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FESTIVALS 2010: KENDAL CALLING (SATURDAY)
31 July 2010 / Lowther Deer Park / Penrith
:: Doves :: Starbase 109 :: The Futureheads :: OKGO :: Exit Calm :: Sista Ray And The Jerkin Tears :: We Are Willow :: Goldheart Assembly :: The 1,2,3,4s :: Danny Fontaine & The Horns Of Fury ::
Manchester decamps en masse to Cumbria for a weekend. Will it stay dry? Are The Futureheads still relevant in 2010? Which band blows everyone else offstage? And is that a bloke or a woman? Some of these questions may be answered here...

SOMETHING FOR NOTHING
30 July 2010 / Ruby Lounge / Manchester
:: The Janice Graham Band :: Orphan Boy :: Little Volcanoes ::
MM pays a visit to BBC Manchester Introducing's free-entry live session and finds a bunch of bands that enjoy defying simple and pointless categorisation. We feel slightly less resentful towards paying our licence fee if this is where some of it goes.

WOBBLE AROUND THE WORLD
29 July 2010 / Ruby Lounge / Manchester
:: Jah Wobble And The Nippon Dub Ensemble ::
The stage looks more like some temple garden than a Manchester gig venue; there's flower arranging, instruments called koto and hikaritchi and shamisen, and the deepest heaviest bass you ever heard: a genuine musical adventure.

PLAY TWICE BEFORE LISTENING
28 July 2010 / The Deaf Institute / Manchester
:: Denis Jones :: Silver Apples ::
Man and machine, Simeon and The Simeon - one of pop music's oddest couples make a very welcome return to Manchester.

FESTIVALS 2010 : TRUCK
24 July 2010 / Hill Farm / Steventon, Oxfordshire
:: Flowers Of Hell :: Meursault :: Stornoway :: This Town Needs Guns :: Mercury Rev :: The Silent League :: Thomas Truax :: Active Child :: Esben And The Witch :: Lau :: Keyboard Choir :: Brontide :: Masks ::
There's no corporate branding, the local Rotary Club do the catering, the music is outstanding and somehow the sun always shines (except in 2007 when the whole thing got flooded off): why TRUCK is the gem of the festival calendar.

FESTIVALS 2010: GURTEN
16 July 2010 / Gurten Festival / near Bern, Switzerland
:: Editors :: Faith No More :: The Cribs :: Rodrigo Y Gabriela :: Gossip :: Charlie Winston ::
Up a mountain in the middle of Switzerland, one Glastonbury veteran finds out what it's like to go to a festival with real toilets - meanwhile MM's Live Editor dreams of a day when festival-goers aren't surprised to be treated like human beings.

BLOWOUT'S BIG FRIDAY
23 July 2010 / Irish Association Social Club, Chorlton / Manchester
:: Beat The Radar :: Working For A Nuclear Free City :: Jo Rose :: To Sophia :: The Sensations :: Two Heads ::
"Why do they need two guitarists?" "One plays the lead, the other rhythm." "Oh. Why can't one of them do both and the other can, I don't know, play a saxophone?"

BACK TO SCHOOL
19 July 2010 / Ruby Lounge / Manchester
:: School Of Seven Bells :: The Steals ::
Maybe we'd hoped for something more, something different, harder electronics perhaps or bigger songs, but at the end of the day what they do is so lovely they pretty much get away with simply doing more of it.

A TASTE OF HONEY
16 July 2010 / Matt & Phreds / Manchester
:: Honeyfeet ::
They're the Manchester buzz band that sounds nothing like the canon of great Manchester bands past or present; the jazz outfit that's exciting music fans with no previous interest in jazz: whatever "it" is, Honeyfeet have certainly got it.

VIVE LA INDIE-DANCE
15 July 2010 / Night & Day / Manchester
:: Shit Browne :: Graveyard Shift :: Brown Brogues :: Kites ::
"Quintet Parisien dopé à l’énergie Madchester", Shit Browne turn out not to be the easy target we expected.

STUCK BETWEEN THE POETRY AND THE PARTY
14 July 2010 / Ruby Lounge / Manchester
:: Klaxons ::
Not a glow-stick in sight amongst the crowd. Is it that we’re all growing up a little bit? Or have people realised that all along, they actually looked rather silly? And three years on from that surprise Mercury Prize, have Klaxons still got it?

AFTERNOON DELIGHTS
11 July 2010 / Fuel, Withington / Manchester
:: Hammers :: DBH ::
Acoustic guitar instrumental reworkings of scary 80s discopop followed by ear-splitting post-hardcore doom - what better way to spend a Sunday afternoon?

MORE THAN YOU'LL EVER KNOW
10 July 2010 / The Factory (Fac251) / Manchester
:: No Tokyo ::
Their talent deserves to be witnessed on a much larger scale and as one punter exclaims "We have a band on our hands!"

FRANK'S FANTASTIC FAREWELL
09 July 2010 / Castlefield Arena / Manchester
:: The Oh Blimey Big Band, Badly Drawn Boy, Charlie Chuck, Elvis, The Re-Freshies and friends ::
Everyone you talk to has a Frank story. Second hand, third hand, some warped and embellished by the retelling, but isn't that how legends are supposed to be? Manchester says goodbye to a legend.

A FIVER'S WORTH OF PIC'N'MIX
02 July 2010 / Moho / Manchester
:: Freedom Of The City :: Bright Kicks :: Stop The Blackout :: Dilettantes ::
The risk of an unsigned night is a bunch of slack-jawed morons cobbled together from something that Liam Gallagher left in the toilet; equally you can see something so stupefying you feel physically shaken: MM dips a hand into Moho's Friday night brantub.

TOP FLOOR
03 July 2010 / Kobana Roof Terrace / Rochdale
:: The Janice Graham Band :: Paper Spaceman :: The Second Floor :: Sunny Jim And The Size 9s ::
Sitting on a rooftop terrace in the evening sunshine, drink in hand, live music all night, it's what summer's all about. Still a brave move though, all that electrical equipment - this is, after all, Rochdale in July.

FEATURED ARTISTS
02 July 2010 / The Roadhouse / Manchester
:: The Features :: Blind Atlas :: Kassidy ::
A glowing recommendation from one of the world's biggest bands can sometimes be a poisoned chalice: are The Features as good as their big pals Kings Of Leon say they are?

NUCLEAR ELECTRICITY
02 July 2010 / Sound Control / Manchester
:: Working For A Nuclear Free City :: Trojan Horse :: Silverclub ::
The thing about Working For A Nuclear Free City is you never quite know which version's going to turn up...

COMPUTER LOVE
01 July 2010 / Ruby Lounge / Manchester
:: The Sound Of Arrows :: Loebeat :: Dirty Organ ::
Post-Glastonbury it's apparently now been deemed OK to like the Pet Shop Boys - the timing couldn't be better, then, to welcome their Swedish spiritual descendants.