The Half Rabbits have reached the semi-finals of MTV’s Get Seen, Get Heard competition, and will be filmed for MTV for a special show that will be aired in March. The band performed at an Oxjam gig at the Port Mahon last October, were shot by local filmmaker Adam Deeves, and the resulting video saw them through voting by an industry panel and a public voting session into the semis. The top three bands overall - to be voted on over the coming weeks - will perform live in a special MTV studio show in front of a judging panel, with the overall winner going on to perform at MTV’s annual Spanking New Music showcase.

Local stars Witches have been nominated in the 2008 Indy Awards. The awards were launched last year ‘to celebrate, reward and recognise the hard work of live music venues, promoters and the talented artists they showcase and help develop’ (it says here), and Truck have nominated Witches as a band to watch for this year. Get involved and cast your vote for Witches before 31st March to send them on their way to the showcase finale in April.

Chalgrove-based Decibel Studios are offering 2 hours free rehearsal to any bands or solo artists who visit their new website at http://www.decibelstudios.org/ and fill out the contact form. Phone David (Tel 01460 221541, mobile07885 211279) for more information.

Looks like The Half Rabbits have been shortlisted by a ‘team of industry experts’ (apparently) for a competition to get on MTV after having their recent Oxjam gig filmed. The top ten entries get to be on the telly, so vote for The Half Rabbits by clicking here sometime between today and 13 January…

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.