IT'S time to show some love. After spending a couple of weeks poking some bands in the belly and rubbing other bands up the wrong way (anyone know the right way to rub up a band?), Discotheque has decided to give the music-making community a dig out.

See, this column is human too. You may find this difficult to believe, but we witness the pain and trauma which Irish bands face on a daily basis. And it hurts. It really, really hurts.

We watch Irish bands trying to get their heads around the 2 out of 5 star review which their latest album has received in the The Ticket. We hear them in interviews going on about how much work they've put in, how hard it is to play a gig in Cork on a Tuesday night and how no one loves them. We spy them at gigs counting the people in the audience and wondering where they've gone wrong.

But help is at hand. What every Irish band really needs is a major record label to make everything better. As good a cure-all as a triple-decker club sandwich and almost as good as echinacea, major labels used to be to Irish bands what the Medici family were to Renaissance artists or fairy godmother was to Cinderella.

Once upon a time, seeing as we are in fairytale mode, major labels were the most generous benefactors an Irish band could ever hope to meet. A&R men, the music industry's research and development technicians, roamed this green and pleasant land in search of unsigned next big things to whisk away to London, where they would slowly but surely be turned into another tax write-off.

It was the best of times for all concerned, and especially for the Irish music industry's permanent establishment. This golden age lasted until well into the 1990s, when the plug was pulled. You can probably blame the internet.

For a spell, most major label A&Rs did their damndest to sign nothing other than credit card slips. But there has been a chink in the armour and a whole slew of new Irish bands have received significant love of late from major labels.

Acts have been signed, recording budgets spent and many debut albums are now waiting in the wings to be released. We could well be on the cusp of something big. Or we could we looking at the latest versions of Cactus World News and Cry Before Dawn to take flight.

It just so happens that this weekend is a perfect opportunity to find out if this particular revival has legs. Between now and Sunday night, various major label reps will be stumbling up and down the mean, cobblestoned streets of Dublin's Temple Bar, running the rule over Irish acts playing at this year's Hard Working Class Heroes festival.

Some of these scouts will need to justify their £19.99 Ryanair return flight from Stansted by bringing back a recommended band or two for everyone else in the office to have a look at. It's the record industry version of bringing back a bottle of wine from a holiday in France, or some stodgy golabki from a cheap weekend trip to Lodz.

Which is where you bands come in. You need to befriend an A&R man. You have to make him go "mmmmm". You should try to be what this dude is looking for.

There's not much time, so here are some pointers from the Discotheque handbook. If you're a singer-songwriter, think James Blunt or James Morrison. If you're a band, try the mum-rock look and sound. If you have a girl in the band (or even two girls), go for something kind of edgy which will make the A&Rs think "PJ Harvey" and preferably not "Abba".

If your band are regularly used by the local gardai for an identity line-up, the cheeky chappie approach is the one for you.

We really wish we were there to join in the fun but, you know, hectic schedules and all of that. Please don't let us down.