New Artist Alert: Alice Avenue

The young and fresh blues trio named Alice Avenue have been born, hailing from Southampton, UK. Be sure to visit their Myspace page to check out for yourself their infectious bluesy delights.

Saturday Night: Live and Acoustic

The exclusive premier of the live acoustic version of Someday I'll Be Saturday Night was yesterday released to Tagged.com. Personally not a favourite song of mine, but you can check it out here.

When We Were Beautiful - Music Video

So the namesake to this blog's music video has been released by the band, and you can watch it here. It's not a particularly imaginative video, filmed solely in a live setting without any surpassing story-line and, as Jon tends to favour, the vocals are live but the music is taken from the album. More for fans of the song than those looking to be wowed...

Weekly Jools Bit

I guess this is turning into a regular feature to the blog when Jools is on TV...I realise it must be quite annoying if you actually watch the show, but remember my opinions are exactly those and hopefully it will open you up to at least one new artist worth checking out every week!

Mumford & Sons undoubtedly stole the show tonight, I want to see them live so bad! Their passion and energy when they play is unmatched; it's just so raw and true.

Hole, frounted by Courtney Love looked more like an attention-seeking experiment in the vain of 'I used to date one of the World's most famous rockstars so someone get me a band'. The 'singing' fits the feel of the music but it certainly isn't note perfect...having said that the overall product was quite interesting and groovy.

Joanna Newsom sat alone with her harp and sang beautifully; her vocals were obscure and child-like but the one song she performed was really beautiful and perfectly suited as she accompanied herself with the wonderful instrument that is the harp.

Beninese singer Angelique Kidjo and her rhythmically-brilliant African band had something really great to offer, as did the foot-tapping retro-rock n roll from Ian Hunter and his Rant Band. A much more enjoyable show overall this week!

In other news, my John Mayer tickets arrived this week and I'm very excited for that show, where he is to be supported by the great Ellie Goulding at the end of the month. One more week of Uni and I'm done for the summer, the gig went really well this week and my personal band project auditioned a fantastic singer yesterday so hopefully I'll be able to share with you some of my own music soon. For now though, enjoy the weekend :)

David Bryan misses MY show.

I'm really not happy about this. David Bryan is missing my show at the o2 on the 13th June...to go to an award's ceremony. Sure, it's a Tony, and Musical Theatre is really important to him. But more important than the band he's devoted his life to with his 'brothers'? The band who's gig he's missing, after claiming he waited "two days to bury my father because I had two shows to do".

OK, it might seem that I'm a little more bitter just because it's my show. But if I read that it was for the show before mine, I'd be thinking 'I'd be really pissed off if that was my show'. And so I am, because it is. When people are paying £75 a ticket for, let's face it, not great floor seats, and in excess of £1000 to stand in the pit and have a pre-show party with a nobody DJ, the least you'd expect is for the whole band to show up. It's not like Richie battling his demons in rehab, this is David choosing not to record a message to send with his apologies in case he wins, because he happens to be playing in the middle of a run of London shows. Really very disappointed.

Later with Jools Holland - This Week

Unfortunately I was really disappointed with Jools' show this week...The Gorillaz were the main act and were, to be honest, completely boring. The band create such a media hype whenever anything new is released but in my opinion they are overrated and were so uncomplicated it was just boring, not clever and effective as I would have hoped. In an interview, Damon Albarn said that The Gorillaz were spawned as a backlash from him watching an MTV music channel back in 1999 at there being nothing 'good' in the charts. So 11 years on, it's depressing to think that not much has changed...

Drive By Truckers were cool and groovy and reminded me of Bruce Springsteen, and there was also a drummer/singer with a DJ whos name I don't even care to mention it was that bad...his singing was just moany and wailing, and the drumming honestly sounded like an amateur child after a couple of lessons.

Fortunately the show was saved from complete disaster by Laura Marling, who just last week performed here in Southampton, UK. I hope the charts aren't sparking a full-on new-wave folk movement considering herself and Mumford & Sons creeping in of late because I'm enjoying the subtle fringes they currently occupy. I believe Marling is probably being replicated in clubs and universities up and down the Country, but there's definitely something about her which earnt her her record deal and I can see her being around for a couple of years.

I'm not in a bad mood, although this post does sound rather moany! Uni finishes next week, then I've a summer of gigs to look forward to. Have a good week all :)

I told you, it's the rule

Jon Bon Jovi: "Love's the only rule".
Billie-Joe Armstrong: "True love is the rule".

Great minds think alike :)