Students face gig challenge

May 2 2007 By Sam Wonfor, The Journal

Music students from Newcastle College's Performance Academy have been getting a real-life taste of life on the road.

Instead of embarking on the traditional period of work experience during the final year of their foundation degree in popular music, the aspiring musicians were given a challenge to arrange themselves into bands and complete a tour of venues around Newcastle.

Everything from booking the venues and equipment to sorting out merchandise, selling tickets and promoting the gigs was to be down to the students themselves ... and not only that. They also had to come up with original music to perform at the gigs.

Each student was given £120 for tour expenses with the aim of making that money back and then some.

"I got the idea from a cutting I read about a similar project at Bath University," course leader Steve Reay said. "I spoke to the guy whose idea it was and it turned out he was a former student of the college. I really thought the students would get a lot from this project because there is so much for them to learn from it."

And so it has transpired with the five acts who have emerged from the project.

Take, for example, students John Vickers, 20, and Luca Corda, 22, who decided to perform under the band name J-Bird and Elsie.

Both band-members are involved with other musical outfits, but decided to do something different for this project - namely setting up an acoustic pop duo who by all accounts packed them in at Echo Bar on Heaton's Chillingham Road last week.

"It's been a really interesting thing to do," said John. "We had been playing guitar together in the house but never taken it any further. This gave us the opportunity and it has been going really well."

Luca added: "We literally have had to do everything including recording the songs to go on a CD which we can sell at the gigs. There have been some challenging bits, but it's been great to have this experience."

As well as taking care of all the aforementioned logistics, John and Luca have also ticked the obligatory internet presence box too, setting up a dedicated MySpace site for the band which list their upcoming dates and allows visitors to sample some of their musical offerings including songs such as Beans n Sardines and Magical River.

• The remaining gigs from bands on the course will be taking place tonight  at the Chillingham Arms in Heaton and tomorrow night at the Cumberland Arms in Byker and The Station Hotel in Whitley Bay.

• Two homecoming gigs will be taking place at the Performance Academy at the College's Rye Hill Campus on May 9 and 10. For more information or to buy tickets, call the box office on (0191) 226-7541.