Liverpool Music Week 1

Like all good festivals, Liverpool Music Week has grown from a tiny, local festival for tiny, local people to one of the biggest inner-city festivals in the country.

A quick history lesson; LMW began in 2003 in a single bar called T-Factory showing eight bands a night on three stages. A year later and it’s back in the same bar, but it’s got some big local interest. 90 bands played across three stages and Ian McCulloch played a covers set of his all-time favourite songs. Needless to say there were queues running round the block for the entire week of shows.

The following festivals saw bigger names, bigger venues and bigger crowds come to the city. The 2007 festival was really stretching the definition of ‘week’ by about four days, but this year is absurd. A 19-day run of live shows, incorporating practically every venue across the city centre. Those big names include The Specials (Olympia Theatre, 29 October), The Enemy (Liverpool University, 08 November), Calvin Harris (Liverpool University, 10 November), and closing the festival will be Kasabian (Echo Arena, 16 November). Be careful though, these shows will not be cheap, and most will be sold out.

The best thing about LMW is that most bands worth seeing are free entry. The Masque, Alma De Cuba and Bumper are all free venues. The Masque will have one of the most celebrated cult singer/songwriters of the past 20 years, Daniel Johnston on 3 November. If that wasn’t enough, he will have members of Hot Club De Paris and Wave Machines as his backing band. This will be without a doubt the highlight of the festival. Make sure you go to the screening of The Devil & Daniel Johnston across the road at FACT before the show. If you’ve never heard of Johnston before, this is the best possible introduction to him and his work.

Also at the Masque will be beatbox-jazz weirdo Son Of Dave (30 Oct), indie heroes Bombay Bicycle Club (04 Oct) garage rock wizards Dinosaur Pile-Up (08 Nov) and Klaxons favourites Chrome Hoof (10 Nov). And elsewhere, Bumper will host Maps (07 Nov) Grammatics (08 Nov), Field Music (13 Nov) and Mercury Prize nominees The Invisible (15 Nov). Alma De Cuba has Wild Beasts (03 Nov), local bands Sound Of Guns (01 Nov) and Screaming Lights (02 Nov).

This list is by no means exhaustive; there are approximately 400 acts playing the festival. If you’re going, tell me which bands you want to see. The best piece of advice I can give you is to not stick to one venue each night. All the fun of LMW is hopping between venues to catch the best new artists this festival has to offer.

Mike Doherty