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17th August

Gearing up for Strawberry fields

Saturday 28th August sees the launch of a new music festival in Leicestershire. Strawberry fields is creating a buzz and already has a line up of some of Leicester's top bands, supporting national acts such as Example and the Holloways. Organisers of the new festival have already laid plans for a second event in 2011. The stage looks set for the emergence of what could be a major new part of Leicestershire's live music scene.

See our feature article on the StrawBerry Fields festival

29th July

Welcome to Sub91

Artsin took a preview look at Leicester's newest live music venue - Sub91 - opening soon in Leicester's Granby Street, in the heart of the city centre. The 300+ capacity venue features a fully equipped sound stage with impressive arrays of production lighting, a quality sound system with five monitors on stage and an air-conditioned main room with bar.

The first big band to take to the new stage will be The Damned who are booked to play on Tuesday 17th August. Tickets are on sale now and we will be there to cover the opening night.

25th July

Yet more live music coming up

Promoters Biff, Bang Pow! told us:

The weekend never starts round here? Well it does . it really does. We know Leicester gets bad press, touring bands don't always come and play etc But how many other cities have great festivals in their city centre like Summer Sundae? We believe Leicester should be celebrated and want to show the rest of the UK it has something to offer. So many people have said there's nothing much going on in Leicester. So we wanted to change that by showing that, along with Summer Sundae Fringe and Summer Sundae Festival, Leicester is the place to be in August.

'Lose Your Cool' is a brand new Leicester festival being held at Firebug. Organised by Leicester club nights Lava Lounge & Biff Bang Pow we aim to bring some great new bands to Leicester and provide a great soundtrack to your Bank Holiday weekend.

Two new live music venues open in Leicester

The Auditorium opened its doors for the first time today to give people a preview of what is in store for them when it officially opens in September.

Behind the new venture is Tim Sturgess, who ran the Charlotte for a few months earlier this year before its final closure and Melting Pot promoter, Paul Collins.

Our first impressions: once you have managed to negotiate the mind-boggling hall of mirrors that form the entrance up to the main room, you find yourselves in a very big area. The main room is rather like the Athena, with its three tiers. The spacious area at the top, currently carpeted, gives a good view of the stage. Part of the odd middle section houses the sound control and down at the bottom is where the crowd can gather to dance or mosh to their favourite bands. This is where you currently find the tiny bar.

There are plans, we are told, to introduce new bar areas and replace much of the carpet with wood flooring. Hopefully that will include some seating, somewhere in the building. Especially towards the end of the night, a lot of the fans were sitting on the floor.

What we saw last night was temporary. The stage area was backed with black curtaining and the stage lighting was adequate. Hopefully in September we will see a full production lighting rig. Acres of funerial black curtaining doesn't exactly feed the joyous experience of live music. There is no smoking area within the building, so a large chunk of the audience were outside sitting on the market stalls, seeking respite from the stuffy heat of the main room, whilst trying to dodge the various characters who inhabit this part of Leicester on a Saturday night.

With 1500+ people in there, air conditioning will be a must. Tonight however, the audience was thin on the ground. With the outdoor "stage" running at the same time as the indoor one, the total attendance was split between the two areas, so overall numbers were difficult to guage, but clearly less than the organisers were hoping for.

The PA system was hired in from an external company; most people we spoke to thought the overall sound level was too loud and although you could hear well enough, even right at the back of the hall, the volume was set louder than you would expect for comfortable listening and some sections of some bands were mashed by the burdensome over powering of the system.

These and many other issues might well be sorted out by September. We all know that rock music tends to be, by nature loud, but loudness is not what it's about; fans want to hear the music as it comes off the stage. Even a high octane metal band can have layers of musicality that gives the songs depth and interest. That can be lost by over-pumping the general master volume.

Everyone we spoke to could see the potential of this venue. Leicester has for many years needed 1000+ capacity venues to attract in bigger bands and in September we will have two big venues capable of pulling in some of the rising touring bands that pass Leicester by as they head up the motorways for Nottingham, Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds.

The key question in all this is - will the ticket buying fans of Leicester, turn out in enough numbers often enough to sustain these venues? We suspect that The Auditorium will not be able to survive on rock music alone and will be offering pop, hip hop, R n B, and other genres because that is where our local market is at.

Leicester is always cited as being a culturally diverse city. That means that the market for music is fragmented into a variety of camps and both venues and promoters have to give people what they want.

Nottingham has it's Rock City (capacity 2,451) but that has a long history and is one of the best known venues on the UK circuit. A quick look at their gigs listings shows it's not all about bands and it's not always about rock.

The vision of a city centre, independent venue committed to giving opportunities to local artists to appear on stage with bigger touring bands is one that we applaud. The live music industry however is one of the hardest businesses to make successful and in Leicester that challenge is always going to be more than in most comparable cities.

Read our reviews of bands that played on the day

4th July

Soundhouse opens

A new live music venue opened its doors last night (3rd July). Located in Southampton Street, in the heart of the Cultural Quarter, the SoundHouse used to be the Queen Victoria Pub. The building has had a complete make over and a sound stage has been installed on the ground floor. Offering good production lighting and a first class sound system, the venue can play live bands and provide enough space for a reasonably good crowd of people.

sound house stage

16th June

Web site hits the dust

Artsin's web site Leicesterbands.info has been laid to rest. The .info domain name was purchased for a year (after a bargain deal on the price was offered) and when its 12 month life span ran out, we let it go.

The web site listed all Leicester bands, venues and promoters with contact details. It was excluded from the search engines and made available only to industry contacts.

There are plans now to add the information from the old web site to Artsin.

12th May

O2 heading for Leicester

Wednesday 12th May 2010; Academy Music Group (AMG), whose shareholders include Live Nation, SJM Concerts and Metropolis Music, announced today the successful conclusion of negotiations with the University of Leicester’s Students’ Union to launch O2 Academy Leicester on campus in September 2010.

The Students’ Union, housed in the Percy Gee building, is the heart of the University of Leicester and currently undergoing a £15m development. The introduction of the 1,450 capacity live music and club venue is an integral feature of this programme, with first-class facilities to cater for the biggest live acts on the touring circuit.

With a vibrant local scene, there will be two additional production-complete venues on site, O2 Academy2 Leicester (500 capacity) and O2 Academy3 Leicester for 250 patrons, all of which will operate independently, as well as simultaneously.

The investment forms part of the university’s £1 billion development framework plan and Leicester has nearly 23,000 students, ranking among the top in the country for student satisfaction and Students’ Union services.

“Students now choose where to study based on the social and cultural aspects of a town or city, as well as the university’s academic reputation, and it is a positive step to introduce the O2 Academy brand to Leicester in partnership with the Students’ Union. It’s refreshing to work with like minded individuals within this sector, aiming to improve facilities and live entertainment. O2 Academy Leicester will put the city back on the touring circuit as a primary destination, with all live gigs open to the general public as well as students” says Academy Music Group Chief Executive Officer, John Northcote.

“This stunning development will bring our Union into the 21st century and establish Leicester as the university of choice for aspiring students” adds Trevor Page, Chief Executive of the Students’ Union.

“In years gone by, the Percy Gee building welcomed gigs from the likes of The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Jam and The Smiths and by working with Academy Music Group, we will once again attract top quality acts that music fans associate with O2 Academy venues nationwide.” Max Cawthorn, Student Officer.

Professor Helen Atkinson, Chair of the Percy Gee Project Redevelopment Team, says: “Students everywhere are coming to university wanting more than just a degree. They are concerned about the whole lifestyle of being a student – from the particular bands that have gigged at the Union, right the way through to whether the university has Fairtrade status. This news, coupled with the large investment the university is making in developing the Union in other ways, will place the University of Leicester at the forefront of developing the best experience for its students, and will help us to consolidate our position as one of the top universities in the UK.”

13th March

The Charlotte closes its doors for the last time

The last ever gig at Leicester's legendary music venue, The Charlotte, took place last night (Saturday 13th March). The building is to be developed by its owners, a property company, into flats. The final night saw several of Leicester's top bands and artists performing at the venue and a fair-sized crowd turned up to see them. Originally called The Princess Charlotte, the old public house in Oxford Street used to play bands in its small back room. It was enlarged and turned into a music venue with a stage and became a destination for most of the nation's touring bands during the 1980s and 1990s. Many of the bands that appeared on the stage of the Charlotte later became household names.

1st March

Death of John Murray

News has just reached us of the sad death of John Murray, who was for many years the Manager of Ictus, the pop-rock band from Anstey. John was a well known personality on the Leicester music scene and for over six years or more his life was totally devoted to his beloved band, of which his son was a member. John pursued his role as manager with huge energy and enthusiasm and made many famous friends in the music industry, including Neville Staples from the Specials. Editor of Artsin, Trevor, said: "John was an enormously friendly and caring character; it was through him that I got involved in the bands of Leicester and in live music. I owe him a great deal of gratitude for that and he will be missed by many, many people."

18th January

Top band announces home town gig

Maybeshewill invite you to a very special show at Leicester's Y Theatre on 16th October 2010.

"Leicester's Maybeshewill spent 2008 and 2009 playing an incredible number of dates around the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, as well as sold out shows as far afield as Russia and Japan."

This is our first home-town headline show in over a year, and we're planning to make a bit of an event of it. We'll be debuting new material from our forthcoming third album, rehashing some older songs, and busting out everything we can to make it a fucking awesome night.

ALSO, perhaps more importantly, we're inviting some of our favourite bands from across the country - some we've met on our travels, some we've toured with, some we've released records by and some we just love to pieces to join us for an EPIC day and night of amazing music.

To top it all off, we're in the middle of filming a documentary about our city's music scene entitled 'Co-Conspirators' and we'll be debuting the film in it's entirety between bands. VERY SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCES WILL BE ANNOUNCED IN THE FORTHCOMING MONTHS. TICKETS AVAILABLE IN 2010 FROM SEE TICKETS, GIGANTIC, WE GOT TICKETS, ROCKABOOM AND FIREBUG.

New Music Promotions company opens.

16th January

A new music promotion company has started up in Leicester. They are called SHADOW PROMOTIONS and will be bringing both signed and new unsigned bands to the Leicester public. The The people behind Shaw Promotions are Sarah Bee and Christopher Johnson. "It has been a long time coming for the Leicester music scene, and it is much needed. It will also give the local bands a chance to support some well known bands, " Sarah told us.

Shows already confirmed so far are THE TOWERS OF LONDON with support from local band THE HEROES on 4th March, and TWISTED WHEEL with support from two great local bands THE CHAIRMEN & KIDS IN CARS on 20th March. A fundraiser in aid of STRUMMERVILLE (The Joe Strummer Foundation For New Music) with headline band REDTRACK is set for 17th April.

Details of the shows are on our gigs list.