Last weekend, reader-turned-writer Mike clenched his fists and boldly dragged us on a quick tour of Wigan’s music scene. His assessment, like most of The View From… articles, is a dual-edged one of cautious optimism and scathing criticism. Though how a man living in the City That Donk Built can complain is beyond me, frankly.

The Suzukis are a product of Wigan too, and possibly began as a deliberate counterpoint to Donk’s strangely lovable bouncy ridiculousness.

By name alone, The Suzukis sound like they ought to be a zippy,…

I can’t even remember how I discovered today’s new band. I will tentatively claim that I received an email from a rapt fan about them, but frankly it could have been from anyone via any medium. It could have been a psychic visitation for all I know.

I’m going to blame old age for forgetting. The truth – that I’m too disorganised to really remember – is the greater of the two evils.

This forgetfulness may well signal of the Beginning Of The End, the descent into premature Middle Age that I’ve always…

It’s still holiday season, and so the ANBAD donkey is still on holiday, possibly sitting at a jauntily amusing angle by a pool somewhere, but definitely sipping some mmm… delicious Kopparberg cider as he does it.

Kopparberg is pear cider, though really there ought to be a portmanteau word – ‘pider’ – to make it easier for drunks to say. And what a nice bunch of people work for them: after tweeting a disparaging message about their annoying advert on Spotify, I received a love-bomb email asking me to contribute to the next…

It turns out there’s quite a lot of bands named after Douglas Firs. Who would have thought? In the interests of fairness, let us list them all:

• The Douglas Firs - a ‘Jam Funk’ band, influenced by – yikes! – Ben and Jerry’s favourites Phish;
• The Douglas Firs - a contemporary acoustic duo with ‘thought provoking lyrics’ who probably don’t know who Phish is (lucky them);
• The Douglas Fir – tantalisingly singular, and in possession of a song called I Think I Loathe You;
• Douglas Firs – Belgian Ryan Adams-a-likes drop the

…

I got drunk last night. I didn’t mean to, but when you go to a party sometimes you just become a victim of circumstance. The party was in a swanky 11th floor apartment, with a killer view over this moderately fair city of Manchester.

Drinking sangria and watching the sunset, I mused out loud that I’d spent a vastly disproportionate amount of my time watching the sun set, but that none of it was wasted. A chorus of voices agreed. We all sighed, pondered for a moment on life’s transience, and then got…

I’m not going to lie. I’m not the most organised person in the world. But even I feel awful that the reason that this following piece showcasing the dubious and multifarious delights of the northern English town of Wigan was that I simply plain forgot about it. Awful, awful, awful.

Still, Mike has written a snigger-worthy and idiosyncratic view of his hometown of Wigan – a place that has a number of unusual spots in the annals of pop history.

Mention Wigan to anyone, and if their first reaction isn’t “Where?”, it…

Another day, another new band that deserves an exclamation mark after their name. Call me a huge pedant, but a surprise doesn’t feel surprising unless there’s the relevant punctuation to ram home the shock. Such are the myriad nuances of life.

Top Surprise! recorded their new EP in their bedrooms – I imagine the drummer was shoved in the bathroom (drummers are always made to record in the bathroom) – over a two day period. This nugget of information is all the justification I need to continue to complain loudly about bands who…

There was no need for me to write the band’s name in BLOCK CAPS up there in the title. But if one band  demanded the depression of the message-board shouter’s favourite button, YUCK were it. Hell, I’m going to throw in an exclamation mark next time I mention them too. Rampant recklessness abounds.

YUCK! is such a great band name that initially I felt like dancing a small, celebratory jig, and then I realised that a band with that good a name would probably write songs that were brilliant…

So, holiday time is really here now, and the chances are you aren’t actually reading this at all, because you’re turning a shade of lurid red on a beach on the Costa del Sol, letting your full English breakfast go down, and waiting to go for nueve cervezas before bellowing ‘Eggo y Chippo por favoro‘ at a humiliated waiter.

Thought: if we bring back straw donkeys from Spain as souvenirs, does the ANBAD Donkey bring back a straw human? Answer: YES [see above].

MIXTAPE:

FIRST! Francois Peglau is a Peruvian/Argentinian…

In July, when the World Cup finished, a huge, endless void opened up in your writer’s life; a void that could no longer be filled with hilarious slo-mo HD replays of England footballers shrugging their shoulders and visibly counting down the minutes until they could get back to crashing Bentleys full of strippers into lamposts.

Perturbed, that void was filled with tons of blisteringly good new bands. And, in celebration, here’s an all-new ANBAD radio show featuring the best five from July. GOAL!

ANBAD Radio Show // Last Month In Review: July’s…