As part of Foals’ recent takeover of the Guardian music website, former Truck co-organiser P-C Rae has written this piece on how to run a music festival.

The latest contributor to Oxfordbands.com is Kate Griffin, a freelance journalist living in Oxfordshire. Kate edited a music fanzine at university and has since contributed music reviews and arts features to the Welsh edition of The Big Issue. She currently edits Leys News, the community newspaper for Blackbird Leys. At oxfordbands.com, we’re extremely happy to have her contributions and hope you enjoy reading her reviews and thoughts on the Oxford music scene.

Was anyone else up and about at about 1am this morning and happened to catch the programme all about Electrelane on Channel 4? The interviews weren’t really up to much, but there was some incredible live footage that reminded me what an amazing band they were and how I’ll miss ‘em now they’re gone. I got the same feeling of having watched them ‘grow up’ as a band as I’ve had with many an Oxford band, from seeing them play in the Rising Sun in Reading years ago, on a bright and sunny afternoon on the main stage at Truck, through to having the privilege to help promote them at Audioscope in 2003, and then seeing them go on to support Arcade Fire and the Beastie Boys. And maybe that’s the most satisfying ‘relationship’ you can have with a band, seeing them develop from early days in pub backrooms into something amazing. On which note, good luck to Foals - it looks like it’s gonna be their year…

How much fun was that? For anyone who didn’t witness Smilex’s incredible Guns ‘n’ Roses set, I’m only sorry I didn’t get any photos. Any band that can pull off a costume change during a guitar solo deserves maximum rock hero respect. Hey ho, I only had this picture of Witches doing ‘Starman’ in a fetching array of matching wigs - more photos can be found over here.

Happy new year!

…well, thank goodness that’s over. Maybe I can have my Sunday mornings back now, free from the morbid compulsion to watch Jo Whiley fawning over some middling indie tripe - only in this case middling indie tripe that isn’t signed to a major label (yet). Was it me or were all the bands, perhaps with the exception of that lot that seemed to have heard a few Tom Waits records, really crap? Was that really the best of British unsigned music? I’m sure there are at least thirty bands in Oxford better than Envy And Other Sins…

Did anyone else find themselves bizarrely unable to turn this off every time it came on?

Well, it’s December, and every blog in the known universe is doing their end of year roundups, so for what it’s worth here’s my top ten albums from 2007… what are yours?

1. Parts & Labor - Mapmaker

This came along at just the right time to hit me hard this year. No one else manages to noise sound as uplifting as this - it’s brilliant.

2. El-P - I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead
Good old El-P. Takes him ages to do a record ‘cos he’s too busy making beats for everyone else, but when he does it’s a belter.

3. Holy Fuck - LP

The best live band I saw this year, and matched on record. Some crazy mad-scientist version of krautrock, like nothing you’ve heard before. Well, nothing I’ve heard before anyway.

4. Dalek - Abandoned Language

Yeah, OK, so they’re a bunch of splitters who pulled out of playing Audioscope for the second year running, but I almost forgive them on this count. ‘Subversive Script’ - what a tune.

5. PJ Harvey - White Chalk

Wow, what a great record. Actually quite an unnerving experience for the first few listens, and just amazing to see someone so obviously pushing themselves.

6. Burial - Untrue

7. Sennen - Where The Light Gets In

8. Witches - Heart of Stone

9. Aesop Rock - None Shall Pass

10. Liars -Liars

Hi everyone - as you might have noticed, we’ve just given OxfordBands a bit of a facelift to try and make things a bit more user-friendly and generally useful around these parts. The whole site now sits cosily in this here blog, where we’ll be asking a range of people who care about Oxford music to post reviews, news, photos and general comments and musings on all things Oxford music and beyond. We’ve chopped out all the stuff that we thought was no longer useful or wasn’t updated any longer, and rest assured we’ll be updating regularly from here on. You can also now comment freely on any post or content on the site, so let us know what you think.

If you’ve got some news on a gig or release for us, or if you’d like to contribute to the site as a writer, photographer or anything else, please drop us a line at stuart (at) oxfordbands (dot) com. We’d love to hear from you.

Happy Christmas!

Stuart.