It’s the wrong time of the year for snowballs but Lee Marchant and Nick Illingsworth seem to have created a giant one which is rolling to St Mary’s stadium this weekend (23rd May).

These two are responsible for Saints Aid, a musical extravaganza which is raising money to help Southampton’s football team.

It started as a one day event but has now spread around the city, rapidly turning into a weekend of gigs and entertainment.

As Lee told me: “The idea started when David Reid from Olympian offered to play a gig to raise a few pounds for the club. Glynn Root from Fingermen also said his band would like to play. I spoke to to Nick Illingsworth about moving the event to St Mary’s and making it an all day affair. After this myself and Nick joked about being Bob Geldof and Midge Ure in red and white stripes, so Saints Aid was born!”

Headlining at St Mary’s on Saturday 23rd will be The Rebs and Dlugokecki. On Bank Holiday Monday The Artful Dodger will be back home at Oceana on the 25th May in a unique performance specially for Saints Aid.

On Friday 22nd Melodee Rockmore will be ending eight hours of music at the King Alfred in Northam Road. And on the same day a heavy rock night at Louisiana Nightclub, Leisure World.

Showcase UK is also taking part and tonight Monday 18th we’re having a preview night at the Soul Cellar, playing tracks by all of the artists taking part in Saints Aid, call it pre-match training if you like but we’ll be raising money for the team and building the anticipation for the weekend to come.

Musicians from around the city, and even beyond, are trying to save the Southampton FC, according to Lee: “It’s part of the feeling in the city of people wanting to do something to help the club but do not quite know what they can. As we have asked for local musicians, the bands have approached us in their droves. ”

“The response has been both overwhelming and quite inspiring. The support for Saints-aid has been fantastic and it has snowballed into something quite enormous, which is why we have had to use over venues and take it all over the city. It just goes to show how much the football club means to the city of Southampton.”

For more details and ticket information visit www.saints-aid.co.uk

Recently I was asked for advice about approaching a record company.

This brought back happy memories of my times in bands where we would all traipse up to a record company, meet someone in A&R, and play them our latest demo.

These were never successful meetings and I doubt A&R departments still allow young hopefuls through the door so this is how I would approach it now.

Find someone whose musical opinion you trust and ask them if you are any good. If they say no then either improve, or give up and stick to the day job.

If they say yes find the record label most suited to your sound; the one you would really love to sign to.

Then find out who is responsible for new acts and try and speak to them. You’ll need to be charming to get past the receptionist. Don’t be put off by a negative response.

Once you have a name; you have a contact. Send this person your demo but make sure the whole package looks impressive: a plain silver CD with a hand written note is going straight into the bin.

So maybe send your trusted friend from above the whole package and see what improvements they can suggest.

And be prepared for a positive response. If they like you they will want to: see you play live as soon as possible and how many albums of material you already have.

Good luck!

In this Sunday’s Original Showcase we have Loz Bridge and the Box Social in session.

Loz used to sing for the Portsmouth band Suburbian who split at the end of 2007 leaving him to concentrate on his song writing and find musicians to compliment his new direction.

The Box Social includes Showcase regular Andrew Foster on guitar (left) and Matt (right) on a rather beguiling Spanish drum that you sit on to play.

Every Showcase session is always a new experience and it sometimes feels like the old days of recording when we try to get the best positions for the microphones and balance the sound levels.

Afterwards a small amount of reverb is applied to give the songs a “live room” feel but we don’t add compression any more as it seems to take away something from the band’s performance.

I didn’t realise we were part of an “anti-compression” trend until I heard about the “Loudness War”.

Compression has been used to make songs louder and help them stand out on the radio. However if today’s songs are loud, tomorrow’s will have to be even louder!

To counter this vicious circle, and the resulting poor quality sound it produces, the “Turn Me Up” campaign has been started by music professionals Charles Dye, John Ralston and Allen Wagner.

You can find out more about their attempts to bring dynamics back to music at www.turnmeup.org

It will open your eyes and maybe your ears too!