I posted a few days ago about a competition that NME are running to find Britain’s best small venue. Well, great news The Wedgewood Rooms has made the final shortlist for the South East category!
This really is a great accolade not only for them should they win, but the city also. Get involved and cast your vote here and hopefully we will see them win the award I believe they deserve.
The Isle of Wight’s The Bees played a sell out show at The Wedgewood Rooms last night and killed it. I’m not very good at writing reviews so I’ll keep it simple: they started with These Are The Ghosts and ended with Chicken Payback with a few new songs thrown in there too. Chicken Payback was something special, a smile on every face there. Still smiling through the hangover now.
Have a watch of the video below and turn the volume up to Friday.
Photos by Paul Gonella
Bit of an early warning, get your tickets now type thing, The Wedgewood Rooms are host to Metronomy as they pass through Southsea on Sunday 17th April as part of a tour promoting the new album The English Riviera (due next year). You can buy tickets now from the box office or online.
Finally, I’ve personally been hoping for this for ages! British Sea Power will be playing at The Wedgewood Rooms on Friday 25th February next year as part of the tour to promote their new album Valhalla Dancehall. This is going to be something special and is sure to sell out sharpish. You can buy tickets in the box office or buy online.
Silver Lake, Los Angeles band Local Natives passed through Southsea last week when they performed at The Wedgewood Rooms on Wednesday night with Superhumanoids and Cloud Control in support. The night was a sell out and all three bands killed it, with a particularly large cheer when Ryan Hahn of Local Natives announced he was born in Portsmouth and felt a sense of homecoming.
Below are a few photos, more over at Forever Circling.
What needs to be said about the Isle of Wight’s The Bees? Hands down one of the best bands from not only the island, the south coast but also the UK, plus they are incredible live. The Bees will be performing live at The Wedgewood Rooms on Thursday 16th December and tickets are only £10, available at the box office or online. This can’t be missed.
The new album Every Step’s A Yes is out on Monday and you can watch the video for their awesome new song I Really Need Love below:
Local photographer Katie Anderson is working on a photography project which is a retrospective book about the Wedgewood Rooms. The book is going to have a diary/scrapbook feel to it and at the moment Katie is in the process of collecting any Wedge memorabilia she can get her hands on to scan for the book.
Katie really wants to get the local community involved so is asking if anyone has any tickets, passes, posters, photos, just anything Wedge related really that people have collected over the years, please get in contact so they can be scanned and included.
You can contact Katie at katie.anderson.photos@googlemail.com.
The wonderful I Am Kloot will be hitting Southsea on Sunday 26th September, performing live at The Wedgewood Rooms. Tickets are £14 and available from the box office and online.
Below is ‘To You’ that was featured in the First Broadcast video from 2002.
With the release of their second studio album Odd Blood back in February the experimental electronic/rock band Yeasayer from Brooklyn, New York popped up on most people’s radar. The band will be hitting Southsea on Tuesday 24th August with a performance at The Wedgewood Rooms. Tickets are £13.50 and available in the Box Office or online. Tickets will sell out sharpish so get in there quick.
Find out more about Yeasayer at www.yeasayer.net (with the weird and wonderful code organ where you can ‘play’ the website) and on Facebook.
Southend-on-Sea’s Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly (also known as Sam Duckworth) will be passing through Southsea and performing live at The Wedgewood Rooms on Tuesday 12th October. Check the Wedgewood Rooms website for more details and tickets for the show are available from the box office for £12.
The tour will include songs from the new album set for release in the autumn, including ‘Morning Light’ which you can listen to below:
We are very happy to announce the details for our Primary exhibition, with it’s preview night on Friday 1st June at Bonzo in Albert Road. We had well over 500 submitted photos by well over 100 different local photographers, all using their mobile phone cameras and an assortment of different apps like Instagram, Camera+, etc. The exhibition format itself will be something new and previously unseen in Portsmouth in this form and we will be unveiling the winners of competition too, with loads of photography related prizes. There will also be food, drink and some surprises we’ll let you know about nearer the time. This may well be one of the largest community arts projects to happen in the city in relation to the number of people who actively participated and we really hope everyone can make it down to see this absolutely unique view of our city and it’s people.
If you cannot make it down on Friday the exhibition will run through the whole of June so be sure to pop along. After the exhibition we will have an online, interactive gallery of all of the images to form a legacy to the project.
As you may know each year we run a home brew competition in February where the winning brew has the opportunity to be brewed by Irving & Co Brewing Co. and sold around the city in the summer. Last year’s brew, the Strong Island Hopper Ale, was hugely successful being one of Inving’s best selling ales and selling out so quickly it went through a second brew run. This year’s winning ale is Dry Dock No. 1, originally brewed by Lee Immins, went on sale in some of Portsmouth and Southsea’s pubs over the weekend.
We spoke to The Hole in The Wall in Southsea who said the new ale went down a storm with it being their best seller on Sunday and with almost two barrels empty by the end of the Bank Holiday weekend. Those guys at the Hole in The Wall and their regular ale drinkers know their stuff so for us this was amazing early news with the ale.
To officially launch Dry Dock No. 1 we are having a launch party with the lovely souls at The Belle Isle on Thursday evening. The ale will be on full flow, come down and try a pint or two. As well as being on sale all around the city the ale will also be available in Chichester’s Belle Isle too, so you can drink it away from home for the first time too.
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