holds up because people want to loose themselves for a couple of hours.
The small Leicester venues put on a busy and varied lineup of bands and there is always at least one live gig every night of the week. But we have nothing to offer bands who want 500 to 800 capacity venues, so they all head off to Nottingham, Birmingham and Coventry.
This is sad not only because fans have to pay more to see top bands but also because our local bands can't get the support slots on their own doorstep. What we need around here is a BarFly or Academy level venue and some really hot booking agents. Hopefully Leicester University will fill that gap once more. But the UK chains have gone elsewhere because the planning authorities don't want to offer them city centre sites with good potential.
Millions of pounds were spent on CURVE, another City Council run venue, but so far not one band has played there, local or national.
Leicester City Council has no commitment to live music and no policy on the subject worth looking at. If anything, it's policies have handcuffed the local live venues to extortionate business rates, over-bearing rules and regulations and a plethora of petty obstructions.
Most elected members fail to realise that live music is one of the biggest assets that this city has got. But the Council have done nothing to celebrate this or to aid the growth of Leicester's reputation as a national centre of music excellence.
We need a new live music in Leicester of a 500 to 800 or more capacity. Not run by the Council but managed by people who really are in tune with contemporary music and the music fans of Leicester.
Leicester is the indie capital of the UK
Wednesday 15th October 2008
No other city or town in the UK has produced such a good crop of excellent bands as has Leicester. Leicester's top bands are writing the best songs in the country.
Leicester's indie rock bands stand out as being some of the best to be found anywhere in the UK. Leicester band The Chairmen beat 11,000 other bands for the coveted top place in the national Surface Unsigned competition. They did this because their songs were clearly the best, by any criteria.
Local bands The Heroes, Autohype, Razmataz and The Utopians have written amazingly good songs which, if released into the UK charts, would go straight to the top and become classic hits.
Bands such as M48, The Screening, The Dandilions, Project Notion and many others are putting on high quality sets with excellent musicianship, great vocals and, above all, highly listenable songs. They are good to watch live and have laid down incredibly good tracks in recording.
We know this because we (as Get Your Band On) have listened to thousands of tracks over the past five years, from bands in every part of the UK. We have not found another city or town which has produced so many great bands or in which you will hear so many indie rock songs as good as those being written by Leicester's bands.
It is our experience of listening to tracks every day for the past five years and of bringing bands to Leicester to play, from all over the UK, that confirms our knowledge of the nation's indie scene.
In the UK, Leicester stands out as being the most prodigious source of good music and musicians, with songs that stand up against the best being heard anywhere. Our city is a centre of musical excellence and one of the best places to be found for live music.
If labels are in search of new bands that will rise quickly into the top of the charts, they should be going to gigs in Leicester and listening to Leicester based bands. Our local bands are writing high quality songs and deserve to heard at national level. There is a great wealth of talent in this city and if labels are not looking for bands here, they are clearly looking in the wrong places.
A&R should be focusing their attention on bands such as The Chairmen, Autohype, Razmataz, the Heroes, The Utopians, The Screening, M48, The Dandilions and many other of our local bands because these are the bands of the future and the ones that are producing music that stands up to the best to be found in the UK.
Much more needs to be done to bring label reps to Leicester to hear music. If they want to find the highest quality talent in the UK, here in this city if where they should be spending their time.
Thursday 7th August 2008
Arts in Leicestershire calls for growth in live music festival
The Summer Sundae Weekender is almost here, heralded by a busy schedule of official fringe gigs and unofficial shows at a variety of venues. Now that Leicester has been recognised by the Arts Council as being a major national centre of live music (5th in the country), more needs to be done to develop our late summer live music festival.
The Local Authorities, Leicestershire Promotions, The Arts Council and the private sector should put their weight behind growing this weekend into a major national event. We would go so far as to say that it could become in the same league as the Edinburgh Festival.
Several organisations in Leicestershire have, over recent years, complained that the public authorities do not do enough to sponsor and support Leicester's festivals. Leicester City Council has recognised the huge economic and community value of there being a programme of festivals throughout the year. These events bring large numbers of people into the city and this has known commercial advantages for the local economy, the benefits running into millions of pounds.
Now, with the opening, later this year, of the only new theatre to be completed in recent times in the whole of Europe, CURVE will add additional resources to the potential of music and entertainment in the city. The Comedy Festival is already a well established part of our annual programme and has enjoyed a national standing and reputation for a number of years.
We would like to see the Summer Sundae week and weekend develop into a fully fledged live music festival, planned, coordinated and sponsored by public bodies and the private sector and marketed nationally to bring large numbers of people into the city to enjoy not only the finest of our local bands, singers and orchestras but also acts of national status.
The Leicester Live Music Festival could become one of the most important and beneficial events in the city's calendar, enhancing our reputation as a destination for music-loving audiences and earning much needed revenue for our hard pressed venues and artists.
We have argued before that Leicester should support a major rock festival
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