Pale news JUNE

June 2008

Hello There!

New Drummer Secured
As you may be aware, Stoobie will be off travelling come July so we have been hard at work looking for our new permanent drummer in a bid to shake off the 'Curse of the Spinal Tap' we suffered for the past while. This we have now managed to do. His name is Jim :) We are busy putting the set back together and writing more new material with him, with plans to be back to gigging from August / September onwards. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible, do not adjust your set.

Every Cloud
Details of this event next weekend are all in the flyer shown below (blog: flyer a few posts down). If any of you want advance tickets and cant get to any of the places they are being sold from, simply email us and we can work something out. Hope to see as many of you there as possible, as its going to be a top day our for all the family (as long as they are over 18, it is a pub after all).

Recording
Our recording continues, regardless of what hiccups the old tech we are using may throw our way, and it has had a few wobblers but thats not going to stop us. Plans are afoot to make an album from what we are doing with it.

Myspace
Any of you who are myspace afficianados might have noticed that our myspace has had a serious facelift. You can find it at www.myspace.com/paleuk.

Well thats about it for now.
See you on the road...

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Middle of Nowhere Festival

What a tiring and amusing weekend that was. After much mooching about and sorting things out we finally got on site late friday afternoon and set about having a beer or two before we played. Things were a little delayed as things ran slightly late (not a bad thing) and a band or two pulled out (muppets), but we finally took the stage around 8pm. We had a broken drum stand which we had to go blag another to borrow (thanks Hips, nice one chaps) but once we got things going all was good. A later (or even a saturday) slot would have been nice but we instead we essentially opened the festival (from a loud music point of view) after some accoustic chaps played a set just before us. Things went very well, we had a good laugh at the gig and got peeps to dance for us. After all that it was time for us to have a festival ourselves as we were done playing. I wont go into many details of the debauchery and devilry that followed, but needless to say we had a very amusing time. We hosted a firepit party till about 10am sat morning, which saw some 40 odd people gather and amuse themselves around the fire (hello fellow fire people!), everyone seems to get wood for everyone else and Mark invented his blues name - 'Gravy Lips' Lewis. Things were drunk, including most of the people present, and other things were consumed. Saturday we made a farmhouse rustic chinese (nice work there stoob) and proceeded to repeat the night before's activities with drinking and partying. An exquisite weekend was had by all. If you made it, then you already know. If you didnt, then come next year to find out...

"Every Cloud..." music event / Bird in Hand saturday 14th June

last draft of the flyer, should be about right...

Lastnight @ The Bird in Hand

Wow was it hot lastight. Very warm indeed. We had 4 cooling fans laid out around the stage, and it was still hot! Still, thats the summer for you and we wouldnt want it otherwise would we? So We got to the Bird and did the usual setup games, sound checking and such. Grace hit the stage around 9.30pm and played a beautiful set that was well recieved by those brave enough to enter the building in such temperatures, big thanks to them and we look forward to seeing them play again at "Every Cloud...". By 10.30 we were ready to play and hit the stage, with the fire doors closed by this time (to avoid a visit from the noise police) we started roasting ourselves and flew into our set. Applying a liberal basting of cooking juices, and some much needed throat lubrication, we worked our way through the hour we had set up to play. A fabulous reaction from each and every song we played was splendidly received by us, very much appreciated as it was hot work! We even got a birthday dedication in (happy b'day T!) and a competition for when Mark was gonna fuck up the song he likes to fuck up from time to time just to check if anyone is paying attention :) A great, and well enjoyed gig. Thanks all who came down and braved the temperatures! See you next time folks...

Next Gig: The Bird in Hand

Exoteric Single Lauch Party / Gig

Saturday just gone we headed up to Bradford for the launch party. The trip up went easy enough, getting us at the venue for before 4pm. Sound checks ensued as is the norm for such things and at around 8.30pm we took to the stage to play. We had some walk on music we had chosen, from the film Requiem For A Dream - if anyone is curious, and then we played our set. Things went somewhat rapidly, with a few well chosen f*ck ups by us - a consequence of us not practicing that day - but overall our performance was good and very well reacted to. It was, after all, a crowd of Exoteric fans who had never heard us before, but the gig went well and good. There was some shenanegans with the sound desk, but we managed to dodge most of the problems as the power was knocked out after we had played (it wasnt us!) leaving Exoteric to deal with a digital sound desk with blanked settings and it being time for them to play. Not a nice experience I'm sure.

Overall the night was a great success, we got great feedback from the gathered crowd and gave out a whole batch of our BBC Sessions cd's. Some good photos have already been upped (thanks to David Brett http://www.photos-dsb.co.uk/) with more to come. We had feelers for more gigs up in Bradford from several quaters and it should see us return there for more giggings soon as we can sort it out.

Major thanks to Exoteric for asking us to come up and play their party, we wish them the best of luck in all things - especially their support slots on the UK dates of Wednesday 13's tour - big thankyou Anneka, Tom, David and Steve and all their friends for such a welcoming visit. See you on the road :)

BBC Session Butterfly effect

So we play this bbc session, even tho Gep, Mark and Stoobie were all ill for one reason or another (and im not talking hangovers) and the very next day Mark gets fired by the delightful company he was working for.

Im not sure they had an official clause for dismissal along the lines of playing a radio session after having had the day off sick, but they rustled something up and sacked him for it. Nice.

"Rock'n'Roll eh?" is Marks opinion on the matter.

"We Are The Underdog" Live BBC Session Video

Here it is, the 3rd and final video. Hope you like them.

You can download the audio from all 3 of these for free from our myspace.

"Falling Snow" Live BBC Session Video

This is the second video from our BBC Session. I have also updated the 'Chest Complaints' video for a slightly different version, this one with better sounding audio :)

Third video to come 'We Are The Underdog' to follow...

enjoy.

"Chest Complaints" Live BBC Session Video

They took a little while to process, and we've slighty mastered the audio in T-Rax to improve the sound quality a little. Strangely the video's we were send by aunty beeb are far superior in audio quality than the transmission at the time and the streams from the beeb's website. There are 2 more tracks to follow once they are sorted out.

The audio is also now on our MySpace player: MySpace/Paleuk
BBC Stoke SUBCulture site for our session: Pale in Session

Lastnight's Rigger gig

Off we went to the Rigger lastnight for gigging purpose. We got there to discover the other band booked for the eve had bailed entirely, not shown up or anything. Well these things happen, I suppose. Still, we got to play a little later than we expected which is no bad thing.

Our set went down very well with the gathered collection of people there. Most of who'm were more 'at' the pub than at the pub to watch bands, but we turned a lot of heads with our songs, so thats all good. A few of our friends came up to see us too, which is always good, and they were not alone in applauding us by a long way. A good gig. The highlight for us was as we were playing 'Falling Snow', our set finisher, and outside the big rigger windows it did indeed begin to snow. Crazy. Perhaps we should start travelling as a pack of weather dancers, or something like that, available during the rainy season for cloud busting :)

A good night had by all, thanks to the Rigger and staff, our friends who came to see us, and all the other people in the venue who caught our set and enjoyed it. Thanks!

BBC Session lastnight

Our session lastnight went really well, big thanks to the SubCulture guys for letting us back in for another session. There were many Stafford types in the BBC Stoke studio's lastnight, all of Pelo were there for an accoustic session, Uggy from Mauskramp and ourselves of course :) We could have staged a coup d’état but we decided it wouldnt be wise, we didnt have the car space to ship a whole radio station back home with us. Also got to meet Steve 'wrongpop' from Herzoga, who not only liked our session, but was a good chap too. Nice one Steve.

We played 2 tracks live on air, they were "We Are The Underdog" and "Chest Complaints" and both went swimmingly, were quite looking forward to hearing them ourselves when the Beeb updates its site and we can hear them. Off-air we also played "Falling Snow" which is a near 7 minuite beast of a track, we finish live sets with this currently. All 3 songs will be streaming from the Beeb site within a few days and links will be posted.

Thanks again to the Beeb and the SubCulture chaps for letting our audio terrorism infiltrate the airwaves, and to anyone who tuned in to catch us at it.

Lastnight @ The Actress'n'Bishop

Was a great night lastnight, our set went down really well with all present, got some great feedback from the crowd there including from the other bands. Thanks to all who had good words for us, always welcome they are. The other two bands did great sets, and all in all the evening was a success.

Top night, bring on the next... which is a BBC session on thursday eve and The Rigger, Newcastle-u-Lyme next saturday :)

New Website

I've just finished uploading the new version of our homepage www.bandpale.com, featuring spangly static buttons and other such amazing features.

Still some work to do on it, but its around 80% done I reckon.

www.bandpale.com

Recording progress so far...

So, as you may have already read, we've been recording some tracks in our practice cellar using much borrowed equipment. Progress, im glad to report, is being made. Here is the track list for songs we have begun to record, and in the fullness of time, will become new tracks for you to hear :)

"We Are The Underdog"
"Chest Complaints"
"Undercover"
"Barbed Wire Sandwich" - this is very much a working title and in no way reflects what we will call it :P

The first track, "We Are The Underdog" is one of our newest songs, we have played it live only 2 or 3 times so far, and is the farthest along the recording line. It is being mixed up this week and something of a preview should be available quite soon. The other tracks are still very much in the basics of recording, but we are finding the time outside of rehersal time (we have lots of gigs at the moment heh - not a bad thing). April has some more room between gigs for us to get a lot of work done on them.

The 8 track is a strange and wonderful peice of kit. It pretends really hard to be a tape recorder, having to do crazy things like rewind the hard drive and such, its quite bonkers really but flexible enough for our purposes. Of course it was invented for what, at the time, was a tape recorder based recording world and we can forgive it that. Having it at all is a bonus, at last we are able to record what we want to record, rather than getting what happened recorded. A subtle, but important, difference.

I shall endevour to keep you posted on track progress, and next week or so should see the first practical manifestation of some music :)

See you on the road...

Get Knail'd lastight

All seemd to go down very well lastight, we had a great time ourselves and as far as we could tell so did everyone else - bands included. Some great music from those who came to play for us, and we thought we played a good set too :) Met some great people too (in between running around the place keeping all the juggling balls in the air heh). Big thanks to Million Empire for making the trip up from B'ham to play for us, thanks muchly :) Hope you had a good time fellers. And a big thanks to all the others who played The Dollarhides, Majika, Andrew Salt and James Flanagan. Thanks guys :)

Apologies for Art Feral's accoustic absence, he had enough trouble getting it together to play drums for us let alone do his own accoustic stuff - evil stomach bug being to blame, but then - we do live in a swamp...

Thanks again all concerned, especially to all those who made it to see the bands. Without your support, these things would not happen :)

See you on the road...

Pale asked to support Exoterik on their Single Launch Night

Hey. We have just confirmed that we will be off to Bradford at the end of April. On the 26th Exoterik (a band we recently supported @ The Rigger in Newcastle) are having a Single Launch Show/Party night and they asked us if we could support them, and that we shall be.

Its at the Priestly Theatre in Bradford which is a proper theater with balcony's, lights and everything. Big thanks for Exoterik for asking us!

Here is a link to them...

Morris Man gig bail...

So, we get to the Morris Man, all ready to play and then at the wonderfully chosen time of 7.30pm or thereabouts, the guy running the place informs us that there is no PA. Hmmm. Interesting. Obviously we were expecting them to provide a pa, as previously arranged. Not an ideal time to go PA hunting, half seven on a saturday night. Seems whoever should have booked the pa, didnt.

We bailed. Apologies to anyone who struggled thru the lovely rain to get up there to find us absent. Really isnt our fault but thats not important.

Gep had a new bass to try out too.

"Flippin' The Bird" made it onto Brumcast

Our recent demo Flippin' The Bird has made it onto this weeks Brumcast. We are track#17 on podcast issue 91 "God's Electric Super Scene"...



Click here to get your own player.

Our Recording Studio

Here is a picture of our borrowed Fostex D80 in all of its glory - wired up to the mixers we are using (thanks JB's, Stoobie & Alex for the loans).

We hope to give it a better place to sit that an old chair and a recycling box, but thats not exactly our priority heh.

And the Gig after that

: This is the next event night we have set up.

these are much more work to arrange, as you can imagine, but thats no problem. So far this series of night has been, on the most part, a huge success. Filling the venue with people to the point of capacity :)

and thats always fun.

Next Gig

:Here is the Flyer for out next live gig


There is just us playing, but it should be a good one. Its even an in-house PA so the sound should be spot on :)

To begin.

From this blog you will be able to keep a close eye upon the activities of the band Pale. We hail from Staffordshire in the United Kingdom. We play only origional material which we write ourselves. We play live wherever we can, which so far has taken us around Wolverhampton, Stoke, Birmingham, Lichfield, Newcastle-U-Lyme, Stafford and Cannock. We would like to go further. So far we have been through several line up changes - as life sometimes kicks in and changes the best laid plans of all of us mice. We have some recordings from a couple of studio visits, yet we are seldom satisfied with the sound we obtain. As I type we have pieced together our own 'back room' recording studio through the helpful assistance of a variety of people and are using it as much as our time allows to get what we consider to be our sound recorded for the world (or anyone outside of the world) to listen to. However, we refuse to become a bedroom band and will continue to play live as often, and as far and wide, as we can. We have played a few small festivals but would love to play more of them. The outside air adds a certain 'element' to the equation.

For now we will add all our standards to the blog, our music, some photo's and video's of us playing live - the usual goodies. We do have music that can be purchased online and, should any of it catch your ears, feel free to buy. Any income generated goes directly back into the band, noone makes any profit :)

See you on the road...