The Bitten, Shackleford, Nieviem, Boguns – Live at the Mitre, Stourbridge – 31st August 2019

Another Saturday night in Stourbridge at the Mitre hosted by the wonderful Pete Tromans and his mighty Noise Merchant Collective. Across the country every week there are hundreds of gigs featuring 1,000’s of bands. Some of the gigs are like Pete’s, a real DIY labour of love for everyone involved. A lot of work is pumped into these events, planning, promoting and ensuring everything runs smoothly on the day, and it must seem, if you purely count numbers through the door, for very little return (I can’t even begin to contemplate how the books all balance – or don’t!). Pete’s got a great knack of pulling in bands from around the country, there’s always ‘new’ bands to check out and usually enough variety to keep even the picky punters happy. The crowd tonight is not big, around 20, but enough to generate a little atmosphere in the upstairs room at the Mitre (once regular host to the Black Country grebo rockers Neds Atomic Dustbin, Pop Will Eat Itself and the Wonderstuff). Boguns from Wrexham get us underway with a blistering opening set. Likewise, Nieviem from Lincoln play great edgy melodic punk and impress the room. I’d seen Shackleford earlier in the year at the Mitre and absolutely love them. Dedicating a couple of covers at the end of the set to Pete they blew any remaining cobwebs right out the place. I then had to do a runner to get the last train home (I can’t believe its 2019 and the last train on Saturday night was at 10.40!) so missed the Bitten but I had seen them before and they are great! I think we need to do all we can to support gigs like this. It’s great to get 4 bands (£5 in, so that’s £1.25 per band – quick math!) from around the country playing in a small upstairs room at a pub in the Black Country. But gigs like this will only continue if we support them- so spread the word, share on Facebook, invite your friends, come along (it’s a cheap night out), buy the merch if you can. At the moment there’s plenty more of these gigs coming up, follow the Noise Merchant Collective on Facebook to get line up and venue details: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1471367266236124&ref=br_rs