The first thing I usually do when reviewing music is visit the MySpace page of the artist or band and listen to the song with the most listens first. The idea behind this is that it must be the most popular song and therefore a great starting point.

No disappointment here with Tom Gee

http://www.myspace.com/tomgeemusic

Tom attends the Leeds College of Music and my impressions of Leeds over the past few months is that it is spawning more musical talent then anywhere else in the country at the moment. I love what I’m hearing and I love Tom’s music. I’m actually nodding my head and I’ve only just realised.

I’m even typing in rhythm – I’m in the groove. The first track I listened to was What’s She Gonna Say and it was a funky soulful song. There is a lot of talent in Tom and he is currently gigging heavily and working with Chris Dawkins who plays guitar and has produced most of Tom’s songs. Chris himself has worked with the likes Jack Johnson and Nightmares on Waxx and his skills lend himself perfectly to these songs.

Tom has an exceptional voice which I could listen to all night. Whilst tapping away at my keyboard two songs have passed Bang Bang and Move a Little and they again display a superb song writing ability. Not just the words, but the melodies and ideas.

However I don’t like to ignore the others that give songs their landscape so big up to Jim “SpaceMan” Jamm on bass, David “Thad” Sudall on drums, David Levi (Smokes) on keyboards and Bridie Burkinshaw & Laura Popperwell providing wonderful complimentary backing vocals.

Wonderful production, wonderful songwriting, superb team of players and something for everyone. If Tom Gee doesn’t get signed to a label soon there’s no justice. He will sell records, sign him and see.

http://www.myspace.com/tomgeemusic

After much speculation, the BBC has finally announced that legendary and award-winning songwriter Pete Waterman is to produce this year’s British entry. The format for choosing an artist to perform the song is still yet to be announced.

Today in a press release from the BBC, it was announced that successful hit-maker Pete Waterman would write and produce this year’s entry for the United Kingdom.

Waterman has been responsible for over 200 hits, working with famous artists such as Kylie Minogue, Donna Summer, Geri Halliwell, Westlife, Rick Astley and Steps. He has also worked with the United Kingdom’s 1993 entrant, Sonia.

Waterman seems upbeat about his selection and said: “Eurovision is one of those iconic competitions that has stood the test of time and keeps coming up with great acts, great tunes and great performances. Life’s full of challenges and I’m relishing the opportunity to put my own stamp on this one.”

Commenting on the recruitment of Pete Waterman, BBC executive producer, Phil Parsons said: “This year, with an extremely successful pop writer, the aim is to build on the UK’s success while moving on in style and doing something different. Pete Waterman has an incredible track record of hits that are known all around Europe so we’re thrilled that he has taken on the Eurovision Song Contest.”

In 2009, after a string of bad results, the BBC decided to change its approach to selecting the British entry and recruited Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber (and Diane Warren, in the end) to write a song and help to choose the artist to perform it. After a series of live-shows where various artists battled it out, Jade Ewen was chosen to represent her country. She achieved a respectable fifth place in Moscow with the song My Time. It launched her career as a member of the highly successful Sugababes. Read more about that in our article about Jade Ewen’s career developments.

The BBC are yet to announce whether or not this year’s selection format will follow that of 2009 but we will post any announcement here in due course.

Sarah and Stephen from Holice on the set of Tokyo Boy

Have you ever fancied being in a pop music video? How cool would that be… the envy of your mates and all the girls / boys you could ever want.

Well okay let’s not go crazy. What we’re talking about here is an opportunity to film yourself doing your best Cheryl Cole at the Brits 2010 miming and dancing along to the next single from Liverpool electronic pop band Holice.

“When You’re Around” is released late May early June and all you need to do is get to their website www.holice.co.uk and follow the link to register for a pre-release of the single.

When it’s emailed to you film yourself using whatever means you have, webcam, mobile phone, camcorder etc then upload it to YouTube and let Holice know the link so they can rip it from the site.

This pop music video will then be distributed via all the usual 21st Century channels, social media etc and of course they have a slot on SKY where it will be shown too – straight up.

Kudos to Holice for involving the fans in this way in their pop music video, more bands should take note and give something back instead of expecting fans to just keep shelling out.

www.holice.co.uk

It’s been a few weeks but I’m finally getting round to doing more band reviews and I’m glad to say I’m getting back into the swing with a great band like The Fall of Kings.

http://www.myspace.com/thefallofkingslive

They have a great sound which is quite unique yet familiar at the same time. I would possibly go as far as saying they sound a little like the Killers however I feel they don’t warrant any pigeon holes.

They have some lovely synth textures in their songs, especially Life in the Wire which I’m currently listening to on their MySpace player. I’m not going to bang on about how tight the drumming and bass playing is anymore when reviewing as the quality of music I’ve been sent for review is so high – and The Fall of Kings is no exception to this.

Good Blood has a great hook and those haunting distopian synths again which I absolutely love. I don’t know the band and I’ve never met any of the members but I’m going to take a guess that the synth player is a Numan fan. If not then I’ll get my coat.

I love the guitar riffs in all the songs and the low bass playing. There are no pretentions here, no egos, no one trying to out do anyone else and Dan Forrests vocals are great to listen to, he has a superb tone that compliments the music and vice versa as we can hear in The Hands of Many.

Everything sits together perfectly and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for big things for The Fall of Kings in 2010.

If you’re in the Liverpool/Wirral area where the band are from then you may well catch them live. Check out their MySpace and see when and where they’re next playing as you won’t be disapointed.

http://www.myspace.com/thefallofkingslive

It was written in the second Summer of Love in 1988 and it’s technically out of date – but that doesn’t matter because Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty’s book “The MANUAL – How to Have a Number One the Easy Way” is a great read and a lot of the principals of having a number one single are still relevant today.

The book also foretells its own imminent irrelevance, The Timelords admitting that they are writing “a book that will be completely redundant within twelve months. An obsolete artifact. Its only use being a bit of a social history that records the aspirations of a certain strata in British society in the late eighties…”

The Austrian Eurotrash band Edelweiss took the book as a primary influence: they read the book, borrowed ABBA’s “S.O.S.”, and sold five million copies worldwide with “Bring Me Edelweiss”. It also proved to be an influence on 2000s British girl group The Pipettes who formed after reading the book in order to explore “the idea of being a pop machine.”

In the liner photographs of the Chumbawamba album Readymades, Boff Whalley is seen to be reading a copy of The Manual. It is a reference to Chumbawamba’s earlier success with their hit single, “Tubthumping”.

Jamie Reynolds of The Klaxons admitted in an interview to reading The Manual and stated that he “took direct instructions from it…. Get yourself a studio, get a groove going, sing some absolute nonsense over the top, put a breakbeat behind it, and you’re away! That’s what I did! That’s genuinely it. I read that, I noted down the golden rules of pop, and applied that to what we’re doing and made sure that that always applies to everything we do. That way, we always come out with a sort of catchy hit number.”

Have your own Number One and get a copy to cherish from Amazon today.