Summer in the city

There's certain kinds of music that evoke time periods or memories or times of the year, and I always seem to associate psychedelia (especially 60's psych) with summer, perhaps it's because the whole 'summer of love' thing is far too imprinted my conciousness thanks to horrible tv adverts; I prefer to think it's more to do with the bright, sunny sounds myself.

You're probably already wondering where this lenghty preamble is going, well I was just listening to Viva Voce and decided to have a quick look at their official web page where Kevin from the band has been more than lovely enough to offer a summer mix tape for your listening pleasure. I have since been to listening to it, and it's exactly the kind of summery psychedelia I mentioned only a moment ago, imagine that! Anyway I would heartily recommend giving it a listen, it's a perfect sunny afternoon mix, and if, like me, you don't know that much about this kind of music outside of 'Tomorrow Never Knows' it's a great way to start. You can download the mixtape direct from this linky. Oh yes, and listen to Viva Voce too, because they are also well worthy of your time.

Thinking of psych makes me thing of garage, which is no suprise since the terms seem to be juxtaposed together quite often, it's also useful because I want to mention a garage alldayer I went to on Sunday.

It was called Weirdapalooza, and was held at The Bodega Social in Nottingham. It's a weird little place to hold a garage alldayer really, it's never very big (up or downstairs) and feels quite cramped whether it's massive busy or not. Thankfully (and perhaps rather selfishly) for me it wasn't that busy at all, so it was easy to watch the bands (of which there were 7) in comfort. I don't want to go into detail of all the bands, but I do want to single out The Hipshakes for praise. I was told before hand that they were going to be good, and they really were. They sound like other garage bands (a lot of garage does) but not in as derivative sense as some of the other bands who played on Sunday. On top of that they have masses of energy, a fantastic rhythm section and great tunes. After the set both Trev from oddbox and Ian Horowitz were full of praise, with Trev telling me that the band didn't even have their proper bassist and that their set didn't even contain their best tunes. I definitely want to see the band again. You can hear The Hipshakes here.