Tonight I headed for The Maze for the regular night Notts In A Nutshell. I have written about this gig (and others like it) before so rather than go over old ground here are a few key points to act as a recap to what I’ve already said.

·         The Maze does a fantastic job at promoting live music.

·         Not enough people who claim to champion new music attend this gig.

·         Bands should not leave before the end and take their mates with them; it is rude to the other bands.

·         I’m sure there are other things; why not use the list of tags below the blog to find past entries?

I was a little late arriving due to my lack of awareness; I seem to think that everything in the world is ten minutes away from my house. Most things are further than that. Phoebe Ball was playing as I handed over my three pounds, (that’s something I forgot to mention in the bullet points – I pay to get in this type of night as I like to imagine the bands get a bit of it). She was singing and playing electric guitar, in a city that has a few too many acoustic guitar/singers it was refreshing to see a different take. Phoebe not only had a lovely voice, but also wins my respect for staying until the end to support the rest of the lineup, as indeed did most of the ‘crowd’ tonight. Next up were four-piece prog influenced Toast who put in a good set and livened things up a bit for the remainder of the night which was bands from here on. They have a female drummer. No band with a female drummer can do wrong in my eyes.

I have only just found out about The Tangents, hardly surprising as this was their first gig. They recently started following my music Twitter accounts but I hadn’t had a chance to listen to them properly before seeing them, what better way to get a feel for a new band than live though! In the setting up time between Toast and The Tangents I went out to the smoking area to find the guitarist having a bit of a nervous wobble, I hope he doesn’t mind me saying that as what happened next was truly amazing. They played an absolute blinder of a set, showing that it shouldn’t be too long before you have to pay a lot more than three pounds to see them. This is why I try to attend these gigs, you never know what you’re going to find. Where were all the other champions of the Nottingham music scene while this was going on? Watching the football probably and not giving a shit about music. This is why I don’t get asked to judge band competitions, I would be letting the rest of the panel down by finding my way to the venue (a live music venue) without the aid of a map and compass.

Next up were The Mithered; musically very talented but at the same time very generic. I kept feeling as if I had heard the songs before somehow, and it was only good manners that prevented me from walking out. The way that the rest of the ‘scene’ wants to work against me, this band will probably be the one that gets bigged up to fuck and become the next big thing that they all wank over. However this is no guarantee of quality, they did it with Jake Bugg, and he is terrible.

PTO was the band I had originally turned up to see, having played them on The Sound of Nottingham UK before now. I was glad I turned up early enough to catch the entire lineup. I’m not trying to be insulting here, but there was no escaping the fact that they were a few years older than the rest of the bands on the bill, possibly a little misplaced on a night of young bands. They haven’t been together that long so technically they fitted the remit. PTO are a good old fashioned punk rock band (and a nice bunch of chaps too) and their age might have worked in their favour as they were the only band on the bill who looked like they were genuinely enjoying themselves, perhaps because they had nothing to prove.

It was nice to see the other bands sticking around to see the night through rather than pissing off as soon as they had performed. Maybe they were getting a few pointers in playing without giving a shit; if the music is good enough then it doesn’t matter how fashionable your trousers are kids!

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