Hello and tomorrow it’s October or, Rock-tober, if you will. I know how much you love it live and next month Dorchester Arts Centre is all over it like a tramp on a dropped chip.

Yeovil-based band Design, who did a storming set at the Quayside Festival in Weymouth back in August, are at the arts centre tomorrow night with their mix of spiky melodic pop, with support from folk rockers Spidereen.

The following Friday Welsh popsters Paper Aeroplanes are the visitors with rave reviews from the BBC’s Bob Harris and Robin Deneslow for their music “brilliantly crafted and stoked from a bruised heart’s embers’. Thank you, Barbara Cartland.

And next Saturday it’s the turn of the fabulous Zoe Schwarz and Rob Koral and their Baddest Blues Band and, on Sunday, the lively Bag of Rats are at the venue in The Grove. Quite a start to the month in the county town, details at www.dorchesterarts.org.uk Now if you woke up this morning and felt like spending the weekend at a blues festival (see what I did there?), then you need to haul your dawg, your laydee (or significant other) and your whiskey down to Swanage on October, 7, 8 and 9 for the town’s fifth blues and roots festival.

Get your kicks down the A351 to enjoy three days of quality blues with over 50 bands in 20 venues in the charming seaside down.

And what’s more it’s all absolutely free. Yeehaw!

Among the bands performing next weekend in Swanage are local favourites Motel 6, C Sharp Blues Band and Freezer, who bring the whole event to a close at The Anchor on Sunday night. More details at www.swanage-blues.org Meanwhile, Weymouth’s relentless march towards being the metal capital of the known universe continues this month with the appearance of Evile at the King’s Club on Saturday October 15.

The thrash experts from Yorkshire, who have toured with Megadeth and have been hailed by Kerrang! magazine as ‘carrying the whole metal revival on their shoulders’, will be supported by Bullriff Stampede and Savage Messiah and tickets at £10 are available from the Pavilion box office or online at ticketweb.co.uk Now, they’re hardly new, having been around for more than 30 years, they’re certainly not models and there’s not enough of them to be an army, but the New Model Army have had a long and eventful journey which takes them to the Electric Palace in Bridport on Saturday October 15.

Post-punk, folk-rock, politico-crusty and goth metal are just some of the labels pinned on the band formed in Bradford back in 1980 but they have steadfastly refused to be pigeon-holed.

They were a hit at at the Endorse It in Dorset festival back in the summer and, despite having no new album to promote, are playing just for the sheer enjoyment of it.

That’s just some of the musical highlights coming up this month and I leave you with two things that will make you go ahhh: Pirates and dentists.