** HATCHAM SOCIAL, GOLDHEART ASSEMBLY, STRICKEN CITY, INVASION AND THE HEARTBREAKS ALL PREPARE TO JOIN THE PARTY!!! **

Cavalier news, pop punters – after spending nine years dig-dig-digging in the promoting trenches Club Fandango has finally found a battlefield it can call its own. And on Wednesday September 1st Pete & The Pirates will be sailing into town to headline the first of several no doubt magical autumnal nights designed to raise a glass or three to 30 years of crunchy melodies at the top end of Kentish Town. Full details are lurking over at www.bullandgate.co.uk but for now we will tell you that the headliners for the first week's indietainment look very much like this:

WED SEPTEMBER 1ST: Club Fandango: PETE & THE PIRATES + REDTRACK

THU SEPTEMBER 2ND: The wegottickets adventure: LOVVERS + DIGNAN PORCH + PEEPHOLES + ONO PALINDROMES

FRI SEPTEMBER 3RD: Stuntfox presents: INVASION + MAGNA SAGA + BLEECH + EIGHTS 'N' ACES

MON SEPTEMBER 6TH: fierce panda presents: HATCHAM SOCIAL + LA SHARK + YOUNGHISBAND

TUE SEPTEMBER 7TH: THE GREAT ROCK'N'ROLL QUIZ

WED SEPTEMBER 8TH: Best Of Myspace presents: REVERE + CURLY HAIR + Chi Limpiroj

And that, my chumbos, is just the beginning: old lags and new pups alike such as Jim Bob, The Crookes, Ultrasound, Kingmaker MMX, Eugene McGuinness, Goldheart Assembly and Stricken City have agreed to come to the party later on in September, as the esteemed likes of drownedinsound, Domino Records, Feeling Gloomy, Steve Lamacq’s Going Deaf For A Living, Tigertrap, Key Production and Chuff Media join forces to celebrate 30 years of Bull-and-Gateness with a whizzbang blend of comedy, punk rock karaoke, devious pop quizzes and, of course, lashings of live alt.pop.rock action.

Quite right, too, for in this era of Shoreditch witchcraft and Camden Crawling it’s hard to remember that the Bull & Gate was once a shining light in the stormy North London new band seas alongside the Camden Falcon and Finsbury Park’s Sir George Robey. The Robey and the Falcon have long since broken up on the rocks of oblivion, but the Bull & Gate has bullishly spent the past three decades just being…the Bull & Gate. Happily, this means that it never went out of fashion because for the people who loved going there it was never in fashion.

The summer has spent acclimatising to the venues’ foibles and giving the old lady a gentle post-spring clean. Lights and PA have been upgraded, chairs reupholstered, floorboards exposed. Throughout this time new bands have still been playing, just as they have done, night after night after night since 1980, but some colourful flashes have already been added to the Kentish Town palette, with a week-long Key Production birthday party here and a monthly Going Deaf For A Living night presented by Steve Lamacq there.

And so they should, because while the world keeps spinning and the music business evolves at a giddying pace so the Bull & Gate remains the essence of…Bull & Gateness. It still has a lovely big stage in a perfectly-formed rectangular room and there are no stairs to negate or scary stares from the door staff to repel. It still has the heroically un-gastro-ised pub next door. And – unique amongst London venues – it has the funny middle reception room which feels a little bit like a musical airlock as you travel between the outside world and Bullandgateland

Now there’s a name which should be put on the map…