Wearside post-punk band The Futureheads visited Newcastle College to play an intimate gig as well as provide advice on how to make it in the music business.
The Sunderland band dropped in on the college’s state of the art £21m Performance Academy to perform to 200 music students from the college’s School of Creative Industries, with the set including fan favorites as well as cuts from their recently released a cappella album Rant.
The gig was the latest in a long line of visits to the Performance Academy from A-List musicians, which have also included boy band megastars JLS, local indie rockers Maximo Park and most recently Britain’s Got Talent finalists Loveable Rogues.
The Performance Academy is also home to Newcastle College’s very own independent record label Push Puzzle Records.
As well as wowing the audience, the foursome also provided some sound words of advice on how to start a band and how to get noticed in the industry, having broken out of the North East scene to become one of the best known groups on the indie circuit, with regular appearances at the UK’s biggest music festivals.
The appearance also gave the band a chance to encourage students to get involved in the upcoming annual Split Festival, which is being held in Sunderland between September 21 and 23.
Front man Barry Hyde welcomed demos from budding musicians among the audience via social media networks and said that he hoped to see some of the students on stage at the festival next year.
David Craig, bassist and backing singer for the band, said: “There have been a number of great North East acts that have broken through in recent years, including bands like Mercury Music Prize nominated Field Music and Frankie and the Heartstrings, and there’s no reason why students from Newcastle College can’t make it. There is a lot of talent here in the region, which we hope to see at Split Festival in the near future.”
Max Weedon, Section Manager for Music at Newcastle College, said: “We are grateful that so many excellent artists are willing to give something back to our aspiring musicians. We have a strong focus on supporting original music, and bands like Futureheads demonstrate that with dedication and creativity you can have a career in the music industry.”
Newcastle College offers a wide range of creatively stimulating courses at its state of the art Performance Academy, including a new BTEC in Music for DJ Producers. Please visit www.ncl-coll.ac.uk for more information.
