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Liverpool Music Week draws to a close this weekend and although almost three weeks revelry is enough for anyone, I am really looking forward to next year. Last night our first stop was Noisecore at a basement venue called Bar Fresca. Noisecore does what it says on the tin. It was like walking into the cinema halfway through a Star Wars battle. It seems that they let a couple of sound effects technicians out of the asylum on day release. I was told that last time they put a night on, last year, there were people bashing spades on the floor and hitting the wall with iron bars. If you can imagine the 30 seconds before a The Prodigy break into ‘Smack My Bitch Up’, the collision of sound that leads up to the actual tune when they play it live? Well it was like that, but all night.

Django Django were on at Bumper followed by Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and headlining was Jaguar Skills - you may have heard this guy on Radio 1. I think he may have musical Tourettes as he mixed each tune in for about 15 seconds before bringing the next one in. The clientele in Bumper loved it, the place was rocking until about 1.30am, when we headed down to a club called La Bateau to see The Futureheads DJ set. I spoke to Jaff after his set who told me why his DJ set is so different from the music of The Futureheads.

"To be honest I think that a lot of the music that goes down well in clubs, we don't really make,” he said, “We make kind of dance-y music but you have got to have your eyes open to what people listen to in clubs and that's what we're doing here tonight to get people to dance and to let people enjoy themselves.”

Jaff you just dropped 'Don't Stop Me Now' by Queen at the end of your set. This is a great song but sits comfortably in the collection of a wedding DJ, not a club DJ

"I love Queen they are one of my favourite bands, I appreciate we don't sound like them but our harmonies all came from Queen, like."

On that note we walked back up to Magnet for an after hours party to finish off the night and to polish off our visit to this fine city.

Everyone I spoke to speaks very highly of the annual event and loved every minute of it. The diversity of talent that is on offer in the array of local venues is second to none.

Read my full review of LMW and check out what Mike Deane has to say to Virtual Festivals in his blogs and our interview.

It's not the leaving of Liverpool that grieves me; it's my car key when I think of thee.

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Well I am back in 'The Pool' for another dose of music and mischief. Tonight a storm blows around the country and Liverpool is no exception. That north wind howls around The Albert Dock, lashing the rain against the cobbled streets and red bricked, converted factories and dock buildings, that now host a tourist’s haven of bars, cafes, hotels, shops, a slave museum and The Beatles Story, all nestled together like penguins on the edge of the Mersey, as if to keep warm against the elements.

My hotel room overlooks the dock and the Liver Buildings. The dock is host to a fleet of sea worthy vessels, stained by the ghosts of their maritime past and eager to set sail, as a fog horn from a passing ferry bellows across the open waters and reverberates over the city. It's good to be back.
 
At times like these we appreciate a festival that is all indoors. We have all braved the weather at many UK summer festivals and quite frankly, there is not much worse than a wet weekend in a field. Don't get me wrong, I love the UK festival scene and I just can't get enough of the Bacchanalia, but when your bones have spong-ified and your skin has lost its water proof lining, due to 5 days of torrential rain and lack of sleep, it kind of takes the sparkle out of the good old English summer.
 
Mike Deane, the founder of Liverpool Music Week has pulled a blinder here. After seven years running, the music scene in Liverpool is as vibrant as ever. Tonight we will be seeing Marina and the Diamonds at Masque, Hot Club de Paris and Field Music at Bumper, then back to Masque for a performance by The Bays. I have been told there are also a couple of clubs afterwards close by to carry on the party so another mad weekend ahead.  
 
And this time the car stays at home.

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Friday the 13th was another thrilling and culturally fulfilling night. Loads of friendly people engrossed in conversations about music, and in particular Liverpool music. This city has always had that edge when it comes to popular culture. Back in the 1950's when the boats used to bring in blues and rock and roll records from America and Jamaican rhythms from the West Indies, the Liverpudlians were first in line to embrace the sounds from other cultures as this port lovingly hugs the river Mersey and the Irish Sea.
 
I bumped into a couples of lad's that had been kicked out of The Echo Arena for smoking, “Ee arr mate have you got a light? We've just been kicked out of The Monkeys” ... surely not, I thought, you look far too young. I found out later that the venue was host to The Arctic Monkeys, not the pseudo Beatlesque cartoons of the sixties. “Do you want any Garrys?” The other one said with a mad smile on his face dancing to the ringtone of my mobile as it rang. It was a message letting me know that Marina and The Diamonds had started half an hour ago so we skipped them and headed up to Bumper where Hot Club de Paris and Field Music were to play.

The main room was jam packed and very hot, quite fitting as Hot Club were on stage as we walked in, I met Mike Deane, the organiser for the first time and we chatted about LMW and the course of the rest of the night. He recommended an after show party at The Loft later which is upstairs in Masque. Field Music are making a comeback with a very unique style of songs. Their presence reminds me of the Joy Division/New Order cusp of mutation. Their persona is electric. The singer/guitarist swapped with the drummer halfway through the set pounding out off beats to a cutting bass line and jaggered guitar rhythm.
 
The Bays were about to come on back at Masque so we headed on down there. The beauty of Liverpool is, all the venues are really close by, so it's easy to hop from one band to another. It turned out that the band were on late so I stood at the bar overlooking the stage and became engrossed in a conversation about the history of music since the late 1980's. It happened that we talked most of the way through the impromptu performance of The Bays who don't rehearse and no set is ever the same. What a show! Dynamic sound, that venue is amazing, well worth a visit. And The Bays deserve more of my attention too. I will have to catch up with them another time.

We took Mike's advice and stayed in Masque, upstairs, The Loft was host to dubstep/drum and bass night 'Eat Your Greens' - again, packed out and jumping. Everyone was well into it through to the early hours of the day, though the comfort of my bed called as my limited energy supply needed to be conserved for a busy weekend ahead.
 
We sat on the dock for a while watching the spaceships roll in ... or was that a dream?
 

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What can I say? Liverpool Music Week is plainly one of the finest winter festivals around. It's not just the diversity of acts on offer and it isn't just the fantastic venues that host the talent. Festivals like these can easily be ruined by attitude, especially in a major city. Liverpool is home to some of the most friendly, warm-hearted and welcoming people in the world and I can't wait to get back there this coming Friday.

Last night we headed up to The Olympia, a Victorian style music hall, to see Seasick Steve play a brutally raw, unadorned thumping set of pure delta blues of his own variety. He entered the stage with a bottle of red wine in one hand and his little three-stringed trance wonder guitar in the other. Wasting no time at all, he broke into his first number with his Mississippi drum machine at his foot, pounding the beats to his beautiful blues licks and deep south holler, painting pictures of life in another time to a mixed audience. He was then joined by his drummer Dan Magnusson who played perfectly to Seasick's rhythms as he swapped his guitar for a cigar box with pick ups and a bullet case on the end. This man can get a sound out of a stone. He played for an hour then had an interval. At this point we had to dash as we had a busy night ahead.

Next stop, The Nation Courtyard to see Sheffield indie rockers Reverend and the Makers. To be honest I wanted to stay for the rest of Seasick's set. I am not a big fan of the Reverend but the band played a pretty good set with all that radio pop thrown in and between songs John McClure got the crowd roaring with slogans like 'Fuck The BNP' and rogue anti-war and anti establishment poetry which impressed me lots. He is not just a pretty face. After the gig we went outside as he busked on an acoustic guitar and we all had a little sing song in the cobbled street.

It was getting cold so we made a move to Bumper to see MAPS play an electro pop set on two keyboards and a plethora of boy’s toys. The sound was first class, resembling Air and Spiritualized with an electronica/acid house feel. They have just released their second album ’Turing of the Mind’. James Chapman entertained the crowd with his dry wit and sparkly eyes between songs announcing one of the songs with, “this one’s about murder, especially murdering ex-girlfriends.” There was a whooping from the crowd. James retorted, “We have a murderer in the crowd!” He went on to talk about murdering and raping his mum before starting the song. Dry, harmless wit from a very strange individual indeed.

After the set we hightailed down to Kazimier to finish the night off with a bit of dubstep and catch half of the Gentleman's Dub Club live set, which was my highlight of the whole weekend. Firstly the club has been beautifully renovated in a burlesque circus style. The dance floor is in the middle, in front of the stage surrounded by balconies with sofas and chandeliers and street art adorning the walls and ceilings. The sound system took on a whole new frequency in bass and the band played a jaw dropping dubstep, ska and dub set with live instruments and a heart stopping sub bass that raised the Kazimier to a frenzy as the crowd were in uproar dancing all over the place. A very cool and happy crowd. This club is pretty underground now and it would be a shame to see it lose its sub-cultural atmosphere. The last thing we need is for the nights to become commercial so this is a best kept secret and a gem in a warm, exuberant and embracing city where I left a little piece of my heart in those rain drenched red bricks, and my car key in some venue or other.

Yes, I was care free enough to lose my car key along with all inhibitions... my only car key. So I spent most of Sunday with the fear of never returning home, which was 200 miles away. I managed to track down a Liverpudlian locksmith. According to Mike Deane, the organiser of LMW, the best locksmiths in the world. He came, drilled holes in my car, gave me a new ignition and two keys. He got into that car and got it started faster than Icky from One Summer. Not the best end to such a fantastic weekend but I am back on Friday for another dose of Scouse magic, finishing the festival off with a Kasabian interview. See you then.

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Here we are at Liverpool Music Week feeling a little fragile after last nights revelry. Twisted Wheel played a blinder in The Masque Theatre, considering Jonny, who we interviewed after the gig in the back of the band van, is coming down with what he thinks is swine flu, he caught it off the bass player Rick, who had it last week. The scousers loved them. They are starting to build a good fan base after supporting bands like Oasis, Paul Weller, Ian Brown, Happy Mondays and Kasabian on major tours across the country, in Europe and Japan. This is a band that we are definitely going to see more of in the future, the energy on stage last night spilled out onto an welcoming and appreciative audience.
 
Later we moved from the theatre into Ink which is a tattoo studio rock and roll bar.
 
Rojister from The Punning Clan played with 4i2i hip hop crews 'til the early hours, it was refreshing to see intelligent talents spitting their unique brand of rhymes onto the Liverpool collective.

We chatted to the boys after their gig and they were all really sound lads. Mowgli who also performed with 4i2i gave us his debut album.
 
Local DJs played us into the morning before we made our way back to the hotel after a brilliant night.
 
Tonight we are going to see Seasick Steve at The Olympia, Reverend and the Makers at Nation Courtyard, which is where Cream use to be held, followed by a dose of rockabilly at Zanzibar before MAPS at Bumper, then finishing the night off back at Zanzibar with a dubstep set.
 
So a very busy night ahead…
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The streets of Liverpool are on fire this weekend with the crackle of energy that is Liverpool Music Week.  Spread over 20 city centre venues with around 400 acts performing in over 80 events exhibited over two weeks.

50 years ago, on these same streets, four lads were about to shake the world with their own take on rock and roll. You can almost hear the jangle of guitars reverberating like ghosts off the Liver buildings and around Mathew Street, in and out of The Nation Courtyard, The Masque Theatre and Alma de Cuba. Clattering around the Albert Docks to be blown back inland by the Mersey breeze, crash landing on a stage in Bumper, host to some of the finest acts around in the coming week. The four lads who shook the world then have become two old men sat on a park bench like book ends, and the world once again is in need of a good shake.

Boethius once said that history is a wheel. "Inconsistency is my very essence", says the wheel. "Rise up on my spokes if you like, but don't complain when you are cast back down into the depths. Good times pass away, but then so do the bad. Mutability is our tragedy, but it is also our hope. The worst of times, like the best, are always passing away". It seems tonight that wheel has been twisted by this city of culture and sent on a buckled journey up the rain-drenched, cobbled backbeats to the pinnacle of our sonic evolution.

With Kasabian, Seasick Steve, The Enemy, Reverend and the Makers, The Brand New Heavies, The Specials, Calvin Harris, Super Furry Animals, Gallows, Soft Toy Emergency, Daniel Johnson, Wild Beasts, Chrome Hoof, Bombay Bicycle Club, MAPS, The Bays, The Invisible, Grammatics, Field Music and Dananananakroyd highlighting the two week event, plus a plethora of local and submerging talents from all over the globe, history is being made.

Tonight, Friday 6 November, Twisted Wheel, a new three piece guitar band from Manchester, play The Masque, a newly refurbished night club and venue with it's own tattoo studio rock and roll bar, 'Ink', 'The Loft' and host to our revolutionary threesome 'The Theatre', which is where I will be going tonight. I will be interviewing the band after the gig then checking out what is going on in the rest of the venue.

Here we go.

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