Friday 27 April 2012

Artist of The Week 2 - Spector

This weeks artist of the week is Spector.



                      (We played Chevy Thunder the other week at TTGV which went down well.)

It was over 4 years ago that I stood in Manchester Club Academy watching the support act for the night Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man warm up for Lightspeed Champion.

This was my first encounter of Fred Macpherson.  Now fronting his third band in the form of Spector. Since last year the band has released three singles, all of which are well worth a listen!


What should you expect? Put simply synth based rock, think early The Killers with equally anthemic choruses yet with a darker edge. However this is no 80s re-run as can be heard in new single 'Celestine' (released 21st May).

So it would appear that this is third time band lucky for Macpherson with steady radio play and a highly anticipated album on the way later this year, there's defiantly no reason to be afraid for Spector's future.

Saturday 21 April 2012

Last Friday Night!

On Friday we held another 'Through The Grapevine' event at Illuccinis' Cafe Bar in Congleton. This was our first one since Christmas which made us a little apprehensive about how many people would turn up... BUT after much flyering, guest DJ slots and alot of other types of promotion we had little to worry about as the night was a great success!

A masterclass by Josh in dance as he took to the floor.
All the tunes went down really well, we started off with a bit of Soul and Motown to get everyone into the groove. But itching to break out the Indie we got Blue Monday out of the record box and stylus met  record and the night went from strength to strength. From this point on more people started showing up and the venue started to get filled.


When the dance floor started to get busy we slammed on some real Indie bangers like; The Maccabies, Joy Division, Arctic Monkeys, Darwin Deez, Miles Kane and many more to keep the floor swinging. Whilst taking some requests as well... Although we did turn down someones request for One Direction... Our response being 'Your not at the right club night' Haha.

Over all the night was a great success with the bar and dance floor being very busy! Everyone asking when the next one will be, and making sure we let them know! All very positive stuff... We at TTGV are looking forward to the next one, with even bigger new things up and coming from us, the futures looking bright for TTGV and the lads!

More photos from the night can be seen here on our Facebook page.

Thanks to everyone that came down! It was great to see a lot of new faces! As well as all the trusty regulars to our nights!!!

TTGV X!

Wednesday 11 April 2012

Artist of the Week - King Charles

Here's the first post of what we'd like to call 'Artist Of The Week' where we review an up and coming artist thats caught our eye recently.

This week we check out King Charles.




Hailing from West-London the singer-songwriter began his musical career by forming the band Adventure Playground in 2007 who went on to tour with the likes of Laura Marling and Noah And The Whale. However the band disbanded (no pun intended) in 2008.

His solo debut single, Time Of Eternity was released in 2010, which gathered considerable attention from the press and radio. This led to him later that year winning the prestigious International Songwriting Competition by a unanimous vote. From here he has been touring the UK and overseas to much critical acclaim.  Most recently he supported Mumford & Sons on their sold-out US tour whom he has also written with.


If Prince and Bob Marley were to have a lovechild that lovechild would undoubtedly be King Charles. Both in style and sound. With folk riffs and reggae soul 2012 is set to be his year with the release of debut album LoveBlood 7th May.



Watch out for next weeks artist! TTGV

Sunday 8 April 2012

Guest Dj slot...

Last night  TTGV were asked to DJ a gig at the Park Pavilion in Congleton..

If you have never been, the bar is set on the border of the park overlooking all the gardens, making for a nice setting...

The two bands playing were The Generals and The Minx.

Kicking off were The Generals..



I was there for the sound test, and never hearing of The Generals before, after listening to the warm-up I was looking forward to the full set.

They did not disappoint... The acoustics of the building are quite demanding but the sound tech did a great job at overcoming this and the bands sounded great! Sound techs website -  www.soundhertzmusic.co.uk Highly Recommended! We use him for our gigs to! The band was very tight and had a really good sound and stage presence. A few of their riffs and vocals reminded us of The Maccabees in style, yet with a more harder or rockier approach. A great band and certainly one to look out for in the future!

Then it was over to us to spin some tunes, with only a crowd of about 40 or so it was slightly disappointing considering the quality of bands that were playing and considering the distance they'd travelled with The Generals coming from Sunderland! Not exactly just round the corner...

But we had great fun, we played mostly indie and slammed some soul tunes in for good measure, crowd seemed to respond well!

The headline act for the night The Minx then took to the stage..

I saw these last year at Congleton Scooter Festival and have been following them ever since. They owned the stage with their really unique sound, a mix of ska and rock . In the last year they have done really well playing alongside huge bands such as Badly Draw Boy. So I was well up for seeing them play in a more personal environment.

Apologies now for the photos ( Only got side profiles as we DJed before The Minx and worked it so they started on the last note of our tune, so we had to watch from the side)...
The Minx have a great and unique sound. Really lively and upbeat the lead singer (Chris Haddonhas a voice that matches the music perfectly. One thing I thought made the band was the keys throughout the songs, what a lot of people miss and focus on is the drums or guitars, the keys player (Kieran McIntyre) was amazingly skilled and this made a lot of the songs for me. They did a set of about 30 minutes, after this the crowd chanted for a certain song... the lead singer annoucing he'd never played it live before and hoped the keyboard played could remember the chords.. It was called a love song for brew! The song was dedicated for his love of tea, which rather amused me. Watch it here - Chris Haddon (The Minx) - Love Song To Brew

They then played a couple of new songs after this and then finished. A great set, really lively and a great band. Hugely recommend them and I'll certainly keep on the lookout for them!

The crowd then dispersed and we left.... overall a great night having seen two brilliantly talented bands.. Shame there wasn't more people there but that didn't change the attitude of the bands who put everything into their performances.

TTGV X!

Friday 6 April 2012

To start the blog off thought it would be cool if we shared with you the places TTGV have been exploring..

In October I decided to take a trip to Berlin. As a lover of underground electronic music, as well as indie and alternative music I was quite excited to take a trip to what some class as the electronic music capital of the world. Before going I researched well into places and things to see and do in Berlin, discovering Berlins sinister and underground reputation. With bouncers apparently turning away tourists, or people because they don't 'look' right. So we were fairly weary of this before we went....

When we got there in the day Berlin just looked like any normally city, we didn't really explore to much of Berlin until the next day.

We planned out a route so we could see the most we could each day, and ended up doing most of it on the first day, IE the Berlin wall, Jewish museums, Berlin gate and the Reichstag's.

We then went back and prepared for our first night out in Berlin. Asking the hostel owner for advice on clubs. He showed us a website with lists of club nights on, we quickly spotted a few DJ's we'd love to see playing a few districts away. So we went to a few bars around Berlin first, noticing straight away the sort of 'rebelious' attitude Berlin showed to any kind of authority... Although like England Germany has a smoking ban, in Berlin every bar we went in people were smoking.. We knew beer was obviously a major thing in Berlin but when my friend dropped his fag into a pint glass with less than 3 millimetres of beer in, the bouncer gave him a bollocking shouting at him to throw it on the floor of the bar next time calling him ' a mad English fool ' we were all stunned , but at the same time very amused with the weird culture.
Also when walking the street police were very present and made themselves clearly seen yet prostitutes were scattered along every street, and the police turned a blind eye to them all. As the club we were going to that night didn't open until 1am, and didn't finish until 10am the next day, the bars had started to shut, (baring in mind this was a Tuesday night) we roamed the street to find a bar, stumbling across very loud music coming from what seemed to be a 15 story block of flats from the 70s.. walking towards it we noticed huge banners in English? saying you will never take us..

The building was covered in graffiti and huge parts of the building were missing.. from the street you could see it to what appeared to be old bedrooms, now just covered with people and graffiti.
So naturally we went in, people guided us up to the top 5 floors where the music was coming from..
The place was painted in complete black with UV and fabrics on the wall. there were huge bean bags and old pillows scattered across the floor as what seemed to be seating. We roamed round not really knowing what to do, and in every small room there was a DJ playing really dark techno music.. some small rooms had a very strange aroma about them, with even weirder looking people. We found some English people in there and they explained that this place we were in, the local authority had been trying to knock it down for years... but the 'ravers' as such just never left, and wouldn't leave..Feeling rather out of place and a bit insecure we quickly left that building to go on the club we planned to go...

As expected the club was not a let down. Looking like a block of flats again on approach, we saw a queue outside.. the bouncers patted us down asking if we had any drugs... and then took some themselves in front of us. We were rather bemused, yet we carried on in to the club. And we got more than expected with very few people drinking or doing anything it seemed huge crowds of people were just going mental the club was perfectly laid out for that sort of night...

The next night we tried to go find some sort of bar that would provide us with indie music, yet this was harder than expected, with even restaurants playing deep house. Everywhere in Berlin was electronic. Yet after our struggle we found a really cool bar with live music on for the first couple of hours, then a DJ came on and played some disco and guitar based music. Which we were quite content with. After another long night we roamed the street home to stumble across what seemed to be a gallery , the sculptures were all made out of metal and scrap, the floor was just mud and people we lay around just sitting in this place. Another strange part of Berlin we felt at edge in... we walked around looking at these mangled pieces of art and trying to make sense of this place. Looking at the sculptures some were amazingly good some were just pieces of car put in a pile. At the end of the circle there was a tent with again, techno music being pumped out this was a Wednesdays night in Berlin about 4-5 in the morning in some side street. We were absolutely baffled as only about 7 people were in there going mental again dancing and jumping around. I mean it looked like great fun... but what do these people do with their lives? ha...

Last day we strolled around Berlin city centre and saw check point charlie along with more from Berlins past.

Although it was difficult to find anywhere that played anything but house and techno we found a few really good places to go. And even if you don't like electronic music I would highly recommend to go to one night just to get a sense of how much the Germans love and live it. I promise you wouldn't be let down....

AMSTERDAM...
In January I went to Amsterdam, just two of us went for a few days..
This trip was with the intention to see everything we could whist there, obviously well known for its underground scene again, Amsterdam is also one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.. We were there for 4 days and must have walked constantly 5 hours everyday going to see places.
We hit the Heineken brewery first, this was actually starting the trip of on the right foot being on the the best things we did.. then the House of Bols, which won the Amsterdam design away 2011 easy to see why...

We strolled from one side of the city to another taking snaps of every other building..  One of the strangest things we noticed was that a lot of the buildings were 'wonky' and appeared to be leaning on one another. They all seemed to be completely different, as if they were built at completely separate eras.. One being white with black beams next door was old wooden house, next to that a taller building made from steel. all very strange yet beautiful in its own right.

And obviously coming onto the weed.. walking though the city it was quite literally every second smell... food, weed, food , weed, flowers, weed, perfume, weed, weed, weed. It was everywhere... I heard a lot of rumours before I went that there has been rule changes and that tourists could no longer buy weed from any cafes unless they were members, but talking to people and other English people in bars. This wasn't true at all.. It is still the easy going rules on smoking..

And the one other major thing in Amsterdam was bikes.. their bloody everywhere and they don't give you a second chance to get out the way, if your in the way your going over haha... I mean  how do you know which is yours...

Might not be able to tell from this picture but 85%  of these bikes were black... with a black lock. Good luck trying to find yours.. Its not just bikes either in the cycle lanes, on paths or wazzing around in the parks mopeds can go all over them as well, which don't tend to 'peep' they just reved at you, which made me shit a brick a couple of times must admit.

Aside from this the bars in Amsterdam were far from cheap being about 12 euros for two pints, but all very welcoming people in the bars as well as bar staff happily chatting asking what we've seen where were going etc. One of the friendliest places I've been... The music wasn't great in any place we went, but we didn't really go here for that so we just took it as it came (normally chart hits). But we can forgive Amsterdam for this. Its other qualities made up for it.

We went to the red light district also, which was one of the most bazaar things I've seen.. we obviously knew about the place and seen pictures but until you have strolled along it you cant really have the full felling for it.. very bazaar, but if you do go to Amsterdam have a walk down its very funny.. both day and night.


Hope you liked my little trip stories..  I could have gone on for ages on what we saw and did in both places etc. Both places were similar in some ways, yet far different in others... If you were to do day trips this year I'd recommend going Berlin and Amsterdam to anyone. As long as you go both places with an open mind your bound to have fun. Don't think I could go either place for more than a week though, unless you took it really steady but again I'll be returning to both places in the near future for sure!

Josh X!

Thursday 5 April 2012

Welcome to the TTGV

For our first post we thought it would be a good idea to introduce ourselves..

We are from the little town of Congleton in Cheshire. Late last year we decided that Congleton needed livening up with a new club night with real music (not chart hits from 4 years ago). So we created 'Through The Grapevine' with music dominantly based around all aspects of indie and soul and general good tunes!

Let us tell you a bit more about ourselves.

                                             We are Josh Reddish and Sam Astbury...

What is your favourite song?

Josh: The Deadsons - City Lights

Sam: Maximo Park - Apply Some Pressure


Who is your favourite artist / band?

Josh: Miles Kane

Sam: Joy Division


Current guilty pleasure?

Josh: LMFAO - Sexy And I Know It

Sam: Eiffel 65 - I'm Blue (Da Ba Dee)



Favourite Shop?

Josh: Topman / ASOS / Pop Boutique / Blue Rinse / Discogs

Sam: Pop Boutique / Charity Shops / Vinyl Exchange / King Bee Records


This blog is where we will post photos from our events, stick up street style, review music and films from alternative indie culture.