Keeping on the Beat

First’s the worst, second’s the best…

…Or so the rhyme went, when I was a kid. Cardiff has been declared the second most musical city in Britain. Pretty good, hey?

This comes as a result of research by the Performing Right Society (PRS). Bristol placed top, according to the number of musicians the city has produced, relative to the size of its population. Bristol has a fair amount of good musical memories for me – growing up in Exeter, it was the nearest stop-off for many bands when touring. By the time I was 17 or so, my parents could have dropped me at the Academy in their sleep; it was where I went during my teenage years to see bands that I now cringe to think of. Good times.

Cardiff has a special place in my heart, though, after three-and-half years of being a student here. There are so many lovely venues here and – despite having lost The Point and The Globe being under threat – this doesn’t seem to be deterring the opening of new venues such as Cardiff Arts Institute. I’ve been to some brilliant gigs here, as well as some decidedly patchy ones. Oh, and I once had to go and see Will Young at the CIA, but that was under sufferance for work.

I’m intrigued to know exactly how they defined which artists were counted – I’m not being impertinent; I genuinely am curious. Did the musicians have to have reached a certain level of success in order to qualify? And, with regard to Cardiff, where was the cut-off point, area-wise? Would a band from the Valleys count, say? Send answers on a postcard (or, equally, just post them as a comment on this post.)

We might not have reached the top spot, but we still have Swn festival. So there. Beat that, Bristol.