Live music listings: September 2006

Doors 7.30
£12.50 via WeGotTickets
£15 door

Chumbawamba appear tonight to perform songs from their new, mainly acoustic album which is, for the first time, a collection of songs, pure and simple. Songs with a radical voice, songs with those same old same old Chumbawamba four-part harmonies and catchy choruses. But songs nevertheless. Songs without drum loops or samples, without backwards cymbals or synth sequencers. It won't fit neatly into any categories, since it stands with its eight legs in different camps. Traditional English music, 'unplugged' pop, choral secular music, jangly acoustic singalongs… oh! Just sling a few barely related words together to create categories that sound vaguely familiar.
T.V Smith rose to prominence in the first wave of British punk rock as singer and songwriter for The Adverts who, after frequent early appearances at the seminal Roxy club in London in 1977, gained cult success with the Stiff single 'One Chord Wonders. This turned to notoriety when their next single, 'Gary Gilmore's Eyes' thrust them into the upper reaches of the U.K. charts. The album that followed in 1978, 'Crossing the Red Sea with the Adverts' charted on its first week of release, and is generally considered to be one of the few genuine classics of the era. A new album, 'Misinformation Overload' was released in 2005. T.V. continues to tour the world, bringing his epic solo show to ever-increasing audiences.
Robb Johnson is now widely recognised as one of the finest songwriters working in the UK today. His songs feature in the repertoires of a wide variety of musicians, from folk legend Roy Bailey to acclaimed cabaret diva Barb Jungr and he enjoys a similarly diverse spectrum of critical acclaim – “a modern-day Dostoyevsky” said the US’s Dirty Linen, Mojo made the double CD 'Gentle Men' Folk Album Of The Month, while The Daily Telegraph made it their Folk Album Of 1998, and Tony Benn says Johnson’s 'Winter Turns To Spring' is his favourite song. Such an accoldade.
He has played pubs, clubs, pavements, pickets and benefits, arts centres and festivals, local radio, BBC Radio 3 & 4, Belgian Radio 1, Nicaraguan TV & Channel 4, the Albert Hole in Bristol and, as part of Roy Bailey’s 1998 concert, the Albert Hall in London. Robb has worked with a variety of bands, with friend & fellow songwriter Leon Rosselson, as well as solo. In 1997 Robb wrote the song suite 'Gentle Men', an ambitious family history of the first World War, for the Passendael Peace Concert, and subsequently toured it successfully in Britain too. He also plays extensively in Belgium, Holland and Germany and he has toured Britain supporting Chumbawamba and in the U.S with David Rovics.