Tuesday 6th January 2015
The Catalogue of Leicester Music
Work started today to create a catalogue of recorded music released by bands, singers and other artists based in Leicester and Leicestershire.
The catalogue covers any kind of recorded music that was made by a music act or released by a record label. It covers all periods of time and all types of music. The only limiting factors are that it is concerned with recorded music and that the artist who recorded the work must be or have been based in Leicester or Leicestershire at the time.
The project came about when music journalist Trevor Locke wanted to organise his collection of CDs. He had several hundred disks in his collection and wanted to find a way of listing them so he could find the one for which he was looking.
Trevor Locke said “Making lists is second nature to me. Years ago I made a card index of all the tracks I had in my collection of cassette tapes. So, it occurred to me that making a catalogue of all my CDs from Leicester bands and singers would be a good thing to do.”
Initially the catalogue will list CDs – singles, EPs and albums. Digital recordings will be added to the collection – both those available to listen to online or those that can be downloaded from websites.
The catalogue will include the CDs themselves and also song titles of each of the tracks on them. When enough work has been done on it, the catalogue will be published on the Music In Leicester website, so that anyone can obtain a copy of it.
Trevor Locke already lists all known bands from Leicester and Leicestershire and the list is published and regularly updated on the Music in Leicester website. There are also lists for singers, rappers and music artists working in a variety of genres.
Trevor Locke said “Leicester is an important place for music. As a journalist and historian I want to collect and list all known recordings by local artists and groups. It is very easy for this material to be lost so the catalogue will be of value to those who want to document, write about and discuss Leicester’s musical heritage.”
Trevor Locke is currently working on a book about The History of Music in Leicester. Plans are also being made to produce a documentary film on the same subject. The film plans to collect together archive and contemporary footage of bands and artists, both videos, celluloid and recorded tracks. It is hoped that both the book and the film will appear later this year.
Work on the preparation of the catalogue has already started and will continue throughout the year and beyond. It is hoped that people with cataloguing skills – such as librarians and information scientists – will offer to help with placing entries into the catalogue.
We hope top provide an online form so that anyone can send in information they wish to add to the catalogue – come back to this page in a few days to find the link to it. In the mean time, send us any information by email.
See also:
Services available to Leicester bands
This was published in the Leicester Mercury on 10th January 2015
