WHEN producers of a new Channel 4 music programme were looking for a city other than London to host a televised gig, they first thought of Liverpool.
But the programme's host, Mathew Horne, had other ideas.
The result airs just after midnight tonight as the Burton Joyce-native Gavin and Stacey actor hosts an episode of Sounds from the Cities shot live in Nottingham.
In the four-programme series – one each in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – Mat gets to know musical tastes across Britain. Cardiff and Edinburgh episodes have already been aired.
Mat, the musicians and the production team were in town to shoot England's episode at the Malt Cross, in St James Street.
The series is produced in partnership with music website bobcom.com. Like the website, it seeks to give a platform to lesser-known bands that doesn't involve corporate influence or X-Factor-style personality-driven juries. Major music fan Mat believes in what the programme and bobcom.com are trying to do. And he believes Nottingham is the perfect place to do it.
"It was an idea that seemed very natural," he said. "The memory (of Nottingham gigs) is very important to me. That was a primary motivation."
Today Mat's a well-known music aficionado who's mates with the likes of the Maccabees and who puts on regular DJ nights in London. That passion began as a teenager, when he was a Rock City regular whose top gigs included Bowie, Radiohead and Pulp.
He thought the Malt Cross – the former Victorian music hall with its variety club, cabaret feel – was a perfect fit. Although he said that with Nottingham's live-music culture, any number of places – the Bodega Social, the Rescue Rooms, Rock City – would have worked.
The programme and bobcom.com are giving voice to something that exists in places like Nottingham, he believes.
"It's something you don't get on the telly, really – to be as bold and brave as they've been," said Mat. "As music becomes more homogenous through corporate involvement, these individual voices get lost."
Music producer Steve Levine, who early in his career worked with the Beach Boys before making his name in the 1980s with bands like Culture Club, was also at the Nottingham shoot. Steve, who's working with some Sounds of the Cities and bobcom.com bands, reckons the music industry goes in cycles.
"There were times when the record companies were great at developing talent," he said.
Now he sees plenty of talent, but a music industry in flux. It needs vision.
That's what bobcom.com founder Michael Feeney Callan would like to provide. He worked for a number of years with Robert Redford and takes the actor and director's Sundance Film Festival as an inspiration. The fiercely independent, un-corporate film festival in unglamorous Utah has in three decades changed the way independent cinema works. Michael has similar plans for music.
"I've said 'no corporate sponsorship,'" he said. He's also said "no" to Simon Cowell-style televised posturing and music manufacturing. Instead, he's committed to finding out what's happening out there already.
Part of that involved bringing the show to Nottingham.
Michael said: "I was very focused on: we have to take this out into the real heartland."
Sounds from the Cities featuring performances from Blood Red Shoes, Faded Cadence and Clare Maguire, airs at 12:10am tomorrow on Channel 4.
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