On Tuesday, I brought you news that BBC Introducing favourites Stornoway were to debut on Later... with Jools Holland on BBC Two this week. It's a massive and hugely influential show, and hence pretty daunting for an unsigned band not exactly used to being broadcast live on tellyboxes all over the country to nearly a million viewers.

But what a triumphant appearance it was. There was a great atmosphere in the Television Centre studio during the filming, and although you could see the band were nervous, they pulled it off and - judging by the reaction on Twitter - have worked their way into the hearts of a legion of new fans.

BBC Introducing in Oxford's Tim Bearder hung out with the band in the run-up to the filming and live show on Tuesday night, and managed to grab a few minutes with Jools Holland himself to hear his thoughts:

Getting the opportunity to star on Later... isn't an everyday occurence for unsigned bands, so we asked Stornoway to give you, dear reader, an insight into the experience. They were only too happy to oblige, and sent us the following diary of the two days, which we've punctuated with some of the nice Tweets we've seen since Tuesday:

"On Monday morning we loaded our instruments into Van Blanc, our untrusty steed, and chugged down the M40 to the BBC studios, in plenty of time for our soundchecks. The studio was bustling with sound engineers and technicians loading in equipment, adjusting lights, cameras, microphones, and laying miles and miles of cables. It was smaller than it seems on the telly, but no less impressive."

"We carried in our instruments and a man came up and asked if Brian (our singer) was the tour manager. Once our brass section had arrived we gathered in the deserted Top of the Pops bar and practiced and ate all the biscuits while Norah Jones and Sting soundchecked."

"Our own checks went well and gave us some confidence. We played a medley of Gala's Freed from Desire and Ronan's You Say it Best on Jools's grand piano before heading back to Oxford for the night."

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Over at the BBC Music Blog, there's a cracking blog post by Senior Studio Manager, Mike Engles. He's worked at Maida Vale studios since 1974, so has more than a handful of interesting anecdotes to tell about the artists he's seen pass through the doors over the years.

To commemorate 75 years of the BBC at Maida Vale, Mike has written a list of ten sessions he remembers working on most fondly, including the likes of The Damned and Nirvana.

Well worth a read.

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'Ello, 'ello, 'ello and happy Tuesday! It's Vicki and Trev here from The Cut blog. You might, quite understandably, be wondering what we're doing over on the Introducing blog.

You see, every Tuesday we make a special episode of The 5:19 Show looking behind the scenes of The Cut at all the things that make the show ace. A big part of this is, of course, the soundtrack, which uses tracks from emerging artists as well as established ones.

And one of those emerging artists are BBC Introducing's very own Kids Love Lies whose music features loads in episode 32 of The Cut.

They very kindly came in to chat to us, told us about what a huge deal it was to play Radio 1's Big Weekend and then did an exclusive acoustic performance of their new single, Under the Bed. Have a little gander:

Obviously, Kids Love Lies have started to get a fair bit of exposure after their involvement with BBC Introducing, and there's some very easy ways for other artists to get their music heard.

Richard recently posted here about how you could get your music on The Cut and other BBC Switch shows via the uploader, and one band who did just that are the brilliant Party Horse. Their song is used in this Friday's episode of The Cut and because of this, we invited them down to the studio for a chat (they'll be on next week's show, so tune in then), proving that it's well worth pressing that little upload button.

Well, as long as you have something to upload. Otherwise, not a lot happens. And it's probably not that worth it.


BYE!
xx

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