Ok, so I’ve been recently a bit stymied by the shiny SXSW scheduler that’s currently live. Because it (currently, anyway) doesn’t have an easy way of checking countries of origin, I just don’t have the time or the inclination to be able to put together a decent list of Brits. In the meantime, here are 20 bands I like who I know are both British AND on the scheduler at the moment. I’ll do another round if it gets any easier to use. Plus, while I’m at it, what the hell happened to Steve Mason and James Blake? They were on the original list, but don’t seem to have made it to the scheduler. If they pop up, definitely go see both of them, too.

UPDATE: Some unforgiving – if lovely – bastards out there are taking the piss out of me on Twitter for not including a bunch of bands also on the schedule. To be clear, the list below is based on the first three rounds of bands announced, NOT the bigger list on the scheduler, which I just can’t be arsed to trawl through right now. I’ll get there eventually, and will get round to the awesomeness of (for example) Twilight Sad, Xcerts, Pete & The Pirates, Admiral Fallow plus a whopping great barrel full of other good stuff. In the meantime please remember that I’m lazy, not stupid – so cut me a little slack, eh? x

Don’t get me wrong, I bloody LOVE Coxon, always have. Quiet, mischievous, with the very devil in his guitar hand, it should be impossible to dislike a man who comes across as shy and awkward but is also capable of smashing out inventive, credible arty pop whenever the mood takes him. Last time he came through Edinburgh, I was at the Liquid Rooms interviewing him for The Skinny, and he was as nice as always, as thoughtful and hospitable as always, and on stage he blew the damn bricks off the walls. That Queen’s Hall show last week should – by rights – have been a triumph of Biblical proportions. But, for me anyway, I felt rotten and cheated and annoyed.

A large chunk of the problem was the fact that he alternated between songs with electric guitars in them and ones with acoustics. Nice idea, and it was a blast to see Robyn Hitchcock wigging out on the same stage during the noisier bits, but it meant the show never really got anywhere. It felt like being a cart horse – just when you start to get a bit of a giddyup on, you get forcibly reined back in.

On top of that, Coxon himself decided to sit down to play his guitar on the acoustic numbers. The problem with this was just pure physics – Coxon’s not the tallest lad in the world, and the Queen’s Hall stage isn’t exactly neck-craning in its stature, with the upshot being that despite me being the other side of six feet tall, I could only just see the top of his mop during half the songs. Anyone shorter than me would presumably have seen even less. That really shit photo up there on the left was taken from well above my head, standing at the back, on a step. And Coxon (the out of focus blur on the left!) was standing up, if that gives you an idea.

I know, I know, I’ve already come across all moany and whiny and stupid, but it all comes from the same source – I could probably have lived with any of this if I’d paid a tenner for the ticket. But at a thumping eighteen pounds fifty, it would have been nice to see a bit of a show, I reckon. Instead, I got what felt like a total vanity project, thrown together on a whim, which felt disjointed and odd and which finally descended into some godawful noodling towards the end.

So – aside from feeling a bit disappointed with someone who I generally and genuinely adore, there’s probably a serioous point in there somewhere. Do we deserve a show with the price of admission? Is it enough to just be in the presence of the music? I don’t think so – given the times we live in, all artists should be showing us how they deserve our hard-earned, and given the scope his other day job allows him, Coxon had an opportunity to really deliver something memorable, instead of a night that turned into something a little bit, well, meh.

Now I do the maths, given that I only got the audio for half the set, I reckon that means Coxon owes me – personally – £4.63. Tell you what though Graham, since everyone’s nicking your music and we gave you food poisoning last time you were up, I’ll settle for a return to the usual blistering live form instead. Deal?