Bands from far away - come to the UK !

The world of the internet has opened up may newer resources for discovering bands. Simply google a few of your favourites and following links can often lead to new band ideas (not via the amazon.co.uk recommendations though, which whilst interesting to one or two degrees generally ends up recommending everyone would like "the killers" and whatever is in the charts that week).

But now I've followed the links, surfed some "MP3 blogs" - blogs like mine that track free download tracks of new bands, such as www.thecatbirdseat.com, read some indie review sites like www.pitchforkrecords.com, seen what others are listening to via their last.Fm profiles and maybe even played with some web2.0 music players such as the computer game like theSixtyOne. And from all this I now have a selection of bands I want to hear more from... but without the required level of fame, they don't want to play in the UK yet... because they are still fairly small bands.

This makes me more aware than usual of the gulf between bands who "have made it" and "are trying to make it". There doesn't appear to be a smooth curve, or gentle steps up those rungs. People have herd mentalities as my girlfriend's father often tells me, and with musical taste it is true. Not that this is a band thing, it helps define our "tribe" when we are young and gives us common interests at work and means we can go to cheap nightclubs and gleefully dance to shameful music, because we all know the songs and can dance to them together. But freeing yourself from the cycle really offers rewards - only then are you really into "music" for music alone, and it's a shocking world of discovering what quality works of music are relatively unheard outside of a few towns, despite the music being wildly more fun, accessible and tuneful than more famous artists of there genre.

But I digress from what was to be a "list post" - bands that should come to the UK, and until then, deserve your support :)

Belguim - Hooverphonic, dEUS
Australia - Howling Bells, Little Birdy
USA - Jonathan Coulton, Over the Rhine

Well, that's all I can think of. But anyone spotting UK gigs by these bands should contract me at the usual address !