fraserlaeto

Its got slightly harder for unknown bands to get a successful gig in Dundee' date=' since the old Westport bar closed down (sniff... sniff... them were the days). The reason being most places is a pay to play kind of policy, and if no-one has heard of you, and you haven't advertised to the point of absolution, there ain't going to be a big crowd, and you will lose money.

The best advice i can offer is to try and offer gig swaps with Dundee bands that are of a similar sound[/quote']

Me and my pal put gigs on in dundee for years back in the old westport days, and not much has changed since then, other than prices.

The new westport doesn't operate a pay to play policy, but asks you to put a deposit down to secure the venue, perhaps hire the venue, and then pay the sound engineer for his time and the PA. This isn;t pay to play though, this is just standard procedure for putting on a gig.

If you're from out of town you'll want to get in touch with a promoter.

http://www.myspace.com/amplabrecs

these guys can probably help you out, or point you in the right direction.

Any word on Laeto i couldn't go.

they were fucking awesome.

for real.

I saw you too then - I've heard very good things since' date=' but the SEGA tshirt concept? Tacky.[/quote']

we're not being ironic or anything.

all of laeto fucking love sega! every one of us has worked in video games at some poin or another, and have an encyclopaedaic knowledge of the subject. It's something that was very close to us, meant a lot to us, and looked cool in our opinion.

cheers, love

Fraser

ben:

i appreciate that you don't like our band, that's fine, and you're more than entitled to voice your opinion but maybe it's more suited to a comments / opinions type thread than one where we're trying to promote a gig on our own.

To me, it seems pretty unnecessary to slate the band when effectively all we've done is put a poster up.

sorry if this offends, that's not my intention.

thanks

fraser/ laeto

Hmm' date=' when you add the two lists, the sum can be divided into three;

Corporate"R"s,

Corporate has beens,

and

Corporate wannabes,

and the little remainder depending upon how you view any "leftovers"

What was it written by journalists? or...? fuck I'll have to read the thread again....! [/quote']

Hi there.

I'm in the band laeto.

We're in the list, and don't fall into any of your above categories.

That's all.

Thanks.

Fraser

One of the songs on your sampler reminded me of 5150 a bit. I think it was the third song.

craig

amazing.

i like van halen lots.

i didint say anything bad about the vocals' date=' i fully endorse using vocals, just a si fully endorse using guitar. it should be used where necesary. i quite liked one of the samples, the clips i got form the rest of the samples were a bit out of my listening range. i dont know, one of them was like outrageous guitar solos, which is ok, just not my kind of thing. i appreciate you responded to my post though.

for the record, i purchase make us mild in londons tower records. if i get a copy of the album somehow il give it a more thorough listen.

i dont know, i used to be in this post rock place. now im in a hip hop, electronica place. i still really like guitar stuff, but more sonic youthy, yo la tengoy stuff, rather than 80's guitar rock...

thats all.

byebye.

lime out.[/quote']

fair enough,

thanks for replying without the "you're wrong and you're a wank" attitude that i might have expected on the jockrock forums or something similar.

i'm not trying to convert you, but there are songs that are a lot less stylised on the new record. there's 13 full songs on it, and still a lot of post-rocky stuff (if you can call it that).

One of my mates brought his friend along to see us in february and he fucking hated it, he said we were "fucking awful, not like bad post-rock, like bad van halen", stuart persuaded him to come along again last saturday and he said he was into it because he "heard the post-rock bits this time". I dunno, maybe after a few listens it changes a wee bit.

maybe not.

thanks anyway,

fraser.

An unsolicited response...

When I was playing in a Dundee band (who shall remain nameless ;P) around the time the first Laeto album came out' date=' I saw them 4 or 5 times. To the guy who said they'd 'turned shite', I really don't agree. Not that they were shite then, but the band I saw in the Cafe Royal on Friday night were, for me, a much more powerful and interesting proposition. Why have singing? Because sometimes you can't articulate everything through music alone, and sometimes you need to say something.

I didn't really know what to expect before the gig - to paraphrase the above, I was 18 the last time I saw them, and I'm 24 now - and I was genuinely impressed by how good a band they were. When I eventually got home (Stuart, Craig, your fault...), the first thing I did was stick on the sampler (note to everyone: free samplers are unequivocably a great idea) and that has to be a sign of a good gig.

Shit, I've just read back this post, and I reckon using the computer after finishing off the weekend's beer is a sure fire way to meander on and on and on...so I'll stop.

And you may never know what the point was.

Amen.[/quote']

Thanks.

The reason for the vocals all the time isn't necessarily that we want to convey a message (most of our songs are about fairly abstract subject matter anyway), but more to do with the fact that a voice is an instrument that we like a lot, and we use it as one. We still don't compress the fuck out of everything and stick the vocals way up in the mix, because it remains a band instrument as far as we're concerned, and has no right to be louder than anything else. The lyrics do mean something though, just maybe just not to other people.

Also, on reflection, after thinking for a moment on the subject of becoming derivative, i really don't see what's derivative about our band at the moment. Certainly, it would have been as derivative to be the instrumental post-rock band we were 5 years ago when almost all post-rock music is instrumental.

Like i said, we kept our devices and gradually employed a different delivery. If that makes us derivative then i don't see why. I don't see many independent scottish bands with solos like we have or the stylistic method we have, and these are our contemporaries.

In summary, it seems that some people may have a problem with our band "straying from our roots" for want of a better term, and doing only what pleases us, current tastes (whatever they may be at that time) and our interest in what we can achieve as a band.

It would seem to me that this is what stops us from being derivative, the fact that we've effectively expanded our gene pool into other genres to stop this from happening.

I talk too much, eh?

Anyway,

peace out

Fraser

i dont know whats happened with laeto to be honest.

i think they made a consious decision to turn shit. thatd make more sense than anything else. out of all those samples there was only one i liked' date=' the party one, and the rest were terrible! i knew theyd made a change from the last album, but from what i heard on radio 1 when they did the session the change was at least to other good stuff. now its derivative boring rubbish.[/quote']

hey man,

turning shit wasn't a conscious decision, it just happened.

really though, it's been a long time since anyone heard anything recorded by us, even that radio 1 session was what, 3 years ago or something?

thing is, we've done our growing up in private for the last few years, we changed a bit at a time, without meaning to, and people never got to hear the progression.

it's a shame that you're not into the new stuff, but we knew that people wouldn't be, it's too different from before i guess.

that's the way it goes, we'd rather do what we're into whether that changes or not than hold back and be bored because we're scared what might happen if we allowed ourselves to change.

anyway, i appreciate that from what you said you were into the older stuff, i still love it, and i'm proud of it.

we're still exactly the same band in my opinion, we still use all the same tricks we did before, just slightly different delivery, and we've got singing because... why not? i hope you appreciate that.

i was 19 when we wrote the songs that are on the first album, i'm 25 now, it's got to be different.

i'm not shouting you down, i just thought your post merited a response.

for the record as well, 2 of the 3 songs from that last radio 1 session are on the album, there really is quite a wide range of stuff on it.

anyway,

thanks for listening to the samples anyway,

take care,

Fraser