Category: Artists

Bez

Mark Berry (Bez) was born in Bolton, the son of parents from the Norris Green district of Liverpool His father was a detective inspector

Bez first came to prominence at the turn-of-the-1990’s as the maraca-wielding dancer with ‘Madchester’ giants Happy Mondays. Neither an accomplished musician nor even a very good dancer, Bez was a prime candidate for fleeting celebrity, soon to sink into ‘Where Are They Now?’ obscurity.

That, however, never happened, nor does it show any sign of happening. Through Black Grape, the second band he co-fronted with the Mondays’ Shaun Ryder, and his ever-presence in the mass media, (Gogglebox, MasterChef, Celebrity Big Brother, and Dancing on Ice Bez’s popularity has grown exponentially, his star rocketing ever upwards!

When he bowled into Celebrity Big Brother in 2005, he ended up winning the series, as viewers came to understand his fundamental decency and sunny outlook. His adult life has been extraordinary: unbelievable scrapes with mortality, periods of financial ruin, and narcotic-strewn hi-jinks.

Lock up your daughters and call the cops, as a night of carnage and chaos is coming to …
If you have never attended a Bez show, then you are in for a treat….

Bez will be on stage as ranting lead preacher and mover that hosts the party, whilst his wife Frou hits the decks spinning massive Hacienda & Madchester Classics

The Darling Buds

The Darling Buds are an indie/alt/rock guitar band from Newport South Wales, led since 1986 by singer Andrea Lewis-Jarvis.

Formed in Newport, South Wales they gained recognition in the UK after their self-released debut 7” was championed by John Peel leading to 3 ‘Peel Sessions’ and a major record contract with Sony/Epic. They released 3 well received albums that showcased the bands energy and appetite for evolving and developing their sound whilst honing their hook laden songwriting skills. Along with the various accompanying EP’s and a couple of actual hit singles this resulted in them becoming a successful and prolific touring band in the UK, Europe and the US, up until the early 90’s.

The band folded in 1994 when critical and artistic success couldn’t be replicated commercially, despite gaining a hardcore of devoted fans across the world.

Following a gap of 17 years and with all ex-members having moved on and consigned the band into a dim and distant memory, fate presented an opportunity to play one more gig in tribute to a dear departed friend.

Re-energised by this, the band started accepting offers to play again and a sold-out gig at London’s Borderline was ecstatically received and put to bed any misgivings about ‘comebacks’. Henceforth the Buds became a going concern once again, albeit as just an occasional gigging and recording outfit.

The band recorded a 4 track 10” EP of new material in 2017 for local indie label Odd Box and have played festivals in Europe and the US, as well as their sporadic but always hugely fun UK shows, and are currently working on finishing their 4th album which should see a release in 2025.

The Buds now consist of Andrea, Chaz Watkins and Matt Gray from the early 90’s line ups on guitars, Erik Stams on drums and Dave Corten on bass. Gigs are a rare but special treat so if you see them playing somewhere near you, get along!

Northside

Northside were the last great band to come out of the ‘Madchester’ baggy scene before the bubble burst. In the summer of 1990, with a newly inked deal with Tony Wilson’s Factory empire behind them, Northside seemingly had the world in their hands. Their debut album featured indie dancefloor fillers “Take 5”, “Shall We Take A Trip” and “My Rising Star”. “Shall We Take a Trip” was notoriously banned from the BBC for too many drug references, but despite the lack of airplay it eventually broke into the Top 50 in the UK Singles Chart.

Originally released on Factory Records in 1991, Chicken Rhythms peaked at #19 in the UK album charts and was produced by The Lightning Seeds’ Ian Broudie (Echo & The Bunnymen, Shack, The Coral, Texas).

It was reissued on vinyl for the very first time since its original release for Record Store Day 2024.

In something of a festival exclusive, NORTHSIDE are announcing their live comeback with Gigantic All Dayer for a special show at the 2025 event. Buoyed by the resounding reaction to a new reissue of their 1991 Top 20 album, ‘Chicken Rhythms’ on Record Store Day this year, the Mad-chester originals will be back to perform highlights from their debut at their first live gigs since 2015. With their Gigantic set also due to be their first performance in the city since their Bristol Studio show of 1991, this will be a once-in-a-blue moon treat not to be missed.

The Soup Dragons

It’s 1984 and from a distance, Bellshill and the other satellite towns and suburbs from whence The Soup Dragons will emerge could be any one of hundreds of underfunded communities where post-war high-rises loom over rows of artex-frosted two-up, two-downs. But come a little closer and it’s clear that something strange is afoot. A proliferation of rosy-cheeked, pop outsiders are forming bands and give them names like The Boy Hairdressers and BMX Bandits.

Sean Dickson, you have yet to find your co-travellers, less still agree on a comparably cute band name, but when this group finally comes together in the dimly lit rehearsal rooms of Glasgow – Jim on guitar, Sushil on bass and Ross on drums – you’ll have plenty to share with them. Because right now, it seems like you barely need to do much more than give your guitar a shake before – pif paf pouf! – another new song falls out of it. The Great Poprendo! Your football-obsessed dad doesn’t pretend to understand the appeal of the Swell Maps and Syd Barrett songs the band cover alongside your ever-expanding repertoire of original numbers, but he’s swift to notice that something exceptional is stirring and this will be your ticket out of here. Had you emerged from the tunnel at Fir Park in a full Motherwell kit and socked it to Airdrie with an injury time winner, he couldn’t cheer you any harder. And right now, every light seems to be turning green for your band.

On your Saturday job at Flip American Clothing, you hijack the tape deck and play your demo to unsuspecting customers, one of whom is called Bobby and, as well as playing drums for The Jesus & Mary Chain, fronts his own band Primal Scream. Do you want to come and open for them at (the soon to be legendary) Splash #1 psychpunkpop happening in Glasgow? Bassist Sushil edits a fanzine called Pure Popcorn and onto the flexidisc that comes with it, he places a track from your first demo, If You Were The Only Girl In The World. Another green light! Then the guy from NME comes across it and makes it Single Of The Week. Ring ring!! You’re in your bedroom staring at the newsprint in utter disbelief when your mum walks in to let you know that John Peel’s producer loves the song and wants to book you in for a session. Only problem is you don’t have the money to go to London and record it. But still, more green lights. If you can get to Glasgow Queen Margaret Union this Friday, John will be deejaying there and he wants to meet you. So you go along and do as you’re told. He shakes your hand like an old friend, presses £150 into your palm, then asks you if that’s enough to get you all to London.

When you get to Maida Vale, you realise that your friends the Shop Assistants are in the neighbouring studio recording a session for Janice Long, so you get them to join in at the end of Learning To Fall with a mass singalong. At this point, you’re writing them faster than you can record them, so this will be the only version committed to posterity. However, it’s Whole Wide World that will truly set out your manifesto in earnest – a song which single-handedly bears testament to the fact that youthful brio is perishable so you might as well use it all at once. You know it’ll be your first twelve-inch single, so you make sure it stops just shy of two minutes because you want it to be the loudest twelve-inch of all time. Ring ring!! Now it’s Smash Hits! In the resulting interview you spin a playful fib, claiming that The Soup Dragons weren’t named after the eponymous character from The Clangers, described in quintessential Hits fashion as “that Universal maestro of ‘tubular’ dinner ladies.” Well, of course Smash Hits are early to pick up on you. Why wouldn’t they? You tick all the pop boxes. Tunes. Effervescence. Irreverence. Youth. Pleasing to the eye. And with the exception of Jim, who appears to be twelve, none of you look a day over seventeen, same age as me.

And so it’s on this basis that I delude myself that mere geography is the only thing preventing me from being in your band. However, there would be nothing for me to do in your band. I play the drums, but there isn’t a soul north or south of the border who looks as magnificent banging a snare drum as Ross in his mutton chops and tank tops. You guys can’t keep a straight face to save your lives, and that’s exactly what we love about you.

Back in my neck of the woods, 280 miles south of Bellshill, it’s August 1986; there’s a new indie night in town, and next week you’re playing there. Every Tuesday, glitzy Birmingham nitespot Burberries becomes The Click Club. Its usual clientele of would-be Blind Date contestants is supplanted by indiepop believers whose romantic idealism has yet to be dented by the adult world into which they’ve just been let loose. In other words, you are us and we are you. We’re here because we heard the very session that John Peel made possible with his extraordinary act of generosity. What a night! I’ve found my tribe and my new favourite band all at once!

Mighty hooks are something you cough out so casually, Sean, that it genuinely seems to amuse you. A few months after Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer video is made for Spielberg money, you land on The ITV Chart Show with Hang Ten – whose video costs tuppence, is a hundred times more joyful and funny and, what’s more, no chickens had to die for it. Five minutes later, you’re back on telly with another one – which mainly thanks to the sight of Sushil driving a van, signals an impressive leap of maturity. Its title – Can’t Take No More – prepares us for anguish and introspection. This is, after all, a break-up song.

Sean, you probably don’t realise how much effort other writers expend on the business of turning pain into pop, but the glee with which you attack Can’t Take No More suggests you were over it by the middle eight (and what a middle eight, one of your very best). As the song rattles towards its thrilling coda, it’s like you’re speeding away from a heist. You tell Smash Hits that you want strings on your next record: “I want to feel those violins wrapped around my body, I want to feel those cellos,” you say. And you surprise us with Soft As Your Face, a song whose timeless tenderness seems to transcend the parameters of our pop-cultural bubble. In other words, this one sounds like a standard. One we can sing to our significant others in decades to come. And when that time arrives and my kids are as old as you were on the week it came out, I’ll learn that you wrote it when you were fourteen! What will also strike me decades later, listening to the incoming intimations of psychedelia on The Majestic Head, is just how restless you seem to be. Beyond the instrumentation, it’s impossible to guess what the next Soup Dragons single might sound like on the basis of the last one. But then I guess that when you’re that young, six months as a fraction of your life, is an eternity compared to the same expanse 35 years down the line. Now, aged 52, part of me wants to go back in time and tell you to slow down. But then I drop the needle on these songs, and I realise that would be a disaster.

It’s the velocity I love. The fearless velocity. The conviction that it will forever be like this. And as long as we have these songs, do you know what? It will.

Pete Paphides

Jim Bob

Jim Bob is one oil painting exhibition short of being Britain’s greatest living renaissance man. He had fourteen top 40 singles and four top ten albums (including a number one) with Carter USM, toured the world and headlined Glastonbury.

Away from Carter Jim Bob has released twelve solo albums, written songs for Ian Dury and for a Barbican production of Mark Ravenhill’s ’Dick Whittington & His Cat’. In 2010 he made his Edinburgh Fringe debut in the musical ‘Gutted.

Jim is an author too. Six novels published and two memoirs – ‘Goodnight Jim Bob – On The Road With Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine’ and the sequel ‘Jim Bob from Carter’.

Right now, Jim is focusing on music. His recent albums, ‘Pop Up Jim Bob’ and ‘Who Do We Hate Today’ were both top forty smashes (26 and 34), his ‘Beach Ready Ep’ was Number 1 in both the Vinyl and Physical sales Singles charts, and when his manager Marc heard his latest album ‘Thanks For Reaching Out’, he sent Jim this message ‘I bet this is how Tony Defries felt when Bowie sent him Ziggy Stardust’. Jim Bob has called the album the third in a trilogy. That seems to suggest something new will follow it. So, if you see him coming out of an art supplies shop carrying an easel and a large canvas, you know where he’s going.

Ned’s Atomic Dustbin

Ned’s Atomic Dustbin formed in 1987 in the glow of a happening scene in the town of Stourbridge, from whence The Wonder Stuff and Pop Will Eat Itself had already launched themselves across stages and airwaves across the globe.

By 1990, Neds had claimed a sizeable live audience with their explosive dual bass sound, whilst playing support to the aforementioned along with Jesus Jones and so released their first three EPs, The Ingredients EP, Kill Your Television and Until You Find Out, on indie label Chapter 22, hitting #1 in the Indie Charts and securing a deal with Sony Music using their ident label name Furtive Records.

The UK charts beckoned, and, in 1991, the band enjoyed #16 with single Happy and #4 with album God Fodder.

Worldwide tours ensued while further hits included #19 with single Not Sleeping Around and #13 with album Are You Normal? in 1992. Not Sleeping Around achieved #1 Modern Rock Single in the US.

Third album Brainbloodvolume was largely overlooked, although subsequently cherished by fans, and the band split in 1995.

The band returned to live stages with their full original line-up (Dan, Alex, Matt, Rat and Jonn) in 2007 and persist in reminding packed-out venues of the halcyon days of alternative rock.

Inspiral Carpets

With its behemothic bill locked-in for 2025, we are thrilled to confirm our headliners for the day…INSPIRAL CARPETS. A vital component of the infamous ‘Madchester’ movement, Inspiral Carpets formed in Oldham in 1980 and went on to score 3 Top 10 albums (‘Life’, ‘The Beast Inside’ and ‘The Revenge of the Goldfish’) and 11 Top 40 hit singles including “This Is How It Feels”, “Saturn 5”, “Move”, “Caravan” and “She Comes in the Fall”. One of the era’s most celebrated and enduring acts, the Inspirals have cemented their status with a series of rave-reviewed comeback shows and a hit-packed compilation last year. Now, in the year of their 35th Anniversary together, attendees of the Gigantic All Dayer ‘25 will be able to experience these indie big-hitters in full swing with a special ‘GREATEST HITS SET’ especially for the occasion.