My Live Reviewer Career
You might have seen the film 'Almost Famous', and though I failed to be invited on tour, I did get to review some of my favourite bands for free. Being a live reviewer added authority to my writing.
I wasn’t ever sure what I wanted to be growing up. Fascinated by space, I had dreams of becoming an astronaut, yet my ineptitude in the science lab put paid to those ambitions. My next obsession was with words and in the late 1990s I discovered my favourite bands. Though my love of The Stone Roses and Oasis should have meant I opted for Manchester University, I felt at home in Sheffield. Before moving for further education, I had my introductory taste of journalism.
Work Experience
My first experience of a newsroom came during high school. For a full week, I shadowed Michael Baggaley at The Sentinel. With the roving sports reporter, I met Sir Stanley Matthews at Stoke City’s Britannia Stadium while Baggaley interviewed the club’s then manager, Gary Megson, in the summer of 1999. We headed to Stafford Rangers and I had my first byline with a story about local cricket.
Fast-forward to late 2003 and I had begun some limited work experience in the sports department at The Sheffield Star. As part of my Media Studies degree, I was required to complete 140 hours of working in the media industry. After all that time, I had a couple of bylines on local golf, cricket, tennis, dressage, and even water polo stories. Seeing your name in print is an exhilarating feeling, and I was keen for more. Little did I realise that, though I’d never step foot in that office again, my experience with The Sheffield Star would become much more involved a few months later.
S-Press To Shu-Print
During the first year of my degree, I’d seen copies of Sheffield Hallam University’s free newspaper dotted around campus. S-Press sounded (and felt) like the offices of the British TV show Press Gang. That’s possibly where my wonder with words started. That and a crush on the editor, Lynda Day, played by Julia Sawalha.
S-Press was a collaborative affair, and you could essentially pick and choose what you wanted to write about. The editor, Ellen Grundy, would steer the ship and there were no university exposes to report. As someone who still bought music, including vinyl records (which was frankly considered weird at the time), I found myself frequentlu putting my hand up for free CDs to review. My first was a band I was very familiar with, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and their second album, Take Them On, On Your Own. Given that I would have bought the CD anyway, this was a sweet deal. That first year was mainly about single reviews and I covered the likes of Graham Coxon (Freakin’ Out), Kasabian (Cutt Off) and 22-20s (Why Don’t You Do It For Me?).
The following year, S-Press became Shu-Print and I became its Music Editor, largely because I’d cornered the review pages by continually putting my hand up. I had big plans for my section of the newspaper and wanted to steer it towards the city’s music scene. Initially, that meant bulking up the review section by making a list of the record labels we already had contacts for and seeing if we could drum up interest with any more.
Eventually, my proactive approach meant we received more CDs to review and were offered free gig tickets or guestlist places when a label’s bands came to town. Win-win. We could also interview these bands, which meant long-form feature articles to pad out the music section and the chance to step foot on a tourbus. Granted, we were typically offered bands on the up and band members never seemed overly keen. Clutching their bottles of water and seeming wholly disengaged. If anything, I imagine the chance to chat for an hour helped kill the time before their soundcheck.
I was in my element and quickly set out to invest in a voice recorder. I’d need one to record interviews for my dissertation anyway, so this was money well spent. Soon enough, I’d head down to The Leadmill a full eight hours before the gig to spend some quality time with one lucky individual from a band who was playing that night. There was the 22-20s (their keyboardist at least, Charly Coombes who is the brother of Supergrass' Gaz and Rob Coombes), all of The Subways, the bassist from Ambulance Ltd, The Dead 60s, and Trap2.
That final interview set things into motion. This was in October 2004, and I’d been aware of Trap2 as a local band in Sheffield, one who could land a lucrative support slot. With my knowledge of online message boards, I’d tracked down their manager and sorted the interview out. Their next gig was supporting Kasabian at The Leadmill on Halloween, and I was ushered backstage just as the band finished their slot. The interview was short, sweet, and I came away with some useful quotes. Though admittedly, I was far more excited about sneaking into Kasabian’s dressing room to thank Trap2’s manager, and grab a beer from their fridge while chatting to Serge Pizzorno about how exactly I’d made my way there into their inner sanctum.
After that, I was keen to see Trap2 and found myself immersed in the local music scene. The next time I saw them was at a Waveaid Benefit Gig to raise funds for those affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. They were listed as headlining, yet I got there early as a break from my studies. As my first real experience of the local band scene, I had an initial encounter with Jon McClure as lead singer of 1984. Trap2 then played in The Leadmill’s second room with some band added as last-minute headliners, Arctic Monkeys?
Almost immediately, I became enamoured with the ‘New Yorkshire Wave’. My core friend group came, not from my course, but from the student newspaper and several of us went to see The NME Tour in Manchester, featuring Kaiser Chiefs. My music reviewing grew, and I became freelance, I reviewed Arctic Monkeys’ exclusive 76 ticket-only gig at The Grapes for God Is In The TV Zine and did a week or so work experience at Exposed Magazine.
The Sheffield Star
Throwing myself into Sheffield’s local band scene meant downloading every track I could find. Typically, links could be found on online message boards, and I got my fill. Soon enough, I made friends to socialise with, whether at gigs or not. The bands themselves were keen to involve their fans, so I found myself in Kelham Island on a cold late-winter’s morning in 2006. Milburn were shooting their video for their next single Send In The Boys. Rather than employing extras, fans volunteered to get involved. There’s me at 1:04 and a couple of interviewees play key cameos, including Kayleigh Thomas at 1:26 and Jon Downing at 1:37.
I’d planned to send a letter to the Music Editor of The Sheffield Star, though I doubt David Dunn would have given it much attention. Thankfully, I spotted him at the video shoot and mustered up the courage to ask whether he needed any additional reporters. As it turned out, he couldn’t get to see Little Man Tate’s single launch party for The Agent at The Boardwalk. I was sent down and asked to email back a 250-word review. Fully expecting some constructive criticism, I received a text message that evening. From Jon Windle, the lead singer of the band and another interviewee, thanking me for the review. I rushed out to the local newsagent to check. Lo and behold, I was in the music section of a bona fide newspaper.
Over the next five years, I had a ringside seat to Sheffield’s band scene during one of its most productive spells. Reviewing bands like Arctic Monkeys, Milburn, Bromheads Jacket, Little Zé (formerly Trap2) was relatively straightforward given how much I was invested in each band. I could review university bands like Patricians, and gain free tickets to touring acts like Be Your Own Pet, and Paolo Nutini.
I became an expert in the New Yorkshire Wave, largely because I was there reporting on it. David Dunn even interviewed me as a punter following Arctic Monkeys’ secret set at The Leadmill in February 2007. I knew of Leeds’ part in the New Yorkshire Wave and reviewed The Sunshine Underground when they toured Sheffield. Then there was competition in ‘New Rave’ which I reported on when the Shockwaves NME Awards Rave Tour rolled into The Plug featuring New Young Pony Club, CSS, and Klaxons providing a distraction to indie music.
As the New Yorkshire Wave expanded, I was sent on tour with Little Man Tate for their gigs in Paris and Amsterdam. Not without quitting a bar job and negotiating my own route home, so I could see Arctic Monkeys at Old Trafford Cricket Ground that same weekend with my then-girlfriend. Inevitably, I also reported on the demise of the New Yorkshire Wave, specifically the ‘something missing’ from Milburn’s set at The Octagon a few months before the band split. Eventually, I hit the front page with a review of Rihanna at Sheffield Arena.
While a rewarding experience, I was still unpaid and returned to my single and album review roots with Room Thirteen Magazine. There, I could praise the recorded exploits of my favourite Sheffield bands, though giving 12/13 for Bromheads Jacket’s second album On The Brain was enthusiastic at best. Especially given that the band have declared that album a ‘mistake’.
By late-2008, it was clear that the New Yorkshire Wave was on the way out. In the summer of 2009, I volunteered to be a reviewer for Tramlines Times, the Sheffield festival’s free paper. Ending up on the front page again, it felt good to have my say at the end of the New Yorkshire Wave. As that wave of bands made way for, what is now, an award-winning metropolitan music festival. It felt good to give something back to the music scene that I had enveloped myself in.